Steve's defense of his paper seems to have struck a chord with some readers but I remain concerned about the substance of what he did and what he then said about it.
1. The paper aims to "replicate previous results without apparent confounding factors". So, his aim was not to discover whether there is any effect on learning due to differing media, but to prove that there was an effect, without the confounding factors? In a later reply, he confirms that this was the case "I had reason to believe Clark's hypothesis was wrong and I wanted to test that belief." So, we are in the belief testing business here, not in any way objective.
But in the same reply he claims that he wants "to ascertain TRUTH!!!" These aims seem to be at odds, especially as other responses make claims about this being "science." In his own words about Clark's hypothesis. "...it is unscientific and it must be abandoned..." I have the same concerns about the conclusions drawn in the paper.
2. The paper states that "A first step in answering questions about the effects of the media is to define the word medium."
In another response, Steve said "I discussed the fact that Clark did not define media in his original article. But I assumed he had some 'commonsense' definition in mind."
In another response, he says "What's vague about text/audio? My guess is that everyone reading this knows what those words mean."
I don't think guessing should form part of any work that makes claims about being "truth" and "scientific." The final words in the paper state baldly "Media influence learning." Surely a definition of "media" must be included before that can be taken seriously.
3. I discussed in previous postings my concern about the design of the experiment, which a number of people have supported, both in this forum and in private messages. These concerns remain, despite assertive if not downright aggressive cries of "Irrelevant" from Steve.
I would like to be constructive (not constructivist) and offer a compromise position. I find that the conclusion drawn "media influence learning" remains unproved due to the lack of rigor shown in the trials, but rephrasing the results of the study might be a possible basis for agreement. I offer this draft for consideration:
In an experiment with 36 subjects of unmeasured reading and writing ability, visual acuity, and hearing ability, the scores on a written recall test as interpreted by the researcher, following exposure to either textual information presented on a VDU under unspecified conditions, or spoken information presented under unspecified conditions, appeared to be different.
It's not quite as snappy as the original conclusion and it needs some tidying up, but I think it covers most of the bases. Any improvements would be welcomed.