Views from the Hills by R. E. Stevens, GENESIS II (The Second Beginning) E-Mail views@aol.com

The Miracle Food Processor

Based on recent experiences I know that in the very near future we will have a miracle food processor.  One that allows you to throw away your garbage disposal.  With this new processor, you take all the scraps that you would normally put in the disposal and put them into the food processor.  When it is full, a simple push a button will yield a meal fit for a king.  This new processor disputes the old saying, "Garbage In, Garbage Out."  How do I know?  Look around you at the technology today.  things like this are happening all around us.  How sure am I that this will really happen?  I'm as sure as I was in the 1970s when they said by the year 2000, we would have public interplanetary space travel and a jet pack that would allow me to fly to and from work rather than drive.

When you think about changes like this, it is obvious.  these things are already happening.  Look at how we collect data today.  Look at the source and quality of the data.  We take that data and massage it, twist it, shape it, distill it, add a little color and a little flavor, throw in a few colorful charts and package it in a rich looking binder fit for management.

People today take a severely biased sample and manipulate the sample to create a representative sample of a given population.  Don't ask me how they do it.  They just say they can and they do it all the time.  I'm slow.  I have never figured out how you could take a sample that doesn't contain some element of the population and twist it so that it does.  It's beyond my understanding.  However, I will probably accept the food processor before I ever accept the concept of a re-constructed sample.

A couple of weeks ago I was reading about this fantastic new personal care product that could change how other people felt about you and how you felt about yourself.  This new product did wonders for the users' self esteem.  The findings were the centerpiece of a national news release announcing the new product.  They were so proud of the research that they told us that it involved undergraduate students and some other subjects living in the immediate area of the university.  I was also disappointed that they did not tell us how many subjects were involved in this monumental research that involved such a great population sample.  But perhaps my greatest concern is that I have money invested in this company.

Some months back, my grandson and I were in a mall, shopping for football cleats.  We took time to observe the research taking place.  I pointed out the signs in front of the research facility which was next door to the shoe store.  Signs were posted stating current projects, the eligibilities and the honorarium for each study.  We took some time to watch and listen to the recruiters out on the mall floor.  My 13-year-old grandson asked, "Why would anyone use data from this type of research?"  I pointed out that there are some good mall research facilities and some that are bad, and he was looking at a very bad one.  The problem is identifying the good and the bad and acting accordingly.  The most important thing that I point out to him was the fact that he had an advantage over most researchers.  That advantage was that he was out in the field looking, listening and learning.  Most researchers today seldom venture beyond their desks or out from behind the mirror.

It is just my view from where I'm standing.  I hope it is more in my mind than in the real world.


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