[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

> psychologist Ellen Langer and her students carefully refurbished an old monastery in Peterborough, New Hampshire, to resemble a place that would have existed two decades earlier. They invited a group of elderly men in their late 70s and early 80s to spend a week with them and live as they did in 1959,

Has this study been replicated? Every time I see a psychology study that is used as the basis of some popular article by some journalist, I get suspicious.

[smnrchrds]

Of course not. Like all things too good to be true, it most probably is. Criticism section on the researcher's Wikipedia page is worth a read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Langer#Criticism

[jessriedel]

Yikes:

> ...Langer claimed that when elderly men were temporarily placed in a setting that recreated their past, their health improved, and they even looked younger. However, this study was never published in a peer-reviewed journal. The only publication of this finding is in a chapter of a book edited by Langer.

> ... Langer described the week-long paid adult counterclockwise retreats she was creating in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, aimed towards replicating the effects found in her New Hampshire study. ... "Langer makes no apologies for the paid retreats, nor for what will be their steep price." Langer was defiant when pressed on the ethics of her study: "To my question of whether such a nakedly commercial venture will undermine her academic credibility, Langer rolled her eyes a bit. 'Look, I’m not 40 years old. I’ve paid my dues, and there’s nothing wrong with making this more widely available to people, since I deeply believe it.'"

I'm bummed Nautilus is publishing this. They ought to know better.

[rramadass]

And may i say that you ought to know better than to point out one data point in a good article to besmirch the entire informative article.

The article deals with complex and interesting topics and is well worth a couple of reads.

[adrianN]

If you're not an expert in the field and manage to find a more or less obvious mistake in the research of the article, how many more subtle errors an expert would find?

[rramadass]

Actually that is not the case here. The article is an overview bringing together ideas/opinions from various different researchers only one of whom seems to have employed questionable practices.

[azhu]

Seriously. People oft forget there are two parts to critical thinking: the part where you figure out all the ways something could possibly be untrue, then the part where you figure out all the ways in which it could be true.

[Out_of_Characte]

This. even the most flawed highschool level proof of gravity is still probaly correct.

[distant_hat]

Another thing with these kind of studies is that any kind of change is beneficial in the short term, sometimes even changes that are significantly detrimental in the long run. Also, sometimes studies may exclude dropouts from the final results skewing results significantly.

[brianberns]

Agreed. I’m also dubious about the control group who were merely “reminiscing”. Seems ripe for researcher-induced bias.