Andy DeSoto

A lot of what I write about in the Behavioral Research and Technology collection involves research of folks other than me or sometimes even just speculation and theory. Yesterday’s article about police lineups, though, encouraged me to write a bit about some work I’ve conducted i…

I’ve been in the market for a new pair of glasses for a few weeks now, so when my buddy Adam told me about a relatively new company called Warby Parker that sells glasses, I jumped aboard.What I didn’t expect was for the behavioral scientist in me to get involved! In case you do…

Not too long ago I expressed disappointment and concern that one of my favorite PDF management software companies was being eaten up by a powerful academic publisher. It was a shame to see a group that I believed in — and volunteer for, in a sense — take such a step. But thinkin…

I’ve noticed quite the uptick in unconventional uses of technology in my field, psychology. Unconventional for practitioners of science, that is. Making the waves today is one such case: a Nature blog post about a disagreement currently being carried out in the scientific literat…

As I’ve progressed as a behavioral researcher, many things have become increasingly simple: conducting literature searches, organizing PDFs, writing up empirical papers. One thing, however, has remained a thorn in my side: Organizing and keeping track of data files (e.g., .xlsx d…

Making the rounds on Twitter is a brand new article, published today, on why it’s a bad thing that neuroscience studies have low statistical power. (The article in question is Button et al., 2013, with full text available here.) Statistical power refers to the likelihood that an…

Academic journal companies are eating up PDF management software and the employees who make it. Should we be afraid? I awoke this morning to an announcement that Mendeley, a PDF management tool I use regularly, has been bought out by Elsevier, an academic journal publisher. The …

I was traveling a bit over the weekend, trying to keep tabs on what I needed to get done for the Memory Lab. Sometimes it takes the occasional travel experience like this one to remind you what does and does not work about the way in which you organize your to-do list. I believe…

As an avid St. Louis Cardinals fan, I was thrilled to hear the news that our ace starting pitcher, Adam Wainwright, had been signed for a huge five-year contract. One of our local television stations, KSDK, advertised on Twitter that the press conference regarding the Wainwright …

Five days ago I wrote about the importance of documenting your work, and how keeping careful worknotes can be an effective way of staying on top of the research process. I described how I use a tool called the World Outliner to manage these notes. Now, there’s an even simpler wa…

I read a paper several years ago — I wish I could come up with it now, but it’ll take me a day or two to do so — that discussed the ideal way a program of research should be devised. I’ll paraphrase here, noting that these ideas are not my own. (Be sure to comment if you know the…

In today’s Memory Lab meeting, we’ll be discussing a popular paper by Fritz, Morris, and Richler (2012) describing how to estimate and report effect sizes in psychology papers. It is a decent paper and likely took a Herculean effort to write, revise, and publish. If I’ve learned…

The other day I wrote about the importance of perfection in research, but didn’t discuss any specific techniques to help this process along. Never fear. One of the most useful tools, I believe, is using an effective work documentation system. Worknotes are a very useful way to se…

If you go to a modern behavioral research conference and stop by a handful of poster presentations, sooner or later you’ll hear the phrase, “We collected our data on Amazon Mechanical Turk.” MTurk, as it’s called, has quickly become a staple for collecting large amounts of behavi…

Four years and counting in academia beats into one’s head one important rule: Make everything perfect. From experimental design to data collection to analysis, there isn’t room for errors. Compulsiveness isn’t as much rewarded as a lack thereof is punished. A mistake, made even w…

A few weeks ago, I completed a big project in the Memory Lab and found some extra time on my hands. One of the things I found myself getting into Microsoft’s Halo 4 video game. If you’re not familiar with this game (or games of this type), each new release in a series (i.e., the …

(This is cross-posted on my personal blog.) Recently, several St. Louis-based companies (or entrepreneurs) have made use of Kickstarter to collect funds in order to open restaurants. At one point in time, I thought this was a smart idea. In fact, if you check my Kickstarter back…

If you’re reading this article, you’re seeking advice. That’s good — advice is one way to augment your own brain with the brains of others. Over your lifetime, you’ll receive a lot of advice. A ton of advice. (Some will be solicited, but most won’t be.) So how do you decide which…