[Air-l] validity of the research

[Denise N. Rall]

I am very concerned with the models that continue to
pervade evaluation of web-based searches via specific
search engines on quantitative issues alone - although
there are a few papers on qualitative measures -

Below is an abstract I am presenting in Milwaukee,
SSSS (Society for Social Studies in Science) on Karl
Popper and the effects of positivism on web search
results, with a method for locating good results by
their salience rather than by volume.  It's just
another way to look at qualitative measures of
validity, which as some have offered here as equally
important to quantitative measures.

Title: Testing hypothesis-testing: Taking Sir Karl
Popper's erroneous trial for a spin on the World Wide
Web.

Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994) was the preeminent
philosopher of science in the 20th century, and most
serious scholars in the philosophy of science have
responded in some way to his theories: his attacks on
inductivism, his constructivist stance, and his
integral role in the development of evolutionary
epistemology.  In this century, Popper’s explications
of learning are increasingly claimed by educational
theorists (Bailey, 2000).  Educationalists can learn
from Popper, who insisted that “all life is problem
solving” -and that learners proceed by building
tentative hypotheses to explain their world and use
error elimination to refine those hypotheses (Popper,
1999).

This author takes Popper's words, "[we] understate the
importance of . . . the erroneous trial" (Popper,
1991:101) and applies them to searcher’s results on
the WWW.  The available logic (Boolean) may limit the
number of results but not increase validity (Lawrence,
1999).  Particularly, tradition scientific
null-hypothesis tests do not work well on the Web. 
Either two many results are returned for sensible
testing; contrarily, when no results are returned,
this scarcely proves the condition as true(!).  Null
hypothesis methods are particularly suspect because
cognitive research shows that we do not learn much
from our behaviors when results are nil (Allison &
Messick, 1988).  Therefore, this author turns to human
information processing to locate better techniques for
searchers, especially searching for salience rather
than eliminating error.  Salience will assist WWW
searchers in two cognitive processes: environmental
scanning of cyberspace, and the cognitive structuring
of their impressions based on 'goodness of fit' (Fiske
& Taylor, 1991: 251).  The author concludes that while
Popper correctly recognized error as the crux of
substantiating truth claims, he required more
sophisticated feedback loops to bolster his theories. 
For one example, Norbert Weiner’s (1954) cybernetics
could have provided a better mechanics for the
cognitive processing of errors.  Finally, better
search methods (Clever project, 1999) and especially
the recognition of super-salient ‘hits’ will yield
better results for searchers than error elimination
methods.

References

Alison, S. T. and D. M. Messick 1988. “The
feature-positive effect, attitude strength, and degree
of perceived consensus”. Personality & Social
Psychology Bulletin 14(321-241).
Bailey, R. W., 2000. Education in the open society:
Karl Popper and schooling. Aldershot, Hampshire, UK:
Ashgate.
Clever Project 1999. “Hypersearching the Web.”
Scientific American (June): 54-59.
Fiske, S. T. and S. E. Taylor, 1991. Social Cognition,
2nd Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Lawrence, S. and L. Giles 1999. “Accessibility of
information on the web.” Nature 400: 107-109.
Popper, K. 1991, “How I became a philosopher” In:
Popper, K., 1999, All life is problem solving. London:
Routledge.
Popper, K., 1999. All life is problem solving. London:
Routledge.
Wiener, N. 1954. The human use of human beings :
cybernetics and society. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.




=====
"it's easier to use your mouse than your brain"
Denise Rall, Sustainable Forestry Mentoring Coordinator &
PhD student, School of Education, Southern Cross University,
PO Box 157, Lismore, NSW, 2480 Australia
Phone +61-2-6624-8627 Fax +61-2-6624-8637
Office (Tuesdays) (02) 6620 3577 Mob 0438 233 344
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/edu/research/deniserall/index.html

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