title: Where's the beef? A comment on Ferguson and Donnellan (2014).
abstract: To make a scientific contribution, a reanalysis must be firmly rooted in the identification of a clearly superior methodological innovation over the original research. By contrast, a reanalysis rooted in dissatisfaction with previous results will necessarily be biased and can only obscure scientific discoveries. The reanalysis published by Ferguson and Donnellan (2014) began with a highly selective literature review, failed to justify its methodological choices, and interpreted its results in an incautious way. Notwithstanding these problems, the Ferguson and Donnellan article leaves intact the core contributions of the original article: that there is no evidence of a positive effect of infant viewing on subsequent development and that it is well worth conducting more research on the effects-including potentially adverse effects--of infant TV, DVD, and video viewing.
authors.affiliation: University of California, Los Angeles.
authors.forename: Frederick J
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Zimmerman
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D007804:Language Development; D013690:Television; D014825:Vocabulary