MUN105Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, Ethnography, Consumerism
16 Sep 2016
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Mun105h1 f - lecture 1 - introduction to course. Last week tonight with john oliver - scientific studies discussion. [what constrains our actions], as opposed to an agency [individual"s actions] problem) Consumerism mindset towards scientific studies leads to creation of a product (tie to ethical implications - is scientific study supposed to be a business?) rather than produce meaningful and significant knowledge. The public is also partially guilty - we are constantly expecting results and taking them for granted (no one wants to read a study in which no correlation is found), putting pressure upon scientists to produce them. Although confirmations studies can be as useful as exploratory studies, there is no publicity in redoing a study. People just want to see what they want to see, so scientists make studies to give them those results. Such as p-hacking (conducting experiments with many variables, then sifting results for statistically significant but meaningless results)
