Last Tuesday when we discussed Fahnstock, Weinberg
and Specter, I realized/thought about something with regards to certainty that
I really wanted to share and maybe this post can create more discussions as well.
It has been a while since Tuesday, but according to my notes we were pondering about entertainment and whether there was a balance between entertainment and incorporating facts. Someone had said that perhaps science writing won’t work without entertainment but needs als certainty in its scientific statements. I think it was Sadie that said (either in a blog post or in class – I’m not sure which at the moment) that human beings need certainty and how no one really wants to read articles that discuss probabilities and maybes. That idea made me realize that perhaps certainty is what furthers knowledge in our society – Perhaps certainty is what helps to expand our knowledge of things in our every day lives. For example if news briefs, articles, profiles etc stated they were unsure of their findings, how much faith would we have in them? How much faith would we have in committing them to either our memory banks or our own library of knowledge?
I’m beginning to realize that certainty exists everywhere, not just within science writing. For example I feel like if we didn’t believe our instructors are certain about what they teach, we wouldn’t be putting too much faith into their words. And the more I think about it, the more I think that “fact” is sort of like another word for “certainty,” with a couple minor differences. Because of those differences, I think I’d rather use “certainty” instead of “fact” because to me “fact” sounds hard/resolute. “Certainty” seems to suggest that our knowledge is always changing, shifting and growing, and not stagnant. Our word choices, our thoughts and the knowledge we gain when we read/interact with others is always growing just like the theories in various scientific studies.
As I mentioned in my blog response to Sadie this week, I do feel the need to distinguish between reliability and accuracy because they mean two different things in the scientific field – at least they do in psychology. Reliability is a synonym for consistency. When researchers get the same type of results over and over again with particular measure, that measure is reliable. However, just because it’s consistent, that doesn’t mean it’s accurate. For example a scale that weighs a 10 pound cat may say it weighs 10,000 pounds every time the cat steps on that scale. Accuracy in psychology means that something is true compared to a known standard. For example does a tape ruler yield the same results as other tape rulers? If it does, then that tape measure in question yields accuracy.
When I was reading that discussion of accuracy and reliability in my psychology book, I definitely found it interesting that the field seems to admit that there isn’t any “truth” or “fact” because there isn’t a way to be certain about anything. To me it’s interesting how the further I read/expand in knowledge, the more that all sorts of uncertainties seem to pop up and make themselves known within the field.
Also, on a related note to uncertainty, I need to say that I wanted to rant about David Freedman’s article this week. There were some things that rubbed me the wrong way, but I will refrain from doing so because I don’t know exactly how research is conducted in the hard sciences. I don’t know how close or far they are from the psychological research that I’ve been exposed to. I guess I can give a little bit of a compare and contrast based on what I know:
Freedman: Researchers head into studies expecting certain results.
Me: Not in psychology because then that would introduce error and bias. One bias that I can think of is called confirmation bias where researchers look for data to support their hypothesis.
Freedman: 41% of items retested convincingly were shown to be wrong or significantly exaggerated.
Me: Nothing is perfect, but according to you, there seems to be some sort of universal truth, but we (the readers) don’t see it because of some conspiracy that says how researchers exaggerate their data in order to earn attention from the readers. Well, it’s considered plagiarism to falsify or fabricate data purposely and so I doubt that researchers would want to jeopardize their careers and reputations just to earn attention from their readers/the general public.
But, I do see the point of this article to say that perhaps misinterpretations of information can impact the readers such as doctors and the general public who wish to use the results of the information to help themselves and other people (and he thus dissects the idea of certainty and uncertainty). Now going back to my first discussion paragraph, I wonder if certainty is also what creates knowledge and I wonder if that’s (at least partly) why things like confidence intervals in psychological research matter. If we are 95% confident in our results as stated in a research paper, then perhaps other researchers/people will find reason to believe our word because even though it isn’t 100% confident, 95% confidence may be close enough for people. ….
It has been a while since Tuesday, but according to my notes we were pondering about entertainment and whether there was a balance between entertainment and incorporating facts. Someone had said that perhaps science writing won’t work without entertainment but needs als certainty in its scientific statements. I think it was Sadie that said (either in a blog post or in class – I’m not sure which at the moment) that human beings need certainty and how no one really wants to read articles that discuss probabilities and maybes. That idea made me realize that perhaps certainty is what furthers knowledge in our society – Perhaps certainty is what helps to expand our knowledge of things in our every day lives. For example if news briefs, articles, profiles etc stated they were unsure of their findings, how much faith would we have in them? How much faith would we have in committing them to either our memory banks or our own library of knowledge?
I’m beginning to realize that certainty exists everywhere, not just within science writing. For example I feel like if we didn’t believe our instructors are certain about what they teach, we wouldn’t be putting too much faith into their words. And the more I think about it, the more I think that “fact” is sort of like another word for “certainty,” with a couple minor differences. Because of those differences, I think I’d rather use “certainty” instead of “fact” because to me “fact” sounds hard/resolute. “Certainty” seems to suggest that our knowledge is always changing, shifting and growing, and not stagnant. Our word choices, our thoughts and the knowledge we gain when we read/interact with others is always growing just like the theories in various scientific studies.
As I mentioned in my blog response to Sadie this week, I do feel the need to distinguish between reliability and accuracy because they mean two different things in the scientific field – at least they do in psychology. Reliability is a synonym for consistency. When researchers get the same type of results over and over again with particular measure, that measure is reliable. However, just because it’s consistent, that doesn’t mean it’s accurate. For example a scale that weighs a 10 pound cat may say it weighs 10,000 pounds every time the cat steps on that scale. Accuracy in psychology means that something is true compared to a known standard. For example does a tape ruler yield the same results as other tape rulers? If it does, then that tape measure in question yields accuracy.
When I was reading that discussion of accuracy and reliability in my psychology book, I definitely found it interesting that the field seems to admit that there isn’t any “truth” or “fact” because there isn’t a way to be certain about anything. To me it’s interesting how the further I read/expand in knowledge, the more that all sorts of uncertainties seem to pop up and make themselves known within the field.
Also, on a related note to uncertainty, I need to say that I wanted to rant about David Freedman’s article this week. There were some things that rubbed me the wrong way, but I will refrain from doing so because I don’t know exactly how research is conducted in the hard sciences. I don’t know how close or far they are from the psychological research that I’ve been exposed to. I guess I can give a little bit of a compare and contrast based on what I know:
Freedman: Researchers head into studies expecting certain results.
Me: Not in psychology because then that would introduce error and bias. One bias that I can think of is called confirmation bias where researchers look for data to support their hypothesis.
Freedman: 41% of items retested convincingly were shown to be wrong or significantly exaggerated.
Me: Nothing is perfect, but according to you, there seems to be some sort of universal truth, but we (the readers) don’t see it because of some conspiracy that says how researchers exaggerate their data in order to earn attention from the readers. Well, it’s considered plagiarism to falsify or fabricate data purposely and so I doubt that researchers would want to jeopardize their careers and reputations just to earn attention from their readers/the general public.
But, I do see the point of this article to say that perhaps misinterpretations of information can impact the readers such as doctors and the general public who wish to use the results of the information to help themselves and other people (and he thus dissects the idea of certainty and uncertainty). Now going back to my first discussion paragraph, I wonder if certainty is also what creates knowledge and I wonder if that’s (at least partly) why things like confidence intervals in psychological research matter. If we are 95% confident in our results as stated in a research paper, then perhaps other researchers/people will find reason to believe our word because even though it isn’t 100% confident, 95% confidence may be close enough for people. ….
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