5 ms·

An article comparing single-sex vs. coed on a domain called singlesexschools.org? Without even looking into the background of this: Can we really expect the art

by kken 13y ago

An article comparing single-sex vs. coed on a domain called singlesexschools.org? Without even looking into the background of this: Can we really expect the article not to be biased?

spindritf 13y ago
All humans and all of their work is biased in some way. You can never expect anything to be unbiased. Without even looking into the background of this The fact that someone made up their mind on an issue doesn't by itself mean they're wrong though.
- ronaldx 13y ago
  Unreliable witnesses can be right, indeed, but being correct doesn't make evidence a reliable source - you can be right for the wrong reasons. Having a stated belief upfront puts your work in obvious danger of confirmation bias[0]. It can and should be assumed that you will promote results which support your belief and ignore results that don't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
  - thaumasiotes 13y ago
    Consider the following scenario: 1. I wonder about the effectiveness of single-sex vs. coed schooling. 2. I do a bunch of research. 3. I conclude that single-sex education is significantly more effective, and that students are being harmed by the dominant paradigm of coed schooling. 4. I establish a website to promote my views, and I call it "singlesexschools.org". 5. I display, on my website promoting single-sex schools, the arguments and papers that convinced me single-sex schools were a good idea. Pretty much anyone who possesses knowledge will be able to give you a "stated belief up front" if you ask them about it. That doesn't mean they started with the belief. Knowledge causes beliefs. In my five-step scenario, what should I have named my website?
    - ronaldx 13y ago
      Choosing the singlesexschools.org domain would be poor judgement on your part; as would publishing a biased report without reference to how you ensured its veracity. If your original research was complete and unbiased, you ought to be proud to show that in your work and in your choice of headline domain. The idealist but misguided situation you describe is not the case here, anyway. This reaseach was published by a group formerly known as the NASSPE - the National Association for Single Sex Public Education.
      - thaumasiotes 13y ago
        > Choosing the singlesexschools.org domain would be poor judgement on your part No, it wouldn't. Someone more interested in dismissing my ideas than in learning what they were could just as easily say "Effective Schooling is a known advocate of single-sex education, and can therefore not be trusted to report on the issue" (indeed, people say this all the time). The fact that someone is willing to tell you what his ideas are doesn't automatically make them bad ones. And everyone choosing to talk about an issue is going to have an opinion on it.
  - spindritf 13y ago
    First, OP's author went through the trouble of citing a bunch of third-party sources. Second, confirmation bias or your beliefs don't go away just because you didn't state them. Not only that, but it's entirely proper, even desired, to state your hypothesis before testing it. Scientists are fighting for it right now, some are proposing a registry of hypotheses to be tested to fight another problem -- publication bias.
    - ronaldx 13y ago
      It's easy to "go through the trouble" of picking the matching third-party sources and rejecting non-matching third-party sources. If you are an association trying to present one viewpoint (as this is), that's pretty much your first job. The article here touts the word "random", which is essential to the science of the claim - but despite being claimed repeatedly, it remains totally unexamined. There is bias and there is bias - this article makes no attempt to clear any source of bias, and as such is about as biased as you can get.
angerman 13y ago
I think this is a dangerous fallacy many of us run into: judging content by it's domain name. Would the same content on a completely different domain change the prejudice towards the contents of the text? Similarly would a url shortener hide the potential bias? By seeing the domain name in this case one could assume a bias towards single sex schools. At least the author of that presence would be frank about it. Similarly couldn't it be that the author chose singlesexschool.org for it's catchiness and still favor coed? While this particular article presents facts in favor of single sex schools, I would think that our duty is to educate our kids and peers to critically question anything they read and at least do a little research (scanning the site to get a basic understanding of the agenda the author may be pushing; to follow the supposedly supporting links, ...).
- leoedin 13y ago
  I'm not sure if it's an entirely dangerous fallacy. The internet is packed with conspiracy theories and crackpot ideas, and one of the filters that I'd imagine most people develop over time is to try and understand the source of what they're reading. Mainstream news outlets, or fairly well renowned websites, have a well understood bias (I would expect to see arguments for social welfare on the guardian, less so on the telegraph) and the advantages of widespread scrutiny (which acts as a limiter for entirely non-factual stuff). This site has neither. In fact, the only metric that I have to determine whether to believe anything I read in the article is the source. Given that it's clearly a single topic advocacy site, I think not judging it by its domain name would be a mistake.
interpol_p 13y ago
I initially felt the same, but the paper linked makes the relevant claims in its abstract (although I'm not paying up to get the full text). http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-012-0157-1 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-012-0157-1 Also, posted by another commenter in this thread: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/graduates-of-all-girls-schools-85038.aspx http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/graduates-of-all-girls-... It's enough for me not to dismiss the idea.
reinhardt 13y ago
It is biased in the sense of choosing to publicize and comment on a research study that agrees with its premise. That doesn't make the research study biased.

by kken 13y ago

An article comparing single-sex vs. coed on a domain called singlesexschools.org? Without even looking into the background of this: Can we really expect the article not to be biased?

spindritf 13y ago

All humans and all of their work is biased in some way. You can never expect anything to be unbiased. Without even looking into the background of this The fact that someone made up their mind on an issue doesn't by itself mean they're wrong though.

ronaldx 13y ago
Unreliable witnesses can be right, indeed, but being correct doesn't make evidence a reliable source - you can be right for the wrong reasons. Having a stated belief upfront puts your work in obvious danger of confirmation bias[0]. It can and should be assumed that you will promote results which support your belief and ignore results that don't. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias
- thaumasiotes 13y ago
  Consider the following scenario: 1. I wonder about the effectiveness of single-sex vs. coed schooling. 2. I do a bunch of research. 3. I conclude that single-sex education is significantly more effective, and that students are being harmed by the dominant paradigm of coed schooling. 4. I establish a website to promote my views, and I call it "singlesexschools.org". 5. I display, on my website promoting single-sex schools, the arguments and papers that convinced me single-sex schools were a good idea. Pretty much anyone who possesses knowledge will be able to give you a "stated belief up front" if you ask them about it. That doesn't mean they started with the belief. Knowledge causes beliefs. In my five-step scenario, what should I have named my website?
  - ronaldx 13y ago
    Choosing the singlesexschools.org domain would be poor judgement on your part; as would publishing a biased report without reference to how you ensured its veracity. If your original research was complete and unbiased, you ought to be proud to show that in your work and in your choice of headline domain. The idealist but misguided situation you describe is not the case here, anyway. This reaseach was published by a group formerly known as the NASSPE - the National Association for Single Sex Public Education.
    - thaumasiotes 13y ago
      > Choosing the singlesexschools.org domain would be poor judgement on your part No, it wouldn't. Someone more interested in dismissing my ideas than in learning what they were could just as easily say "Effective Schooling is a known advocate of single-sex education, and can therefore not be trusted to report on the issue" (indeed, people say this all the time). The fact that someone is willing to tell you what his ideas are doesn't automatically make them bad ones. And everyone choosing to talk about an issue is going to have an opinion on it.
- spindritf 13y ago
  First, OP's author went through the trouble of citing a bunch of third-party sources. Second, confirmation bias or your beliefs don't go away just because you didn't state them. Not only that, but it's entirely proper, even desired, to state your hypothesis before testing it. Scientists are fighting for it right now, some are proposing a registry of hypotheses to be tested to fight another problem -- publication bias.
  - ronaldx 13y ago
    It's easy to "go through the trouble" of picking the matching third-party sources and rejecting non-matching third-party sources. If you are an association trying to present one viewpoint (as this is), that's pretty much your first job. The article here touts the word "random", which is essential to the science of the claim - but despite being claimed repeatedly, it remains totally unexamined. There is bias and there is bias - this article makes no attempt to clear any source of bias, and as such is about as biased as you can get.

angerman 13y ago

I think this is a dangerous fallacy many of us run into: judging content by it's domain name. Would the same content on a completely different domain change the prejudice towards the contents of the text? Similarly would a url shortener hide the potential bias? By seeing the domain name in this case one could assume a bias towards single sex schools. At least the author of that presence would be frank about it. Similarly couldn't it be that the author chose singlesexschool.org for it's catchiness and still favor coed? While this particular article presents facts in favor of single sex schools, I would think that our duty is to educate our kids and peers to critically question anything they read and at least do a little research (scanning the site to get a basic understanding of the agenda the author may be pushing; to follow the supposedly supporting links, ...).

leoedin 13y ago
I'm not sure if it's an entirely dangerous fallacy. The internet is packed with conspiracy theories and crackpot ideas, and one of the filters that I'd imagine most people develop over time is to try and understand the source of what they're reading. Mainstream news outlets, or fairly well renowned websites, have a well understood bias (I would expect to see arguments for social welfare on the guardian, less so on the telegraph) and the advantages of widespread scrutiny (which acts as a limiter for entirely non-factual stuff). This site has neither. In fact, the only metric that I have to determine whether to believe anything I read in the article is the source. Given that it's clearly a single topic advocacy site, I think not judging it by its domain name would be a mistake.

interpol_p 13y ago

I initially felt the same, but the paper linked makes the relevant claims in its abstract (although I'm not paying up to get the full text). http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-012-0157-1 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-012-0157-1 Also, posted by another commenter in this thread: http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/graduates-of-all-girls-schools-85038.aspx http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/graduates-of-all-girls-... It's enough for me not to dismiss the idea.

reinhardt 13y ago

It is biased in the sense of choosing to publicize and comment on a research study that agrees with its premise. That doesn't make the research study biased.