Comment on ‘Close to zero impact’: US study casts doubt on effect of phone ban in schools
reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net 6 days agoTypically when a news article mentions a “study” it’s a peer reviewed research article. If it’s a white paper or a working paper that is typically pointed out. Leaving that detail out is notable and probably a purposeful decision by my reckoning.
Generally they don’t mention conflicts of interest even if they’re listed so that bit isn’t especially atypical here to me.
PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
Okay. Again, from the standpoint of how to get at what’s knowable - my complaint here with The Guardian is that they aren’t pointing out the things they should be, at all, and that the white paper nature (from such “sources”) merits exactly nothing. No further draft on any such topic from such sources could ever be credible.
Your “typical / atypical” is you getting to my point for me, or maybe we just agree.
reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net 6 days ago
I think we agree! I was the original commenter in this comment thread and posted the screenshot of the sponsorship issue
PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 days ago
Maybe we do, and I appreciate you pointing out what you did! I’ll be the first to acknowledge I never would have known those things had you not posted them (and I’m sure that’s true for tons of folks who saw your comment, so truly, thanks).
But to me even “taking this with a grain of salt”, though, that’s just way more credulity than documents coming out of those orgs will ever merit. So I don’t know, your comment struck me as really strange, you point out the bombshell facts you did, to me those utterly destroy any assumption of good faith investigation/analysis, and then you go essentially “so I’ll take it with a grain of salt and wait for other experts to weigh in”. But…why?
Apologies if you’re simply using neutral language as a way to reach more readers. But the damning epistemological facts about the document make it ineligible for taking seriously. To make an analogy it’s like you said “we can see this bread is half-baked (white paper), and it actually comes from a mold factory (Bezos, Waltons), not a bread factory. So I’ll have a little, not a lot, and then see what other bread experts say about it too”. Which would be a crazy course of action, given the preceding description.
Again, sincere apologies if I’m mischaracterizing your POV, that’s how it reads to me though.
reallykindasorta@slrpnk.net 6 days ago
I guess I felt like the evidence spoke for itself, my aim was to communicate that Guardian was acting in bad faith in their reporting of this. “Grain of salt” was just colloquial language. I hadn’t read the paper so I couldn’t speak to the actual contents.
I’m also disappointed that Stanford, Upenn, and Duke would be okay with this (there are rules for putting your university affiliation on illegitimate research to make it seem legitimate). I would kind of expect it from Stanford (who also sponsored the research) tbh but not Duke or Upenn.
No wonder people are losing faith in the scientific establishment. If anyone reading this goes to one of those universities you should email the VPR/OPR office to complain. This is eroding your legitimacy too.
This whole thing is an excellent example of how corporations wield their ‘soft power’ to try to make their policies seem reasonable.