The Anatomy of a Fraud: Symmetry and Dance

About this book

A thorough reanalysis of Brown et al. (2005) “Dance reveals symmetry especially in young men” shows that all of the major results appear to be based on hidden procedures designed to produce the results later derived. These procedures include the pre-selection of animations of Jamaicans dancing, apparently based on preliminary evaluation in New Jersey, so as to exclude symmetrical individuals who danced poorly and asymmetrical ones who danced well (N = 10 out of 10, P <0.001). There are also systematic biases in averaging dance evaluations so as to produce significant results where none exist and more highly significant ones than do, in fact, exist.