[Air-L] NYT story on academic facebook research

[Ulf-Dietrich Reips]

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/
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