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In BS, research often seeks to
identify a random sample, perfect an hypothesis and draw a
conclusion, or so I think. In FLOW, we recognize that it's not
easy to draw a sample because of both the inherent diversity
of everything from values, to perspective, from traits to
attraction. We need to be careful about generalizing
conclusions from "random" samples that may not be.
People who found the means met
their ends more efficiently, have gathered in attractive ways
to form large blocks of similar inbornness, and that by merely
drawing a sample and projecting a simple stat onto a lot of
people, without first understanding the inbornness of those
measured is in fact part of the issue, which means instead of
a generalized trend, we have a poor study...which doesn't
generalize, often producing another composite standard.
A few years ago, there was an effort on the adult
developmental discussion list which has been running more than
a decade that I have been on it... Where there was no member
who could/would/did offer a study that had been setup properly
by first examining the baseline of inbornness,
heredity, attributes, traits, etc. before the study was
conducted, in other words, a "random" sample was supposed to
have covered it...
My sense is that a random sample from Maharishi Institute or
the Military would hold no more randomness than me going into
a monestary, or FLOW discussion... And selecting every 10th
person and calling it a random sample, performing my
hypothetical and then claiming a generalized result.
BS research has prevailed on the notion that if we get the
phone book and call every 10th number that we'll get a random
survey and the results are generalizable to the rest of the
population.
I don't know much about this stuff, but I wonder what would be
different about studies if we actually created a baseline
before we started...to make certain that in fact a random
sample had been selected and that we had no pre-determined
variables already colluding in the study to create less than
generalizable data.
I realize not all studies need
that, but what I'm saying is this... BS is not... Anymore, Blank
Slate never was, but it became so, as a result of assuming
that research was in fact carefully controlled, and it isn't
in a lot of cases. We proven there are huge biases at every
turn from everything to researcher values--the
biggest--clearly biasing results, along with "funding sources"
and the way studies are designed.
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