Very interesting article that makes a valid point about the outcome of studies presumably covering the same ground but that fail to line up. This is trivially e

Very interesting article that makes a valid point about the outcome of studies presumably covering the same ground but that fail to line up. This is trivially easy to notice in medical journal articles, for example, reports of drug trials are often contradictory. (A notorious example: studies of SSRI antidepressants.) How could this be? In simple terms, the sets of subjects weren't congruent. For one thing, given the intrinsic difficulty of measuring "depression" and subtle differences in sex, age, and distribution of symptoms among cohorts of depressed individuals it's hardly a surprise to find out response to a treatment could vary significantly. I fully agree with the author's ideas about interactivity and context of events. But these are infinitely variable and it often takes a lot of effort to work out what are the salient elements that shape the data we're collecting. There's a point to be made about "premature abstraction" that's parallel to the oft-cited evil of "premature optimization". It might even be the very same thing.