Junk science in TED Talk

Jerry Coyne reports on some populist bogus social science:

The second most popular TED talk of all time, with over 32 million views on TED, is by Harvard Business School associate professor Amy Cuddy, called “Your body language shapes who you are”. (You can also see the talk on YouTube, where it has over 10 million views. Cuddy appears to be on “leave of absence.”)  Her point, based on research she did with two others, was that by changing your body language you can modify your hormones, thus not only influencing other people in the way you want, but changing your own physiology in a way you want.

The kindest thing you can say is that her results were not replicated. All the other studies gave opposite conclusions.

Statistician Andrew Gelman also laments the sorry state of social science. It is overrun by poor studies and p-hacking.