Your Brain on AI: Is ChatGPT making us mentally lazy?

ChatGPT is melting our brainpower, killing creativity, and making us soulless — or so the headlines imply. We dig into the study behind the claims, starting with quirky bar charts and mysterious sample sizes, then winding through hairball-like brain diagrams and tens of thousands of statistical tests. Our statistical sleuthing leaves us with questions, not just about the results, but about whether this was science’s version of a first date that looked better on paper.

Statistical topics

• ANOVA
• Bar graphs
• Data visualization 
• False Discovery Rate correction
• Multiple testing
• Preprints
• Statistical Sleuthing

Methodological morals

• "Treat your preprints like your blind dates. Show up showered and with teeth brushed."
• "Always check your N. Then check it again."
• "Never make a bar graph that just shows p-values. Ever."

Link to paper

Kristin and Regina’s online courses: 

• Demystifying Data: A Modern Approach to Statistical Understanding  
• Clinical Trials: Design, Strategy, and Analysis 
• Medical Statistics Certificate Program  
• Writing in the Sciences 
• Epidemiology and Clinical Research Graduate Certificate Program

Programs that we teach in:

• Epidemiology and Clinical Research Graduate Certificate Program 

Find us on:

Kristin -  LinkedIn & Twitter/X

Regina - LinkedIn & ReginaNuzzo.com

• (00:00) - Intro
• (03:46) - Media coverage of the study
• (08:35) - The experiment
• (12:09) - Sample size issues
• (13:11) - Bar chart sleuthing
• (19:15) - Blind date analogy
• (23:51) - Interview results
• (30:01) - Simple text analysis results
• (34:01) - Natural language processing results
• (40:57) - N-gram and ontology analysis results
• (45:52) - Teacher evaluation results
• (52:27) - Neuroimaging analysis
• (01:00:29) - Multiple testing and connectivity issues
• (01:06:07) - Brain adaptation results
• (01:09:44) - Wrap-up, rating, and methodological morals