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Record W2031464481 · doi:10.1017/s0140525x05250148

On the limitations of quasi-experiments

2005· article· en· W2031464481 on OpenAlexaff
Terence C. Burnham, Robert Kurzban

Bibliographic record

VenueBehavioral and Brain Sciences · 2005
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicExperimental Behavioral Economics Studies
Canadian institutionsAcadian Seaplants (Canada)
Fundersnot available
KeywordsSelfishnessAxiomCore (optical fiber)Null hypothesisField (mathematics)PsychologyComputer scienceMathematical economicsEconometricsSocial psychologyMathematics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Although provocative, the data reported in Henrich et al.'s target article suffer from limitations, including the fact that the “selfishness axiom” is not an interesting null hypothesis, and the intrinsic limitations of quasi-experimental designs, in which random assignment is impossible. True experiments, in the laboratory or in the field, will continue to be crucial for settling core issues associated with human economic behavior.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.558
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.731
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesMetaresearch
Consensus categoriesMetaresearch
DomainCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: Methods
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Methods · Consensus signal: Methods
Teacher disagreement score0.442
Threshold uncertainty score0.545

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.5580.731
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0020.002
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0050.003
Bibliometrics0.0020.003
Science and technology studies0.0040.026
Scholarly communication0.0060.014
Open science0.0070.007
Research integrity0.0060.012
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0120.002

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.225
GPT teacher head0.411
Teacher spread0.186 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; the direct Gemma label and the distilled Codex classifier agree on what is shown here.

Study designTheoretical or conceptual
DomainMethods
GenreMethods

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations11
Published2005
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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