Amateur Data Gathering

If I tell you that I've been having gastrointestinal trouble, since I started consuming Splenda itself and products that use Splenda, you would rightly say that the evidence of a connection is just anecdotal. That term is used to dismiss a lot of data gathered by amateurs, Actually, when accurately reported, I prefer anecdotal evidence to statistical evidence, just as I prefer in-depth interviews with likely voters to telephone surveys. The conclusions of a statistical study carried out at a university or health organization often turns out to be misleading or just plain wrong, because of the risks inherent in the design of population studies.


Continuing on with my "Slenda" story; I went to the web to see what I could find. Lo and behold, there was a forum which contained many first hand accounts of gastric distress accompanying the use of Splenda and a few that said complainers were all crazy. The first defect in such forums is that it automatically selects people that are in distress. If I started a forum for people who have experienced sneezing fits after turning on their computers less than an hour after eating, there would immediately be 50 contributions from people who had that experience. It's just the statistical nature of the huge number of people browsing the internet. However, I'm not quick to dismiss honest data. Outliers can contain important information. Every experiment deserves to be explained.

My question for this blog is this. Astronomers have used thousands of amateurs to scan the skies that are too vast for professionals to monitor. Can the anecdotes of amateurs be filtered and combined in such a way as to produce valid scientific evidence? If one hundred people who report stomach distress stopping after quitting Splenda, are asked to restart in order to see if the distress starts again, can we draw any conclusions. How many times must we reproduce the start-stop cycle with each of these amateurs before we can have some confidence in the results?

The TED Talks - Five Channels of Morality

Howard linked to this TED Talk in a Comment on a previous Topic. I think it is worthy of being a new Topic so I am copying it here, along with Joel's positive Comment as well as my favorable take on it.

Jonathan Haidt's views on the five channels of morality were previously posted by Stu. Howard also posted a previous link to a TED talk on memes. If Howard, Joel, Stu, and Ira agree on the importance of a concept, and the value of TED talks, we can't all be wrong, can we? ("Great minds think alike" but "fools seldom differ" or something like that :^)

Please view the 19-minute TED video because it is definitely worth your time.

Here is my short version, using screen captures from the video with some annotation I added.

The image above shows what Haidt posits are the five channels or tools or foundations of traditional morality: 1) Harm-Care, 2) Fairness-Reciprocity, 3) Authority-Respect, 4) Ingroup Loyalty, and 5) Purity-Sanctity.

The graph shows the result of over 23,000 US respondants who took the online test at http://www.yourmorals.org/

You may want to take the test and report your personal results here as a Comment.

Haidt points out that self-described liberals rate Harm and Fairness very high.

They rate Authority, Ingroup, and Purity very low.

Conservatives rate all nearly equally, with Harm at the top and Fairness at the bottom, but all in a tight range.

Moderates score between the extremes.

The final image indicates why liberals reject three of the five tools of traditional morality, in Haidt's view:


LIBERALS REJECT> Ingroup Loyalty (they CELEBRATE DIVERSITY)

LIBERALS REJECT> Authority-Respect (they QUESTION AUTHORITY)

LIBERALS REJECT> Purity-Sanctity (they say KEEP YOUR LAWS OFF MY BODY)





HOWARD'S COMMENT
Ira exhibits another C- vs. L-mind difference that...
November 12, 2008, 9:46:00 PM(Howard Pattee)

Ira exhibits another C- vs. L-mind difference that I think makes sense. C-minds make judgments based on the past performance over a lifetime.

L-minds make judgments based on the potential of youth for the future. If I judged my students on C-mind criteria, I would fail as a teacher.

Here is a TED talk about C- and L-minds that I think pretty much covers the conclusions of our own discussions, except that it does appear liberally biased to some conservatives. Remember, he is speaking to an audience that is mostly liberal. The comments are also interesting.

In this post-US-election week, TED is passionately discussing Jonathan Haidt's talk on the difference between liberals and conservatives.


JOEL'S COMMENT
Howard said:If I judged my students on C-mind crit...
November 13, 2008 (joel)

Howard said: If I judged my students on C-mind criteria, I would fail as a teacher. Here is a TED talk about C- and L-minds that I think pretty much covers the conclusions of our own discussions, except that it does appear liberally biased to some conservatives. Remember, he is speaking to an audience that is mostly liberal. The comments are also interesting.

Joel responds: Thanks for the citation. I think it was an excellent presentation. I especially liked the fact that he tied the prewired part of morality to evolution. Although he and the audience (or his expectation of the audience) appear to be L-minds, the theory itself seems pretty free of bias to me.As for judging students, it seems to me that you aren't making allowances for ALL of Haidt's five criteria.

A C-mind would also be concerned with fairness and therefore judge based upon the current course only.

I've seen teachers (both L-minds and C-minds) make allowances, based upon excellent performance in previous courses. I condemn such a practice (although frankly I've occasionally been a beneficiary as a student).

On the other hand, the grade point average is cumulative. It's the appropriate measure for recruiters and graduate school admission. I must say that I've seen recruiters give somewhat more weight to the last year. I've also seen a recruiter overlook lackluster academic achievement based upon a candidate's impressive performance at the interview. Is the latter situation comparable to the selection of Obama over McCain?

With respect -Joel

Ira Glickstein


NOTE: See the : Morality profiles of the participants in this cross-discussion.