About
Our most important laboratory instrument is our brain. It's a powerful engine for creativity and problem solving. Only problem? It's not objective at all! Beyond basic sensory biases (e.g. optical illusions), our brains are subject to a number of cognitive biases, skewing how we conceive, test for, and evaluate scientific hypotheses (Kahneman & Tversky, 1996).
If unchecked by safeguards to recognize and mitigate cognitive bias in our own research, we might mistake even a seemingly “correct” result in the short term for a valid premise in the long term. In other words, our experiments will suffer from confirmation bias (CB), and we’ll be building bad science on the shoulders of three kids in a trench coat. This unit will train you in a few practices to help identify and prevent that.
Prerequisites
Elementary algebra and probability calculus.
Tinker with Wason’s 2-4-6 Hypothesis Rule Discovery Task to contend with ambiguous information.
- Begin to build an intuition around cognitive bias and identify it in your own thinking.
- Self-check: How do I know I’m right?
Modules
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