After a rather unproductive day I decided to go out to get some fresh air, and caffeine before settleing down to get some serious work done on a few assignments. 9pm was probably not the most advisable hour to be ordering a triple grande white mocha, but it did have the desired effect of getting my brain working again. Lately whenever I get a beverage from Starbucks, the same “The Way I See It” quote has been featured on the side of my cup, however today’s was new. Here is what my cup says:
“A very bad (and all too common) way
to misread a newspaper: To see
whatever suports your point of view
as fact, and anything that contradicts
your point of view as bias.”
-Daniel Okrent
Ombudsman
Upon reading it, I realize that this faux-pas applies to much more than reading the newspaper. This year especially, I’ve found fault with quite a few scholars and the work they publish, and this very Monday afternoon I found myself getting all riled up in a discussion with a professor and several fellow students in a seminar course about the validity of evidence that had been cited in a paper published in a fairly prestigious scientific journal. It seems surprisingly common in multiple disciplines these days for researchers to conveniently overlook outlying values, or evidence that doesn’t support their hypothesis claiming they’re merely an anomaly or unique case; or choosing statistical tests in such a way that “supports their theory” at first glance, when really it was never the appropriate test to be using in the first place!
