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Stuart Ritchie

Stuart Ritchie

@stuart-ritchie · 10 positions · On ppll ↗

Psychologist, formerly a lecturer at King's College London, author of Science Fictions, a book about fraud, bias, negligence and hype in research, and of the Science Fictions newsletter, where he takes individual papers and press releases apart in public.

Stuart Ritchie did not write this page.

We collected these quotes from things they published elsewhere, and every quote links to where it was said. They have no account here and have not endorsed this site. Quotes are word for word; the short line under each one is our own restatement, not their wording. Their own site. Is this you? Claim it or ask us to remove it. Or tell us what is wrong here.

2 of Stuart Ritchie's claims fit 2 mental models. Most often: Cognitive biases, The map is not the territory.

Models we see in what they say

Our reading: their claim applies the idea without naming it. The claim is theirs; filing it here is ours.

Cognitive biases

Your mind jumps to conclusions and defends them; look for the evidence against you and use checklists.

Used by 18 others

Deciding your conclusion before you look at the data is one of the most reality-distorting things a scientist can do.

  1. Stuart Ritchie Psychologist, formerly a lecturer at King's College London Having a pre-existing conclusion—a “take-home message”—in mind is one of the most reality-distorting influences on our thinking. Science isn't storytellingsciencefictions.org · 27 Dec 2022All korrents from this piece
    Having a pre-existing conclusion—a “take-home message”—in mind is one of the most reality-distorting influences on our thinking.

The map is not the territory

Every model, word or plan is a simplified map of reality; useful when its structure matches, misleading when mistaken for the thing itself.

Used by 56 others

Compressing a piece of research into a journal paper's word count is itself a distortion of what was found.

  1. Stuart Ritchie Psychologist, formerly a lecturer at King's College London The mere act of squeezing a complex process into a few thousand words—limited by a journal-imposed word count—is itself a distortion of reality. Science isn't storytellingsciencefictions.org · 27 Dec 2022All korrents from this piece
    The mere act of squeezing a complex process into a few thousand words—limited by a journal-imposed word count—is itself a distortion of reality.