You may be aware of evidence that taking a daily small amount of aspirin (e.g., 75 mgs) helps to prevent heart attacks and strokes. Newer studies show that a daily small amount of aspirin also helps to prevent cancer. These positive effects may be the result of aspirin’s reducing of inflammation. Some scientists now consider aspirin a vitamin, although others say the evidence is not strong enough for that conclusion. So does it make sense to take 75 mgs of aspirin a day as a preventive against disease? Is it worth the risk of side-effects?
Life has many tough decisions like that. We make a decision and see what happens, but sometimes we cannot tell whether the decision proved to be good or bad. On the question of aspirin, I decided yesterday to take a small amount (a tiny pill, indeed) daily and monitor for short-term positive and negative effects. If I observe no negative effects, I will continue as long as the scientific evidence seems to point in that direction. So I have made my life a small aspirin experiment. Other individuals try a new religion, a new romantic partner, a new diet, or a new career. Students in my behavior modification unit experiment with sets of behavior-change principles. At work, I experiment with different teaching methods. Humans experiment throughout their lives.
With what are you experimenting? Are you collecting data like a good scientist to test whether your hypothesis is supported? What experiments have paid off for you in the past?
John Malouff, PhD, JD
Assoc Prof of Psychology
Hey John,
How did you experiement go? Was there maybe pros and cons?
Hi kart. My latest teaching experiment involved giving students questions to anwer every week before class (or before the intensive school). I rate that method as mostly a failure b/c most students seemed not to come to class with answers. In 2013 I will give students a quiz each week for 1% of their grade in a continued effort to get students to read the assigned material on as we go along and to check how much they are learning.
Hi John,
Years ago I read an article about a knew medication and the use of a placebo, and had an idea. At the time one of my children was a bed wetter, on average 6/7 wet beds a week, so I decided to try my own experiment. I brought vitamin C tablets and explained to the child how the Doctor said ‘they stop you from wetting the bed’. It was amazing, at first there were no wet beds for about two weeks, then the odd one, about one per fortnight. (I was very happy with the result, even though I don’t know if the tablet really helped). I tried it a few years later for a child who was scared of the dark, (going to bed of a night), but only had slight success.
Hi SC. What a good outcome from the bed-wetting experiment! Possibly a placebo effect — a topic worth exploring in a future blog entry.