[Air-L] NYT story on academic facebook research
Ulf-Dietrich Reips
ureips at genpsy.unizh.ch
Mon Dec 17 06:19:59 PST 2007
At 8:04 Uhr -0600 17.12.2007, Eszter Hargittai wrote:
>
>Mary-Helen mentioned earlier that journalists seem to feel more comfortable
>discussing quantitative results. That comment made me chuckle. If you only
>knew how much time I (and I suspect others in similar shoes) spend
>explaining relatively simple statistical findings to journalists only to
>have the results misrepresented in the end you would not make that
>assumption.
Hi Eszter, all,
it may well be that journalists feel more
comfortable discussing quantitative results
precisely *because* they often misunderstand
them...
I regularly show examples from newspapers to
students in my classes where research is
distorted, miscited, condensed to false
statements, shortened to meaningless phrases or
in other ways hurt. For example, I rarely see
correct descriptions of correlational research -
most incorrectly imply causation without a
cautious note or even a discussion of alternative
explanations.
Anyhow: congrats on being mentioned in these
important media! Despite all problems, these are
still some of the best.
Cheers --u
--
PD Dr. Ulf-Dietrich Reips
Universität Zürich
Psychologisches Institut
Binzmühlestr. 14/13
8050 Zürich, Switzerland
iScience portal: http://psych-iscience.unizh.ch/
Publications: http://tinyurl.com/98qay
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