r value alone does not tell one whether the relationship is statistically significant

You're right, and I should have made that point explicit. The Pearson r does not make any indication of significance. I was assuming that the reviewer was aware of the p-value and based his statement on that, but failed to report it. My purpose was to point out that converse, a low r value does not exclude significance either. There's another thread running to the same point.

You're definitely right about that. Since the review doesn't give a p-value, I took it on good faith that it was covered in the book... but then again, a reviewer who doesn't note the p-value probably didn't know what significant meant anyway... hrm...

Social scientists and anyone else who passed STAT 101 might find that significant[1]. It is sort of cute how you think you are critiquing science.

[1] Previous post explaining the difference

I think you're confusing correlation (R) with coefficient of determination (R-squared). Only 10-30% (cautiously limiting to 1 sig fig) of the variation is accounted for, but this is still huge. See my other post.

suggest that about 10-30% (r-squared) or more of the variation

Correction: Cut the "or more". It was left over from a previous version of that comment... if you can believe that I actually read and revise my comments before posting! (although apparently not well enough)

TFS never claimed it was a strong correlation. It's a highly SIGNIFICANT correlation (meaning that the probability that the result occurred by chance and not systematically is very low, less than 5%).

Now, whether or not .33 is a STRONG correlation is another matter. By most definitions, it is not, although .52 would be a moderate correlation. However, the correlation does suggest that about 10-30% (r-squared) or more of the variation in subjects' decisions was accounted for by their social security numbers (accounted for != caused by, but we can make inferences based on the experimental design). Over a lifetime, 10% variation due to random irrelevant factors (like SS number) is serious, and 30% is HUGE. In that sense, it is a meaningful result, even if the correlation is not a "strong" one in terms of proportion.

You mean fMRI. EEG has nothing to do with the salmon study.

That said, TFA cites fMRI also, so your comparison to the salmon study is plausible, if not terribly informative.

</sarcasm>

I think you forgot this.... right??

If a truck is tail-gating you, there's also a good chance it's your fault. In areas with any substantial terrain, trucks have a lot more difficulty modulating their speed than your sedan/pickup. I've seen plenty of people think that having a small car made it OK to slip in a couple yards ahead of a rig's front fender. Those people shouldn't be surprised when the trucker is angrily riding their tail all the way down the hill. Good defensive driving means having a reasonable notion of what's going on in the cars around you, not just your own right-to-the-road (not suggesting that this is parent poster's attitude).

Do not shoot off screen to reload!!!!!

I began wondering about this same problem as several questions were distinctly medical (and sounded pretty urgent!). The good news is that QuestionBox is trying to recruit medical professionals to assist with these calls (can't find the link now, but it was on the QuestionBox website).

I'm sure there are plenty of $topic_of_interest geeks out there who would love to volunteer a bit of their time in this sort of capacity, and being telephone-based it's a highly distributable service. Of course, nothing beats a good research librarian in general background knowledge and ability to sift out the garbage.

FWIW, QuestionBox appears to have internships, of what nature I don't know:
http://www.questionbox.org/you.html

Minor quibble: Penn State University is located in Centre County.

When I think of people I know, the ones with diverse ethnic backgrounds are invariably taller than either of their parents and very often good-looking.

Nutrition is also a pretty strong influence on height. I don't know where you live, but where I'm from there is a high immigrant population, and children are frequently much taller than their parents who grew up in developing nations. If the people of 'diverse ethnic background' have one or both parents in the same scenario, the availability of food is probably contributing to the child's height.

As for attractiveness, you might be right, but don't forget about the effects of the observer. We may prefer (i.e. assign 'beauty' to) people whose appearance we consider exotic, perhaps partly because reproducing with them would result in increased genetic diversity for the offspring.

"It's dead, Jim."

Come on, how did we overlook such a staple?

Moreover, a teacher who is constantly disciplining the same group of 5-7 has some serious classroom management problems. I don't mean to divert attention from the students' responsibility to exercise some self-control, but teenagers are not adults, and part of the job description for a good teacher is engaging a cognitively unique age group. This factor is strongly emphasized in elementary eduction, but nearly ignored in secondary.

Speaking from my own high school experience, there were teachers who would get flustered, angry, or severely distracted by disruptive behavior. We pushed those teachers to the limits of their sanity, because we had no respect for them and resented their supposed role of authority.

Conversely, there were several teachers in whose classes we didn't blink our eyes out of turn. Our behavior wasn't a result of any fear of retribution. For the rare serious infraction, these teachers would stop everything, calmly ask the offender to leave his/her classroom immediately, and move on. We recognized the domain of these teachers and worked to earn their respect by showing them the same.