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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

Eliezer, The math professor study was Strupp and Hadley, (1979) "Specific vs Nonspecific Factors in Psychotherapy."

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

>had a two-to-one chance of being better off on the measure examined than >someone chosen at random from the control group. That is a very strong >finding …

As stated here, this doesn't seem like a strong finding to me. We're told nothing about how strong anything is. The 2:1 says zero about the intensity (other than it was detectable by whatever measure used) of better-offedness. Were they suicidal and it saved their lives (pretty strong), or did they feel a little better for an hour (trivial)? What was the "measure", and why would anyone care about it? A 2:1 chance of having a trivial effect would say nothing about the effectiveness of psychotherapy.

Is this a problem with the summary, or with the study itself?

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