(Of course I don’t know how the authors actually come up with the hypothesis and I could be wrong, and the conclusions seem very plausible anyway, but..) The study seem to be susceptible to stopping bias.
If the correlation was very strong right away, they could’ve said “Parental grief directly correlates with reproductive potential, Q.E.D!”
It wasn’t, but they found a group resembling early hunter-gatherers; with the conclusion “Parental grief directly correlates with reproductive potential from back then, Q.E.D!”
If this didn’t turn out either, and the correlation had peaked for some values in the middle, they could’ve said “Parental grief correlates with reproductive potential from back then, and it is also influenced by the specifics of the current society, Q.E.D!”
(Of course I don’t know how the authors actually come up with the hypothesis and I could be wrong, and the conclusions seem very plausible anyway, but..) The study seem to be susceptible to stopping bias.
If the correlation was very strong right away, they could’ve said “Parental grief directly correlates with reproductive potential, Q.E.D!”
It wasn’t, but they found a group resembling early hunter-gatherers; with the conclusion “Parental grief directly correlates with reproductive potential from back then, Q.E.D!”
If this didn’t turn out either, and the correlation had peaked for some values in the middle, they could’ve said “Parental grief correlates with reproductive potential from back then, and it is also influenced by the specifics of the current society, Q.E.D!”