Comments on “Differences in common psychoacoustical tasks by sex, menstrual cycle, and race” by D. McFadden et al., 2018, and methodological pitfalls in human population research

Resumen

The study reported by McFadden, Pasanen, Maloney, Leshikar and Pho [2018, JASA 143(4):2338-54] investigated the effect of “sex, menstrual cycle and race” on performance in seven psychoacoustical tasks. Out of 35 comparisons related to the “race” factor, 2 were deemed significant by the authors. Based on these observations, the authors concluded that: "racial background needs to be considered when making generalizations about human auditory performance." Surprisingly, though, the same authors also admitted in various sections that the study had serious flaws. By carefully reviewing the paper, we have concluded that the flaws were at least as serious as what the authors feared. Yet, the paper is written in such a way that a casual reading would mislead the reader into thinking that the conclusions are legit. To such avoid such erroneous use of the paper, we recommend it to be retracted by the journal. This preprint is made public to attract further comments before we submit it to the journal.

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Cómo citar (APA 7)

Gaudrain, E., Undurraga, J., Grimault, N., & Başkent, D. (2020). Comments on “Differences in common psychoacoustical tasks by sex, menstrual cycle, and race” by D. McFadden et al., 2018, and methodological pitfalls in human population research. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/ghfpv