My brother has extended the ongoing discussion about anonymous and pseudonymous blogging yet again in his recent blog entry.

His conclusion got me thinking that perhaps there is more here than simply academics hiding behind anonymity or pseudonimity.  He wrote:

This is leading me to the growing conviction that academics should not blog anonymously. If we truly believe in the dissemination and  examination of ideas then we should also be willing to own up to our ideas. There is some risk, but we are living in an age and country² with tremendous protections. To you believe what you are saying? Then say it clearly and be willing to defend your views in the light of day.

As Chris mentions, as academics we are about the dissemination and examination of ideas.  This brings me back to the notion of the “double blind peer review.” The double blind process is in place to ensure that our ideas aren’t accepted, or rejected, out of hand simply by the history of the author, but rather measured by our adherence to rigorous methodologies and that our conclusions are supported by the literature, the data and the proper analysis. Through this “blind review” process we attempt to avoid both the Halo and the Horns effect. (see the great repository of knowledge, Wikipedia) Of course, once accepted for publication, the anonymity is removed, and we are allowed to heap praise, or criticism, on the person(s) who wrote the brilliance/drivel.

Perhaps a greater criticism of academics blogging is that, in addition to the anonymity, we tend to also stop writing as academics. Blogging seems to be a place where writers go to bloviate (to borrow from Bill O’Reilly) but not to provide much in the way of supporting documentation.

When academics blog, we tend to stop conducting and reporting on the review of extant literature. We stop providing supporting citations. (despite the ease with which we can do that in html.) We don’t discuss and defend our methodologies. And worst of all, we get defensive when our (often unsupported) ideas are challenged.

In short–we stop being academics.

Your thoughts?

I broke the presentation into three areas of collaboration:
1.  Data gathering (del.icio.us)
2.  Structuring of the research (wiki)
3.  Writing (Google Docs, Microsoft Live Mesh)

(note:  I say in the presentation that Live Mesh is Windows only.  Turns out I was a few versions wrong. It is now available for Mac OSX as well.)

Much of these tools allow us to work asynchronously, sharing information as we find it, and learning what our team has discovered as we have the time.  That said, I also talk about using communication tools such as Skype and Google Talk to work synchronously with your team when geographically separated.  I briefly referred to Twitter, but unfortunately, as much as I love Twitter (and you can find me on Twitter as @SCMProfessor) I don’t see it as a real engine to facilitate collaboration in conducting research.)

I also identified a few things that collaboration in research does:

1.  Fosters cooperation rather than competition
2.  Enables other researchers to share in the research (long discussion about what is and isn’t the outcome of our research).
3.  Speeds the cycle time of research (idea-data-analysis-draft-publication)

Finally, we discussed that the tools should:

1.  Be freely available
2.  Easily understandable audit trail
3.  Provide some levels of security

In the presentation I refer to a few documents (as Google Docs) that I have built to help my students collaborate in their research and project efforts.  First, I have the “Tools and Tutorials” document, where I provide links to not only the tools listed above, but links to helper sites for using these tools, as well as links to “really cool stuff.”

I also mentioned the document I give my students to guide them in the development of their podcast projects.  I even have a 12 step program for them!

So go, listen to the podcast, and please–come back and let me know how YOU are using Web 2.0 to work more closely with your colleagues.

Let’s start with the credibility.  I wondered about the credibility of the author of the article. So I read the credentials listed at the end of the article “Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com” He lives in Washington STATE! Yes–of course, How could I miss that credential! I should listen/pay attention to him. (And does anyone else find it, um… odd, that Mike’s email address is “FERGIE?”)

Now, I would like to take a brief moment to encourage everyone to do something called “research.” You may recall, as regular readers to this site, that I often encourage one to practice academic and intellectual honesty. Stop. Check the data. Question the sources. Challenge the techniques.

First, and most simply, I found that clicking on the source link for the article (http://www.counterpunch.org/whitney/02222008.html) results in a “connection timed out” error. (as of 2/25/08, 1118hr EST) That could mean that everyone is going there and resulted in the site being overloaded, or it could mean that the article on the site has been “pulled.” Either way, the credibility of the source is now questioned. Especially since the main site, Counterpunch.org is also returning a “connection has timed out” error.

Second: There are statements that should be easily verifiable in the article. For instance, the author (Mike? Fergie?) writes: “The $330 billion ARS market has dried up overnight pushing up rates as high as 20 per cent on some bonds…” which is quite a bit of news! Did anyone see this high bond rate reported? Can anyone find a news source that reported this? I would think that, if Fergie/Mike was able to find the information, then it should be “findable” right? I am not saying that the information isn’t there–but I am wondering why sources aren’t given.

Now, actually, it wasn’t that hard to do. I did find this snippet:

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, for instance, is paying $390,000 in interest this week on one $100 million bond that cost just over $83,000 last week, before a failed auction pushed the rate on the bonds to 20 percent from 4.2 percent.

Now, I also found numerous other sites that actually state, verbatim, what Mike/Fergie wrote. For instance, the Free Market News reports:

The credit storm which began in July when two Bear Stearns hedge funds were forced to liquidate, has continued to intensify. Last week the noose tightened around auction-rate securities, a little-known part of the market that requires short-term funding to set rates for long-term municipal bonds. The $330 billion ARS market has dried up overnight pushing up rates as high as 20 per cent on some bonds — a new benchmark for short term debt.

That should count, right? Well, one might think so, except it really is a summary of the article written by Mike/Fergie, and points back to the (unavailable) site. Move along. Nothing to see here.

And, while I could continue, I will end with this: given that the document written by Mike/Fergie is posted on a website, and created for electronic distribution, he/she should have taken the time to provide links to the actual sources for his/her information. “Good” bloggers at least hold themselves to that standard. Heck, even bad/poor bloggers (like good ol’ Eric over at A Liberal Dose) link to sources where they get the information they then distort. This may well be a maelstrom that consumes all in the fiery demise of the world economy. But then again, without sources (reputable or otherwise) this is simply another pundit, among the many, touting gloom and doom.

Academics of all people should remember that the plural of anecdote is not data.

I find this to be a humorous, and in some way, interesting quote. I also find myself “engaging” with the quote in ways that I didn’t expect. This statement challenges really two fundamental concepts–that of anecdote, and of data. When does a collection of anecdotes step out of a collection of “stories” and actually add up to real, actionable data?

Data is, at the most broad, a collection of anecdotal evidence that builds a case over time. In fact, case-study analysis is simply a rigorous approach to gathering anecdotal evidence. Yes, you are limited in the amount of pure statistical analysis that can be accomplished through the gathering of anecdotal evidence, but anecdotes bring a richness to the data that one cannot get through simple “number crunching.”

In addition, an anecdote could be considered a data point of one. And sometimes “one” is all you need. How many times should a car not start before you suspect a problem? How many space shuttles do we need to blow up before we learn about O-rings? If one is seeking to improve service, enhance quality, or improve a reputation, then every negative “anecdote” is a story of failure–failure that must be controlled, corrected, and eliminated.

On the other hand, anecdotes of success should be plentiful, and instructive, if they help one overcome the failures in the other negative anecdotes. Anecdotes about repeated success help in that they demonstrate that success can be achieved, and perhaps can be “replicated” with appropriate processes.

Let’s look at one example. In a blog written by one of my students, he struggles with poor customer service from (stand by for stereotype) “the cable guy.” At the end of the day, the cable guy dragged mud over the carpets, cut two holes in the wall (only needing one) and then had to leave so couldn’t repair the damage to the wall.

The best part about the entire story was, the installer had to be at another appointment and couldn’t fix the hole in my wall. I asked what he was going to do about the wall and he gave me some putty and a sponge and explained how to fix it. He then gave me my $80 installation bill and was on his merry way.

Is it any wonder this customer was upset?

Comcast (as Wesley points out) “wants to be perceived as the leader in cable services.” If one seeks to deliver a high quality service, error free, on-time, every time, then a single story of failure is a failure. In fact, what the Comcast blog posting points out is that a service provider, Comcast, is failing in key aspects of the delivery of that service.

The Fitzsimmons’ write, in their book Service Management that reputation is often a key dimension to the provision of a service. They write:

The uncertainty that is associated with the selection of a service provider often is resolved by talking with others about their experiences before a decision is made. Unlike a product, a poor service experience cannot be exchanged or returned for a different model.

So the “take away” here is that for an individual about to make a decision an anecdote is “data.” And as negative experiences begin to collect, the weight of these anecdotes can tarnish (perhaps irretrievably) the reputation of an organization, or a person.

So, does the simple statement “the plural of anecdote is not data” hold true? I think not. Cute, but alas, wrong.

I was sent a link to this page by one of my students currently conducting research. I have many on-going discussions about qualitative vs quantitative research, and my student thought this discussion was something in which I might have an interest. Obviously–I do!

First, let me say, I find it interesting that we even have a struggle between “quant” and “qual” or between “hard sciences” and the “soft sciences.” It certainly strikes me as arrogance that one group of academics feel they can claim to be “true researchers” and thus limit the contributions of others through a claim of “lack of rigor.” I have for years argued that different disciplines have different types of rigor. The rigor a chemist requires is different from that of an electrical engineer. The rigor required to conduct solid research in History is different from that of Hebrew Literature. In the words of Rodney King “Can’t we all just get along?”

Now, moving on to the website referenced: This posits another interested direction for research–that of activist. Creswell, in his text on “Research Design” refers to for different “Knowledge Claims” that we have for research, and argues that we fit in one of 4 categories. One of those categories includes “Activist.” Of course, this makes the hair on the back of many necks stand straight up. How can one be “objective” if one has as one’s goal effecting change?

The need to effect change forms an explicit assumption of one’s research. Perhaps the greatest difference here is that the assumption is explicit, and often embedded in the “problem statement.” For instance, consider this problem statement/research question: “Heroin use remains a significant killer on the streets of major cities. This research seeks to identify the many ways people die from heroin use and propose policies that would reduce the number of deaths of our fellow citizens.”

Not very objective–or is it? Certainly it is “activist” in it’s role. Embedded in this statement is an assumption (hopefuly supported in a lit review) that heroin is a killer. Also embedded is that the “solution” must involve government intervention, since it seeks “policies” to effect change.

My question for you all, dear students, is this: Can one be objective, and be an activist researcher (or an “action researcher?”)

Please, feel free to share your comments and ideas on this.

The Professors

I am sure many of you have asked yourselves “how can I get my hands on the actual data, rather than rely on the new reporters to give me their (often incorrect) interpretation?”

This link is one of the answers. On this link, you not only have the National Transportation Statistics (NTS) 2004 report, but more conveniently, you have it with excel and csv (comma delimited) text files. The significance of this is simple: you can conduct your own data mining, reviewing and slicing the data, or conducting statistical analyses as you see fit.

Hint: when you have a homework assignment, or a project, that requires you to analyse some data–perhaps in a statistics class, and you need to do a forecast, or conduct regression, here is a ready source of useful, and informational, data.

Happy hunting, and if you find something interesting, please, come back here, and share it with the rest of the class!

The Prof

Have you ever read a news story that just seemed, well, odd? This, to me, is one of those stories.

Perhaps I have been tainted by a book I recently read and enjoyed, titled “Freakonomics.” In that book, an economist slices data in ways that challenge the “conventional” views of the world, and shows how an understanding of data can help one make more sense of the world around us.

One of my favorite vignettes in the book is the discussion about airline vs automobile fatalities. Yes, we all “know” that it is safer to fly than to ride in a car. That’s conventional wisdom. The authors point out, however, that if you evaluate the data differently, by assessing time spent “in the seat” then it turns out to be a dead heat (no pun intended.) the number of fatalities per hour spent traveling in that mode is statistically even. Go figure.

So that leads me to this story. Here we have all the makings of bad journalism–reporting misleading facts, quoting of inflammatory language, and the obligatory “counter view” at the end of the article.

Let’s tackle the facts. In the article you will find this:

“We should have experienced a significant decline in speeding-related fatalities, given the tremendous gains in safety-belt use coupled with the increasingly safe design of vehicles,” said Lt. Col. Jim Champagne of the Louisiana Highway Safety Commission and chairman of the GSHA.

That statement follows a paragraph where we are informed that “The number of speeding-related deaths is not declining” and “Speeding is a major factor in about one-third of the 42,000 traffic deaths a year in the USA.”

Hmmm… The “numbers” are not declining? Sounds like we have a problem on our hands, right? As the article points out, vehicles are far safer than ever before, and yet the “numbers” are not declining.

But wait just one minute! The article then points out that “The nation’s traffic fatality rate last year was a record low of 1.46 deaths per 100 million vehicle miles traveled, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.” Now we begin to see that in fact, fatalities have declined, and we are just spending more and more time on the road. It’s not that speeding is more deadly. It’s that we are spending more and more time on the road.

But wait, there’s more! The author can’t just let the record stand corrected. The author uses the word “But.” Yup, after telling the reader that the actual rate is lower the author points out “But the number of people killed in accidents each year has remained fairly constant as the number of vehicles and miles driven increased.”

So now we see that perhaps Lt Col Champagne was speaking in hyperbole when he argued against speeding. What’s worse, he called the accidents “carnage” on the highways. Inflammatory language, to be sure. Especially since, according to Dictionary.com, carnage is “Massive slaughter, as in war; a massacre.”

Bottom line? Read carefully–and look for all the details. Ask questions about the data presented. In this case, the article at least presented the death rate, and not just raw data. Imagine if the author had chosen to leave just that one bit of data out.

So the question I have is: Which do readers notice more, and why?

Class dismissed.