Adam Mastroianni
Experimental psychologist and author of the blog Experimental History, on psychology, science reform and creativity.
Adam Mastroianni did not write this page. ppll compiled it from their own words, each linked to the source. Is this you? · Report a mistake
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What they believe
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Teaching and grading are two different jobs, and doing both at once makes a person worse at teaching.
Grade harder, grade softer, grade with words rather than numbers, hide the grades entirely—none of it works, because the problem was never the grades themselves. The problem was trying to be both a teacher and a cop at the same time.
experimental-history.comSaid 16 May 2023This on korrents
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Science is a strong-link problem: what it amounts to depends on how good the best work is, not on how bad the worst is.
In the long run, the best stuff is basically all that matters, and the bad stuff doesn’t matter at all.
experimental-history.comSaid 11 Apr 2023This on korrents
The bold line is korrents’ wording; the quote is theirs. These 2: what they wrote before what they said aloud, one per source, newest first.
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Lovedrcmnd.app
How to Survive Boiling WaterTheir words
"How to Survive Boiling Water" is a quintessential effort post. Cook accidentally drinks some probiotic tea, and then she's like, wait, how could "probiotic tea" possibly be a thing?
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Magical ConstitutionalismTheir words
SECOND PLACE ($250): Magical Constitutionalism by Ricardo López Cordero
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Remembering Indonesia from My GrandpaTheir words
What stands out about Hsieh's version is that her roots occupy such a unique spot in history: her grandparents were Chinese born in Indonesia, which means they got caught between the rock of the Cultural Revolution and the hard place of anti-communist backlash.
+ 2 more
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Recommendsrcmnd.app
Chatting AloneTheir words
Martsinovich argues, via code snippets, that there is no such thing as a "conversation" with a chatbot. The AI is born anew every time it speaks, and it simply reads the dialogue so far and then tries to write the next line:
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Usesrcmnd.app
PangramTheir words
For the first time, I ran all potential winners through Pangram, which is an AI-writing detector.1 So according to the machine (and to my ear), all of the winners are 100% human-written.
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16 May 2023
From one piece I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a cop 6 beliefs · experimental-history.com
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Their words
Every time we rank one another, we lose a little humanity.
I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a copexperimental-history.com
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Their words
If my class is so boring that I have to devise an additional carrot-and-stick system to get students to pay attention, the problem is my class is boring.
I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a copexperimental-history.com
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korrents.com
Evaluation should be taken out of the classroom and given to people whose whole job it is.Their words
One solution is to separate instruction and evaluation. Let teachers be teachers and cops be cops.
I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a copexperimental-history.com
+ 3 more
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korrents.com
Grading flattens whatever is taught into what can be tested, and teaches students to ignore everything else.Their words
Evaluation forces me to flatten everything I teach into something that can be tested, and it encourages students to ignore everything that isn’t on the test.
I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a copexperimental-history.com
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Their words
Instruction is collaborative: students want to learn, and I want them to learn, too. Evaluation is adversarial: students want the points, and I have to make sure they don’t get too many.
I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a copexperimental-history.com
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korrents.com
Teaching and grading are two different jobs, and doing both at once makes a person worse at teaching.Their words
Grade harder, grade softer, grade with words rather than numbers, hide the grades entirely—none of it works, because the problem was never the grades themselves. The problem was trying to be both a teacher and a cop at the same time.
I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a copexperimental-history.com
11 April 2023
From one piece Science is a strong-link problem 3 beliefs · experimental-history.com
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korrents.com
Large replication projects answer the wrong question, because most individual studies do not matter either way.Their words
There’s no point in picking some studies that are convenient to replicate, doing ‘em over, and reporting “only 36% of them replicate!”
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Their words
Reviewers are less likely to greenlight papers and grants if they’re novel, risky, or interdisciplinary.
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Their words
In the long run, the best stuff is basically all that matters, and the bad stuff doesn’t matter at all.
14 March 2023
From one piece You can't reach the brain through the ears 5 beliefs · experimental-history.com
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Their words
We do this all the time: we attempt to reach the brain through the ears, but all we end up doing is vibrating the air.
You can't reach the brain through the earsexperimental-history.com
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korrents.com
The beliefs worth changing are the defended ones, so changing a mind is a siege rather than a conversation.Their words
To impart wisdom, then, is to lay siege to someone’s mind-castle, because the only things worth being wise about are hidden behind the walls.
You can't reach the brain through the earsexperimental-history.com
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korrents.com
Even when advice is understood and believed, people discount it by assuming their own case is the exception.Their words
Even when we understand the words, and even when we trust them, we still have another eject button: we assume they don’t apply to us.
You can't reach the brain through the earsexperimental-history.com
+ 2 more
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korrents.com
A thought does not fit inside a sound wave, so most of what a person means is lost before it reaches anybody else.Their words
You simply can’t fit a thought into a sound wave.
You can't reach the brain through the earsexperimental-history.com
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korrents.com
Opinions move by touching things, not by reading about them: nobody learns to drive a race car from a book.Their words
You cannot dump your bucket into someone else’s bucket.
You can't reach the brain through the earsexperimental-history.com
13 December 2022
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Their words
All we can say from these big trends is that we have no idea whether peer review helped, it might have hurt, it cost a ton, and the current state of the scientific literature is pretty abysmal.
7 March 2022
1 March 2021
Nothing matches.
Beliefs
Korrents What they believe 34 beliefs — each backed by an exact quote.
Each is a — compiled by korrents.com, not by them: the one-line wordings are korrents', the quotes are theirs.
Recent
Teaching and grading are two different jobs, and doing both at once makes a person worse at teaching.
Grade harder, grade softer, grade with words rather than numbers, hide the grades entirely—none of it works, because the problem was never the grades themselves. The problem was trying to be both a teacher and a cop at the same time.
I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a cop Said 16 May 2023
Instruction is collaborative and evaluation is adversarial, which is why putting them in the same hands degrades both.
Instruction is collaborative: students want to learn, and I want them to learn, too. Evaluation is adversarial: students want the points, and I have to make sure they don’t get too many.
I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a cop Said 16 May 2023
Grading flattens whatever is taught into what can be tested, and teaches students to ignore everything else.
Evaluation forces me to flatten everything I teach into something that can be tested, and it encourages students to ignore everything that isn’t on the test.
I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a cop Said 16 May 2023
Show 31 more
Evaluation should be taken out of the classroom and given to people whose whole job it is.
One solution is to separate instruction and evaluation. Let teachers be teachers and cops be cops.
I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a cop Said 16 May 2023
Needing grades to make students pay attention is evidence that the class is boring, not that students do not care about learning.
If my class is so boring that I have to devise an additional carrot-and-stick system to get students to pay attention, the problem is my class is boring.
I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a cop Said 16 May 2023
Ranking people costs something every time: the top become more arrogant, the bottom more indignant, and the rankers more callous.
Every time we rank one another, we lose a little humanity.
I wanted to be a teacher but they made me a cop Said 16 May 2023
Science is a strong-link problem: what it amounts to depends on how good the best work is, not on how bad the worst is.
In the long run, the best stuff is basically all that matters, and the bad stuff doesn’t matter at all.
Science is a strong-link problem Said 11 Apr 2023
Gatekeeping in science stamps out the best research along with the worst, because reviewers are least likely to approve what is novel or risky.
Reviewers are less likely to greenlight papers and grants if they’re novel, risky, or interdisciplinary.
Science is a strong-link problem Said 11 Apr 2023
Large replication projects answer the wrong question, because most individual studies do not matter either way.
There’s no point in picking some studies that are convenient to replicate, doing ‘em over, and reporting “only 36% of them replicate!”
Science is a strong-link problem Said 11 Apr 2023
Opinions move by touching things, not by reading about them: nobody learns to drive a race car from a book.
You cannot dump your bucket into someone else’s bucket.
You can't reach the brain through the ears Said 14 Mar 2023
A thought does not fit inside a sound wave, so most of what a person means is lost before it reaches anybody else.
You simply can’t fit a thought into a sound wave.
You can't reach the brain through the ears Said 14 Mar 2023
Even when advice is understood and believed, people discount it by assuming their own case is the exception.
Even when we understand the words, and even when we trust them, we still have another eject button: we assume they don’t apply to us.
You can't reach the brain through the ears Said 14 Mar 2023
The beliefs worth changing are the defended ones, so changing a mind is a siege rather than a conversation.
To impart wisdom, then, is to lay siege to someone’s mind-castle, because the only things worth being wise about are hidden behind the walls.
You can't reach the brain through the ears Said 14 Mar 2023
Telling people that something is good or fun accomplishes nothing; the posters and campaigns that do it only vibrate the air.
We do this all the time: we attempt to reach the brain through the ears, but all we end up doing is vibrating the air.
You can't reach the brain through the ears Said 14 Mar 2023
Sixty years of peer review produced no evidence that it made science better, and the literature it produced is in a bad state.
All we can say from these big trends is that we have no idea whether peer review helped, it might have hurt, it cost a ton, and the current state of the scientific literature is pretty abysmal.
The rise and fall of peer review Said 13 Dec 2022
Peer reviewers miss most of the serious errors in the papers they review.
Scientists have run studies where they deliberately add errors to papers, send them out to reviewers, and simply count how many errors the reviewers catch. Reviewers are pretty awful at this.
The rise and fall of peer review Said 13 Dec 2022
Fraudulent papers pass peer review routinely, which is direct evidence that peer review does not do the job it is supposed to do.
In fact, we’ve got knock-down, real-world data that peer review doesn’t work: fraudulent papers get published all the time.
The rise and fall of peer review Said 13 Dec 2022
Scientists say they take peer review seriously, but what they actually do shows they do not think it matters.
If you look at what scientists actually do, it’s clear they don’t think peer review really matters.
The rise and fall of peer review Said 13 Dec 2022
A vetting system that catches almost nothing is worse than no vetting at all, because its stamp makes people trust what nobody checked.
This extremely bad system is worse than nothing because it fools people into thinking they’re safe when they’re not.
The rise and fall of peer review Said 13 Dec 2022
Needing a reviewer's approval before an idea counts for anything makes scientists worse at thinking, and costs the field its most unusual ideas.
Making peer review harsher would also exacerbate the worst problem of all: just knowing that your ideas won’t count for anything unless peer reviewers like them makes you worse at thinking.
The rise and fall of peer review Said 13 Dec 2022
The demands of peer reviewers push scientists into producing bad research.
The invention of peer review may have even encouraged bad research.
The rise and fall of peer review Said 13 Dec 2022
Peer review is one of the things genuinely wrong with academia, not a safeguard that mostly works.
Peer review doesn’t work and there’s probably no way to fix it.
The rise and fall of peer review Said 13 Dec 2022
Going back to re-check every old psychology study one by one makes no sense.
But the point that gets mixed in is “now we should go back and double-check every psychology study.” And that, my dear Kyle, makes no sense to me.
Psychology might be a big stinkin’ load of hogwash and that’s just fine Said 20 Sept 2022
What survives an education is not the knowledge but the feeling it left behind.
I’m here to tell you that learning is all about vibes.
You'll forget most of what you learn. What should you do about that? Said 12 Jul 2022
Knowledge decays fast when it goes unused, while the feeling a class left behind lasts for decades.
Feelings, or vibes, on the other hand, seem to stick around a lot longer.
You'll forget most of what you learn. What should you do about that? Said 12 Jul 2022
Almost all of education is organised around knowledge and skills, which are exactly the part that does not last.
Almost all of education centers around knowledge and skills rather than vibes.
You'll forget most of what you learn. What should you do about that? Said 12 Jul 2022
We know a good deal about how people actually learn, and almost nobody is ever taught it.
We do, in fact, know quite a bit about how people learn, and almost nobody learns it.
You'll forget most of what you learn. What should you do about that? Said 12 Jul 2022
Highlighting, rereading and summarising are poor ways to remember what you have read, and cramming is worse.
When you want to remember something you’ve read, do you highlight it, reread it, or summarize it afterward? Those strategies don’t work very well.
You'll forget most of what you learn. What should you do about that? Said 12 Jul 2022
Knowledge is cheap and easily acquired; what a person actually needs is curiosity, self-efficacy, perseverance, perspective and hope.
Untangling them requires some knowledge, yes, but knowledge is cheap and easily acquired. What you really need is curiosity, self-efficacy, perseverance, perspective, and hope.
You'll forget most of what you learn. What should you do about that? Said 12 Jul 2022
Learning a technical skill turns less on memorising its parts than on accepting that you will feel stupid and carrying on anyway.
The students who ultimately succeed in learning R are not the ones who force themselves to memorize functions or do a bunch of coding drills.
You'll forget most of what you learn. What should you do about that? Said 12 Jul 2022
Misperceptions of attitude change may hinder efforts to understand social worlds, distort democracy, and turn imaginary trends into real ones.
These misperceptions may bedevil people's efforts to understand and change their social worlds, distort the democratic process, and turn imaginary trends into real ones.
Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change (with 1 co-authors) Said 7 Mar 2022
National discourse on contentious issues and resulting policies would be very different if people better understood how attitudes have and have not changed.
Our findings suggest that the national discourse around contentious social issues, policies resulting from that discourse, and perhaps the opinions that drive discourse in the first place would be very different if people better understood how attitudes have and have not changed.
Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change (with 1 co-authors) Said 7 Mar 2022
Stereotypes of the past lead people to misperceive attitude change, and those misperceptions can legitimize policies people may not actually prefer.
Overall, our findings suggest that widely shared stereotypes of the past lead people to misperceive attitude change, and these misperceptions can lend legitimacy to policies that people may not actually prefer.
Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change (with 1 co-authors) Said 7 Mar 2022
Imaginary social trends can spuriously shape people's real beliefs and behaviors.
Imaginary trends could thus spuriously shape people's real beliefs and behaviors.
Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change (with 1 co-authors) Said 7 Mar 2022
Beliefs others hold too
Opinions move by touching things, not by reading about them: nobody learns to drive a race car from a book. 2 hold this
You cannot dump your bucket into someone else’s bucket.
You can't reach the brain through the ears Said 14 Mar 2023
Peer review is one of the things genuinely wrong with academia, not a safeguard that mostly works. 2 hold this
Peer review doesn’t work and there’s probably no way to fix it.
The rise and fall of peer review Said 13 Dec 2022
What is a korrent?
A korrent is a belief a person has stated in their own words: one sentence stating the claim, backed by a quote and a source, kept at korrents.com.
Under a name here, the quoted block is what they actually said. The korrent beneath it is the claim those words support, in korrents' wording — tap it to see the record, its source, and who else holds it.
Nobody here wrote their own korrents. They are compiled from public statements, and a person can change their mind, which is recorded too.
Recommends rcmnd
rcmnd What they recommend 5 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
Recent
Uses Pangram
For the first time, I ran all potential winners through Pangram, which is an AI-writing detector.1 So according to the machine (and to my ear), all of the winners are 100% human-written.
experimental-history.com 21 Jul 2026
Recommends Chatting Alone
Martsinovich argues, via code snippets, that there is no such thing as a "conversation" with a chatbot. The AI is born anew every time it speaks, and it simply reads the dialogue so far and then tries to write the next line:
experimental-history.com 21 Jul 2026
Recommends Remembering Indonesia from My Grandpa
What stands out about Hsieh's version is that her roots occupy such a unique spot in history: her grandparents were Chinese born in Indonesia, which means they got caught between the rock of the Cultural Revolution and the hard place of anti-communist backlash.
experimental-history.com 21 Jul 2026
What others say about Remembering Indonesia from My Grandpa →
Show 2 more
Recommends Magical Constitutionalism
SECOND PLACE ($250): Magical Constitutionalism by Ricardo López Cordero
experimental-history.com 21 Jul 2026
Loved How to Survive Boiling Water
"How to Survive Boiling Water" is a quintessential effort post. Cook accidentally drinks some probiotic tea, and then she's like, wait, how could "probiotic tea" possibly be a thing?
experimental-history.com 21 Jul 2026
Where they publish
Blog Experimental History His blog on psychology, science reform and creativity.
Recent
- Claude, don’t touch my lump 13 Oct 2026 OR: the secret key to permanent happiness
- The Strangest Idea in the World 29 Sept 2026 coming soon to a bookshelf near you
- There is no epidemic of loneliness, but there is an epidemic of scurvy 15 Sept 2026 OR: hey buddy, your teeth are falling out
Show 17 more
- Actually good advice 25 Aug 2026 don’t tell someone they look like Beaker from The Muppets, etc.
- I like 'em thick 18 Aug 2026 OR: an apology to my English teachers
- Incentives are for losers 5 Aug 2026 OR: you must look at this fish and go insane
- Blog Jamboree 2026: The Winners 21 Jul 2026
- The Decline of Deviance 2 8 Jul 2026 2 Decline, 2 Deviance
- The most wonderful thing that happened to Tommy McHugh 23 Jun 2026 ..."was having a stroke while doing a poo"
- Stop eating Lady Gaga's Oreos 9 Jun 2026 OR: The Great Switcheroo
- Only insane people use the internet 26 May 2026 OR: hit me with your Honda
- Shame them, shun them, ban them, beat them! 12 May 2026 OR: crock pots and lightning bolts
- The 3rd Annual Blog Post Competition, Extravaganza, and Jamboree 28 Apr 2026
- Nothing ever dies. It merely becomes embarrassing. 14 Apr 2026 OR: the Halo theory of science
- Infinite midwit 31 Mar 2026 OR: if we were playing by Settlers of Catan rules, I'd be dead already
- Help I'm being persecuted 17 Mar 2026 OR: rubberneckers anonymous
- The one science reform we can all agree on, but we're too cowardly to do 3 Mar 2026 OR: the long overdue forest fire
- I swear the UFO is coming any minute 17 Feb 2026 Links 'n' updates
- Underrated ways to change the world, vol. II 3 Feb 2026 OR: why you should sell onions on the internet
- I know your secret 27 Jan 2026 11 notes on turning unknowns into knowns
Link verified 5 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
x.com @a_m_mastroianni His X account, listed as the byline's Twitter handle on his own blog.
Recent
- just got a physical prototype of the book and it's looking fire 2 Oct 2026
- Very excited for this to come out, Jackson got me riled up into rare form 1 Oct 2026
- me 'n' Derek get weird 26 Nov 2025
Show 17 more
- This survey has been up for 3 minutes and already has a bigger sample than the original study did, amazing 3 Nov 2025
- This is an underrated way to approach writing a blog 4 Jul 2025
- The golden age of blog science is right now 27 Jan 2025
- When a child is born with a golden tooth, that's just God saying it's time to go kick some ass 10 Dec 2024
- If you're tired of "hope this message finds you well," try starting your emails like this letter from Giordano Bruno (c. 1583) 30 Oct 2024
- New study out today! We had a bunch of Democrats and Republicans do an Ideological Turing Test. People either portrayed themselves or pretended to be from the opposite party, and then another group tried to pick out the real partisans from the fake ones: 23 Oct 2024
- I dunno man if something was proven to cause harm I'd probably vote against it 9 Oct 2024
- Whenever people ask me “should I do a PhD?” I tell them “not unless it’s with @mcvollberg” 19 Aug 2024
- I’m running a blog post competition! Winners get cash, a feature on Experimental History, and added to my recommendations. I’ve been hurting for good stuff to read recently, so I’m hoping to discover some new writers and help them reach more people. 28 May 2024 experimental-history.com
- Proud of Harvard for going out of its way to cultivate relationships with alumni even when they are technically the Unabomber 11 Apr 2024
- Gotta love this take from 1937: the problem with our modern world is all of these newfangled toilets and umbrellas 7 Apr 2024
- I’m running a prototype Science House this summer! It’s a great opportunity for anyone looking to do research outside academia. No application, just do some science, post it on the internet, and send me the link. 29 Feb 2024 adammastroianni.com
- Look at me, a dummy who can’t even reliably taste the difference between alkali metal salts 5 Feb 2024
- If you can say "All counterexamples are critical and require revision of my theory" I will give you a big kiss on the lips 12 Dec 2023 experimental-history.com
- The spookiest thing of all is perverting your own incentives 31 Oct 2023 experimental-history.com
- Bob Barker (RIP) ruined my wedding and I'm putting a stop to his reign of terror 22 Oct 2023
- Finally worked up the courage to tell the world I don't floss 12 Oct 2023 nytimes.com
Link verified 5 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
Papers ORCID Their ORCID record: peer-reviewed papers, newest first.
Academic papers, most recent first, restricted to open-access articles published in an identified journal. Fetched live from OpenAlex, keyed by this ORCID.
Recent
- The future of academic publishing 13 Jul 2023 Academic publishing is the backbone of science dissemination –– but is the current system fit for purpose? We asked a diverse group of scientists to comment on the future of publishing. They discuss systemic issues, cha…
- The illusion of moral decline 7 Jun 2023 Anecdotal evidence indicates that people believe that morality is declining1,2. In a series of studies using both archival and original data (n = 12,492,983), we show that people in at least 60 nations around the world…
- Widespread misperceptions of long-term attitude change 7 Mar 2022 SignificancePeople change when they think others are changing, but people misperceive others' changes. These misperceptions may bedevil people's efforts to understand and change their social worlds, distort the democrat…
Show 1 more
- Do conversations end when people want them to? 1 Mar 2021 Do conversations end when people want them to? Surprisingly, behavioral science provides no answer to this fundamental question about the most ubiquitous of all human social activities. In two studies of 932 conversatio…
Link verified 9 Sept 2026. Recent items update automatically from the channel.
About the English under a post
Some people here publish in a language other than English. Where they do, this site shows a machine translation beneath the post, in this typeface — the site's own, not theirs.
The post itself is never changed, moved or hidden: what is set in the serif above is exactly what the person published, and it is what to quote them on. A translation can be wrong in ways that matter, especially about tone.
Only the post's own words are translated. A quoted post, a linked article and a belief on korrents.com are left in their original language.