In any case, I want to thank you because, by challenging me,
quite rightly so, it helped me produce a snippet of my
investigative process.
I never wrote an a b c of my process before because I never had
to. But now that I've written it, I've already spread it to
several other places, where I have _some_ educational impact
upon people, many of whom are still in school.
I want them to think critically about their world and not being
in awe of something because of its appearance of authority.
Things labeled SCIENCE get particularly strong critiquing from
me because of the VERY STRONG influence they have upon culture,
and while weeding out "good science from junk science" is easy,
it's MUCH harder to differentiate between "good science" and
"errrm... maybe good science but take it with a big grain of
salt here because of x, y, z"
We have an amazing amount of information that shoots at us from
all directions and being able to sort good eggs from bad eggs
quickly is critical to keep our brains free of crap, skeptical
of shocking headlines, ESPECIALLY if they have Science behind
it, or Statistics. They both have the power to educate, but they
ALSO have a great power to mislead, especially when there is
bias behind the studies.
Misleading intelligent people is sometimes easier than
misleading the general public
That's not to say that there MIGHT NOT BE some value in their
study. There might be. But it's not fact. It's literally:
academic but it's not really science for 20 cats do not
statistical significance make. I stand by my original statement
so far, but I welcome corrections. Your challenge was useful to
me and will prove useful to others now.
