My brother and I broke the nice coffee table in my parent’s living room when we were kids. My dad bought one at a garage sale for $3 that we could use temporarily until we got something better.
About 15 or 20 years later, I was moving in with Cheryl and took the $3 coffee table to our apartment and the two places we lived next.
Our next move was across the country, so we decided to sell all our old furniture. We had acquired quite a bit of 2nd hand furniture by this point. A guy from Discount Furniture came to look at our stuff, and said he would take everything but the coffee table. Finally, I had to give it up.
Often, we think because things are old, they are no longer useful. This is particularly true with research studies. People don’t want to look at anything published more than a few years ago. I was recently working with a child with autism using the latest research. Things were going very well, but we weren’t getting the desired effect. After much tweaking, we added a component directly out of 1960s JABA, which led to an amazingly successful result.
When we look at the newest research, there are likely new insights for practice that we can glean from those results. Integrating new results into what came before is sometimes a difficult process–but well worth the effort required.