synonym studies

An essay (short report) formed by investigation and consideration to compare the nuances of meanings among a group of closely related words.

Cross-references at related entries in the dictionary make the synonym studies easy to find.

by sammmybobami February 29, 2024

Oxford Study

“The Oxford Study” typically refers to a study done by Oxford University finding that Asian women will more often pursue caucasian males as opposed to any other race.

This study also concludes that some Asian women weigh race over conventional attractiveness when pursing a male.

Asian Woman: *has a white boyfriend, particularly one who is far less attractive than her*
Person 2: Damn, guess the Oxford Study was right

by DornPVN March 7, 2024

studying donkey

A person who studies a lot, and he gets straight As in tests or exams, but he has no idea what the hell is he doing! A 21st century typical student who only focuses on grades or degrees, and he cares little to zero about the material he is learning, or the outcome of his studies in terms of knowledge and real life applications. Someone who is in school with the main focus of making more money or following the crowd and listening to what others told him, so he tries to do well just to embarrass them. The good student with no qualifications who sums up our educational systems today.

This engineer I work with must have been a studying donkey! He has a PHD, but he cannot answer a single question I ask him at my job.

by Zizou1990 March 9, 2024

Study

A way of thinking that is different to many others, this usually involves massive headaches and urges for a “little something” from nearby desired partners. Many people associate this with the desire to start gaming.

Partner: do you want to come to my house and study?

Partner 2: Hell yeah!

by The Antisocial Therapist <4 July 1, 2021

Hard Problem of Controlled Studies

The problem of external validity (the "lab vs. world" gap). Controlled studies, especially randomized controlled trials (RCTs), are the gold standard for establishing causality. But to achieve control, you must isolate variables in an artificial, simplified environment. The hard problem is that this very act of control often strips away the real-world context, complexity, and interactions that determine how a treatment or phenomenon actually functions in the wild. What works perfectly in a double-blind RCT might fail or cause harm in a messy society because people aren't lab rats and the world isn't a sterile cage.

Example: A prestigious RCT proves a new antidepressant is highly effective. But the study excluded people with substance abuse issues, chronic pain, or more than two other medications—a large portion of real-world patients. When prescribed widely, the drug shows severe side effects and lower efficacy because it interacts with dozens of variables absent from the lab. The hard problem: The more perfectly you control a study to prove internal causality, the less it can tell you about external applicability. The quest for purity in evidence can render the evidence irrelevant to complex reality. Hard Problem of Controlled Studies.

by Enkigal January 24, 2026

Hard Problem of Controlled Studies

The inherent and often crippling limitation of the gold-standard scientific method—the randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial—when applied to phenomena that are deeply subjective, context-dependent, or allegedly non-physical. The "hard problem" is that the very act of imposing strict laboratory controls can destroy or mask the effect being studied. For instance, the healing intention in energy work may require practitioner-patient rapport, or a psychic's ability might rely on a specific, non-reproducible emotional state. Insisting on sterile, repeatable conditions for everything creates a methodological catch-22: if it can't be measured under our controls, we declare it doesn't exist, but the controls themselves may be the reason it vanishes. This problem exposes the boundary of where the scientific method, brilliant for studying objective, repeatable processes, may become a Procrustean bed for studying consciousness, meaning, or anomalous human experience.

Example: "The university's parapsychology lab kept getting null results for remote viewing. The Hard Problem of Controlled Studies hit when a gifted subject quit, saying, 'You've turned a spiritual connection into a boring spreadsheet task. My 'talent' requires mystery and meaning, not you staring at a clock in a beige room.' The control was the killer."

by AbzuInExile January 31, 2026

Controlled Study Bias

The inherent distortion that occurs when the artificial, sanitized environment of a controlled laboratory setting becomes the only valid source of knowledge. This bias privileges data gathered in unnatural conditions over real-world observation, assuming that controlling variables reveals "pure" truth, even if it strips away the essential context that makes a phenomenon meaningful.

Example: Dismissing decades of ethnographic research on community resilience because "it wasn't a controlled study." The controlled study bias assumes that only knowledge produced in a lab-like setting—removed from the messiness of actual human life—counts as rigorous, rendering most real-world understanding "anecdotal."

by Dumu The Void February 9, 2026