[9wzYQbTYsAIc]

> You seem to be confusing "theys". The question is what motivates participants, not what motivates researchers.

Contrarily, you seem to be confusing “theys”, yourself.

There exist participants that are motivated by participating in research that benefits society.

Just like there exist individuals motivated by lending their computing resources to the various @Home research efforts.

[thayne]

But if the participants are limited to people who are motivated solely by participating in research, wouldn't that add significant bias to that research?

[9wzYQbTYsAIc]

Indeed, sampling bias is a large concern.

Nonetheless, much of psychology research conducted in the US has made do with ridiculous sampling bias - the US college student is anecdotally considered to be the most-studied population in the world.

[yissp]

Doesn't the field of psychology have pretty serious issues with the replicability of their experimental results?

[9wzYQbTYsAIc]

Indeed, anecdotally, if not empirically, that is the case. Nonetheless, psychology is a highly operationalized field.

In other words, every thorough study begins with an assessment and revision of the consensus language being used to describe reality.

On that front alone, psychology is one of the most hard sciences around.

Deep learning is directly attributable to psychology research, for what it is worth.