Bias in Academic Research

An interesting article in the Globe and Mail about how academic research can be susceptible to racism or sexism.

On the Ground, In the Air

As I complete readings in the Introduction to Research course, I am beginning to see binary viewpoints in academic articles; either on the ground, or 30,000 feet in the air.  I am not speaking of the theoretical framework or the methodology the researchers take, but rather how micro or macro focused the literature is in scope. I just finished an article discussing how a group students felt about their first-time experiences with distance learning. The authors summarized the reflections of twenty students from their own video logs. There was a lot of personal feedback from the students as they tried to balance school work and other commitments. The students also shared their feelings about their relationship with the learning technology and the academic supports available to them. This study, very much rooted in phenomenology, gave me a micro, on the ground view of the subjects. I felt like I really understood the their individual challenges and motivations (or lack thereof).

A few other articles I recently completed were research reviews of distance education and the digital divide. After a lot of synthesis, the authors present the reader with a "state of the nation" snapshot of what the research at a macro level says about their respective subject matters. An aerial view of distance education, or the digital divide in education, as it were. As I read more academic articles, I can see the benefits of both the on the ground and in the air views. Sometimes you need detailed data from specific subjects, within specific situations. At other times, you need to understand what the emerging trends are in an industry, sector or country.

Just to keep it interesting, I added a new word to my vocabulary this week, meso, an intermediate level of analysis. This came up in one of the articles I was reading. I'm still working on the analogy for meso. The walking on stilts view? The hot air balloon perspective? I'll get back to you on that one.

Citation Snowballing

I don't know if anyone has come across this term, but I just had to share it:

Citation Snowballing

I came across this term while reviewing an article for Assignment 3. It is essentially searching the cited articles in an academic article and reviewing them for key words. Presumably to see if those articles are relevant to the research at hand.

Great definition here from HLWIKI Canada.

Big data goes around the world

Please forgive me for paraphrasing iconic Canadian rock band Rush's lyrics to their 1985 song "Big Money", but if you substitute "money" with "data", you might see a more accurate reflection of the digital world we live in over 30 years later:

Big money goes around the world
Big money underground
Big money got a mighty voice
Big money make no sound
Big money pull a million strings
Big money hold the prize
Big money weave a mighty web
Big money draw the flies

Songwriters: NEIL PEART, GEDDY LEE WEINRIB, ALEX LIFESON
"Big Money" lyrics provided for educational purposes and personal use only.

I was Master of Ceremonies for a college I.T. conference a couple of weeks ago and the theme was Big Knowledge. There was also a separate technology conference happening in downtown Toronto the same week focused on big data. Clearly, big data is a buzz word, but it might be more than a buzz word du jour. Big data might be a real Orwellian manifestation of living in the digital age. This term was until recently, usually talked about in the context of large retailers trying to sell you more goods based on shopping patterns and demographic information extracted from huge sets of transactional data. A quick Google search of "big data" today yielded news stories about automobile traffic, human judgement versus data driven decision-making in manufacturing, and  U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden's Cancer Moonshot research initiative. As big data grows exponentially, so does it's potential uses and misuses.

I'm beginning my current academic studies at a time when research is also being impacted by big data. Vice-President Biden's aforementioned Cancer Moonshot project is an effort to double the pace of preventing, diagnosing, and treating cancer (The Rocket Fuel for Biden’s “Cancer Moonshot”? Big Data - MIT Technology Review). Part of that project is an effort to bring together enormous amounts of cancer research so it can be better shared by academia, industry and government. This is a challenge I heard a few times from keynote speakers at the conference I was hosting; how do we organize and standardize huge amounts of data from disparate sources, structured in different formats? If this challenge can be met, the potential for research, and by extension, industry, government and society is enormous. But unless there is rigorous security, ethical and legal structures in place outlining how big data can, or cannot be used, the potential for violations of personal privacy and research ethics is equally enormous. Big data is a tsunami of information, all of our own making. The question is, will we be able to harness that energy or will it overwhelm us?