Like most of our readers, colleagues and friends, we cannot imagine doing anything these days without taking the football world cup into account … So, let’s talk about football 😊
The most hotly debated innovation in modern-day football are Video-Assisted Referees (VARs), i.e. video replays for referees that are supposed to help players avoid making and feigning fouls and focus instead on their performance. And, the commentary by Leonid Bershidsky indeed suggests that the VAR seems to work!
What does this commentary have to do with the scope of our Newsletter and preclinical research data quality? Well, as discussed elsewhere, basic reinforcement laws work not only with simple behaviors such as bar-pressing in rats or mice. Complex behaviors are also highly sensitive to reinforcement contingencies – whether these are reporting of research results or performances on the football field.