Data: Such a Flexible and Handy Marketing Tool
July 5, 2019
Love Big Data? Like New Age research? Enjoy studies funded by commercial enterprises? If you are nodding in agreement, head on over to ““Evidence-Based Medicine Has Been Hijacked: A Confession from John Ioannidis.”
Here’s a statement to ponder:
Since clinical research that can generate useful clinical evidence has fallen off the radar screen of many/most public funders, it is largely left up to the industry to support it. The sales and marketing departments in most companies are more powerful than their R&D departments. Hence, the design, conduct, reporting, and dissemination of this clinical evidence becomes an advertisement tool. As for “basic” research, as I explain in the paper, the current system favors PIs who make a primary focus of their career how to absorb more money. Success in obtaining (more) funding in a fiercely competitive world is what counts the most. Given that much “basic” research is justifiably unpredictable in terms of its yield, we are encouraging aggressive gamblers. Unfortunately, it is not gambling for getting major, high-risk discoveries (which would have been nice), it is gambling for simply getting more money.
Does this observation apply to the world of Big Data, online advertising, and the spreadsheet fever plaguing MBAs? Yep.
- People believe numbers and most do not ask, “Where did this number come from? What was the sample? How did you verify these data?”
- Outputs can be shaped. Check out your college class notes for Statistics 101; that is, I am assuming you kept your college notes. See anything about best practices? Validity tests?
- What about those thresholds? Many Bayesian methods are based upon guesses. Toss in some Monte Carlo? How representative of the outputs? What are the deltas between the current outputs and other available data?
Our next Factualities will appear in this blog on Wednesday. There are some special numbers in that round up.
A friend of mine who owns a successful online business said, “Nobody cares.”
Nobody cares?
Stephen E Arnold, July 5, 2019
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