this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2026
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Why isn't methodology discussed anymore? How were their conclusions reached? That was always a big part of newspaper reporting back before the internet. Methodology is important. Without it, conclusions are as useless as any other "polling" data. It may be in the linked article but I look to the post only for good, or incomplete, information. I don't click on the links.
You had me in the first half.
You're not wrong, but this is a press release from a university about research. They're not going to dig into methodology when they want to toot their own horn.
Reading the abstract and introduction (full article is pay walled), it was a pilot study using EEG. Normally similar studies have participants self report using a survey. Sample size was 60 people which seems reasonable given they had to hook up each person to an EEG. Demographics are a bit skewed based on gender and age, but as a pilot, that probably isn't that big of a deal.
I'm not seeing anything egregious, and it was published in a peer reviewed journal. I would treat this as a single data point and wait for other researchers to replicated it and prod at the methodology more.
... that's kind of silly. The methodology is indeed in the article. Why would you expect the internet to behave the same way as a newspaper? If you care about the methodology of the study, why wouldn't you just read the article anyway?
However, I do think you at least have a point about how these aggregate feeds work in relation to how information is presented/understood. The post here is a good example of the title being a woefully inadequate descriptor of it's content, despite being generally 'fine'. People would probably draw inaccurate conclusions upon only reading the title, but like, we're already pretty aware of this phenomenon by now, aren't we?