[Air-L] Public/ Private

[George Floros]

I said
> the devil is in the details. "A living individual" IMHO disqualifies
> > imaginary personas and as long as you can't rule them out, you  
> > write off
> > your entire work (even if we talk of just one in a hundred.).
>   

Jeremy responded
> I'm not sure I understand where you are going here?   I don't need  
> 'real' people to talk about the things that I need, I just need the  
> results to be created by either humans or created by something that  
> human creates.   It is perfectly valid, but then I'm not dealing  
> explicitly with human subjects either.
The point is very simple ; unless your results can be traced back to 
specific individuals then they can't be treated as valid. In an Internet 
board for example anyone can log in with multiple aliases and publish 
opinions. Problem is that the researcher can do that too, create 
multiple imaginary aliases and force his opinion as something "out 
there". You do need some very real people in order to prove that your 
work is valid and not something pulled out of a hat.

I said
> Name one field of research which does not "need" identifiable  
> > individual
> > subjects. I'm not aware of any.
>   
>   
Jeremy responded
> sociology, anthropology, musicology, literary studies, anything that  
> does not require methodological individualism, which is most fields  
> of research.   Even some topics of research that do no sometimes  
> require methodological individualism don't require identifiable  
> subjects.  In fact, I'd say those that ''need'' identifiable  
> individual subjects are probably in the minority in terms of research
I can't really see that in any of those examples. All of those fields 
deal in the study of concrete human cultural output. You seem to confuse 
the actual quoting of names with the existence of identifiable 
individuals. You can't just say "we conclude on the basis of our 
observations that x stands and y doesn't", the natural question by any 
reader would be "so what or whom did you observe, what was his 
demographics, for how long did you observe him/her, how many times, etc. 
?" You need not identify them on print but you certainly need to have 
records of their existence and/or records of you spending time in the 
field doing the observations, or records of which cultural produce you 
studied (which again implies creators hence individuals with names). 
Just because you may be a conscientious researcher don't mean everyone 
else is. The recent example of that Korean guy springs in mind. I don't 
really think that research w/o those characteristics can even be 
considered, in principle, reproducible .

George