, 8 min read
Why senior researchers and managers should analyze data themselves…
8 thoughts on “Why senior researchers and managers should analyze data themselves…”
, 8 min read
8 thoughts on “Why senior researchers and managers should analyze data themselves…”
There’s also a subtle bias when senior researchers don’t routinely look at data. Analyses that confirm expectations will not be reviewed, but analyses that contradict expectations will be reviewed. So some kinds of mistakes will be more likely to go undetected than others.
Vertical collaboration, in my mind, is more analogous to “you clean the whole house; I’ll offer feedback on whether you did an adequate job or not.”
Cool idea though. I wasn’t clear: are you calling for more collaboration inter-research group, or intra? I think one of the best advances, in software research, anyway, would be for mandatory public data warehousing for all papers. E.g., http://promise.site.uottawa.ca/SERepository/
This would facilitate intra-group collaboration. From reports on climate modeling, that field has a healthy ‘co-optition’ model: each group designs a model, but once built, they share ideas to improve them all.
An interesting point. I agree that the whole process, as it is done today, is troublesome. Analyzing the data is the most important point in doing research, and it is basically the point in which professors are less likely to be involved.
The main technical problem is that in many cases, the data goes through several processes, and it is almost impossible to present a nice big data structure that can be analyzed by everybody.
Maybe a a more modest approach is to leave traits of the data used in each stage. Its not really a technical solution, and can be implemented by Google spreadsheet (in most cases) and some good will, but it is much better than burying the data in some Phd’s computer.
@Jeremy Sure. But I am not entirely certain I want my collaborators to be using different tools than I am. Wouldn’t it make discussions confusing?
Can I offer a distinction, and/or ask for a clarification?
You seem to be saying that there are two choices: Collaborators can either be (1) vertical and specialized, or (2) horizontal and general.
I agree that (1) is a problem, because the “senior” collaborator never engages with the low-level data. But I don’t see why the solution has to be (2). Isn’t there a third option?
“Horizontal and Specialized”
What I mean is, both collaborators should work on the same underlying, low-level data. But the tools given to each person to do their analysis are specialized and different. Perhaps overlapping, but with a certain amount of complementarity as well. Again, this is not complementarity of the data; both collaborators have access to the full raw data. But the system actively helps them look at that same, shared data in different ways, so as to see patterns that the other person might not be seeing.
At least, that’s the way my research group has been thinking about things, in our “collaborative exploratory search” work. Horizontality, but with specialization. Is this what you mean, too?
@Daniel,
Let me give a naive, oversimplified example: Suppose you had a tool that made one collaborator always see the raw data as a bar graph, and the other collaborator always see it as a pie chart. Then if the pie person ever saw a pattern that was less apparent in the bar view, the pie person could share that view with the bar person. But the point is, the tool would automatically (and hopefully helpfully) push both collaborators into different modes of seeing things. Horizontal, but specialized.
Now, of course the world is more complicated than “I specialize in pie charts and you specialize in bar graphs”. But you get the idea.
@Jeremy That’s an interesting approach to the issue and one that could work SO LONG AS everyone in the group is at the same level.
Or let me put it this way. Let’s say Pie Chart Viewer is the boss and Bar Graph Viewer is the employee. Is Bar Graph Viewer actually going to point out to Pie Chart Viewer that there is something wrong with his view? Is the boss going to believe his employee or dismiss it since he can’t see anything “wrong” with his own personal view?
Yes, this is an interaction problem that can happen in any small group, no matter what tools they are using, but I’d be worried that your approach might accidentally exacerbate it. Actually, this would make for a fascinating study 🙂
@neil
I wasn’t clear: are you calling for more collaboration inter-research group, or intra?
Actually. Let us do away with the notion of “group” shall we? Let us talk about networks of researchers instead.