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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 fac

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.

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.