[jholman]

There was no such study.

The story you're repeating is a parable, published in a book called "Art & Fear" (as sibling commenters have noted).

There is no evidence in that book that it's anything other than a fabrication, argumentation from "just-so story".

I happen to believe the theory, personally. But the ceramics story is not evidence at all that the theory is correct. It's just a bald-faced assertion.

[kens]

I investigated this story a while ago and concluded it was a parable, based on how it was presented in Art and Fear. However, I checked with the book's author and found that it is a true story. Strangely, the class was actually a university-level photography class, but they changed it to ceramics in the book.

[areyousure]

425 days ago you wrote that you were highly suspicious the event ever happened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11439565 (I was also active in that thread because I have researched the story.) The same happened 324 days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12108514 but then you updated one day later that you checked with one of the authors of the book! And here you relate the information again. I'm excited to learn more about this history.

Which author did you contact? Can you relate any details about the class? Where was it (which university)? When was it? Who was the instructor?

Thanks!

[kens]

I like to get to the bottom of things :-) I emailed author David Bayles last July to ask him about the story. He didn't give a lot of details but said it was a university level photography class taught by "a very experienced and sophisticated teacher", and apart from changing the medium to ceramics the story was the literal truth. I asked for more details, but didn't hear back and didn't want to keep bothering him.

[jholman]

Thank you for your service, and for your updates. :)

A few observations, I think, flow from this:

1) Still not a study (as I note you have noted elsewhere, but I'm drawing that to the attention of anyone else who reads this), but rather an anecdote. Interesting one, though.

2) Art and Fear was published in '93, so that means chemical photography. That means that even the students who were being marked on quantity would have some lower bound for quality (in a digital photography regime, you'd just hold down the shutter for an hour and submit 3000 photos and be done for the semester). By-hand developing also has a lower bound on how much work you can do and still produce a photo. It just seems a lot less game-able than the pottery version, which makes the story seem more believable. So that makes it pretty weird to change for Bayles and Orland to change the story.

For myself, I think it's true that if you want to be good at anything worthwhile, you need to do a lot of work. But it's also true that if you want to be good, you need to struggle with perfecting your craft, rather than merely churning out whatever. I highly doubt that either is adequate alone. Of course, if you merely want to be tolerable, in many fields some people can get by on talent (however talent works).

[areyousure]

Thank you very much for your response! I encourage you to keep getting to the bottom of things.

For what it's worth, I will go on record that I still do not believe the event occurred. :)

[oh_sigh]

This makes me wonder how many times, when people say 'I read/remember a study...', they actually read the study itself, and not some second-hand analysis (or, a story which masquerades as second-hand analysis). I think 'I remember a study' should be an anti-pattern for careful conversation.

[gwern]

It happens all the time. After being burned dozens of times by urban legends and grossly misdescribed studies, I started just always reading fulltext instead of relying on summaries or citations. And even then, you'll run into misleading to the point of lying summaries of past research throughout the literature. Life is hard.

[ThrustVectoring]

Yeah, I definitely wasn't careful with my wording there. I remembered reading about a study, not "reading a study". And even then, it was less a study and more "hey, a funny thing happened in my pottery class".

[oh_sigh]

No worries! I didn't mean to call you out or anything - I've used the phrase frequently myself, and was mostly just thinking out loud for how I can communicate with more care.