I thought it was relevant because it discusses the use and misuse of big data, but from a different direction than what we have been discussing. Unlike FB and Google, which are businesses and are gathering/manipulating data for capitalist purposes, this one is academic.
Basically, the researcher involved kept analyzing data sets until he came up with something, which can be a good thing — we should look at data from many different directions, but he seems to have been involved in p-hacking, which is the manipulation of data to make certain points stand out and look more significant than they are.
(I think. I’ve never heard of this before, and I’m totally going on the article. Stats isn’t really my field. I could be very wrong here.)
The npr article linked to this article, which deals with p-hacking and its effects. I haven’t read it, but will try to for next week.
interesting! no doubt the increased access to data allows for this manipulation as well as its discovery?
I hadn’t thought about this, but, yes, it does.