It is actually ironic that I should be writing about research. You may be asking why? The name of my blog has to do with theories.
Most research begins with a theory. A person wonders "why" about something and then, may proceed to find an answer.
Remember when the prevailing theory was that the sun revolved around the earth? Or for that matter, the earth was flat. People at the time, used their powers of observation and concluded that since you couldn't see past the horizon, and it appeared flat, the earth in fact was flat. Ditto for their reasoning about the sun. And heads up. If you came up with a theory that the prevailing wisdom didn't like, you had to recant or go to prison or drink poison. Not that I'm judging.
Actually, part of research is observation. I'd love to know who observed that having sex (intercourse) was responsible for women getting pregnant. And how long did it take them to figure out that puzzle.
It probably took longer to figure out that, maybe the father wasn't the daddy, and they didn't have no DNA tests.
It was probably the theory of "Hey, why don't my kid look like me and while I'm thinking 'bout it, why does he look like the guy who lives two caves down?"
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Look, he has your nose.
Before there were scientists, the "why" of things, was rather a hit or miss business. I won't go into the history or development of scientific study. I'm already probably boring you and I haven't even gotten to that part yet.
Also, I'd have to do research since I don't know it very well. And I don't have the time. Or the inclination which is why I'm writing this.
A couple of days ago, my husband came in and asked if I knew what "astroturfing" was. I knew they used AstroTurf in sports but the only sports he watches are boxing and football to you all out there in the world and soccer to us in the US.
I don't think they use turf in a boxing ring, and it didn't sound very European. So, I let him tell me. (He is not going to like that. Can I strike that and say I said, Oh honey, that sounds fascinating. Please tell me about it.) Yeah, that's better.
Very long story short, social media and Wikipedia and places like WebMD are being used by the companies whose products they are discussing.
Silly us. Isn't an encyclopedia supposed to have just the facts ma'am. If I wanted to know what the drug manufacturer had to say about it's medication, I'd look at their ad. Instead, I look it up for an unbiased opinion.
Apparently, those opinions aren't so unbiased. Get ready for a big shock. They get their information from sources that derive from the manufacturer and they might not even know it. Subterfuge. Cheating lying, bastards.
Of course, this came as no huge shock to me. I'll get into that when I write about how research is supposed to be done.
You go to your doctor and he has to prescribe a medication for you. How does he get his information? From the drug reps. He may do his own research, but as we've learned, he's not going to find out anything more than the drug company already wants him to know. So don't blame the doctor. Blame the damned greedy companies.
 
It's not just medicine. The food and drink industries do it
too. So, what's wrong with the research?
Put on your thinking caps, boys and girls. I am not an expert in research or statistics. Which is good because that should make my explanation simple.
The type of research I am going to describe is known as The Scientific Method. There of you who are reading this who know a lot more than I do, about as much as I, or not at all. So, please bear with me.
This is the most rigorous type of research and is what one must do in order to be taken seriously. Especially in the scientific community.
There are 5 steps that must be done.
1. Observe some phenomenon.
2. Formulate a hypotheses and make a prediction.
3. Test your hypotheses through Empirical research.
4. Draw conclusions from your results.
5. Evaluate your conclusions.
This all begins with a THEORY. YAYYAYA . I love theories. They try to explain why certain things happen and then, they can be used to make predictions about future observations.
1. So, what shall we observe as an example? Women wearing high heels get looked at more times by men, than women wearing flats.
I had nothing to do and sat in a mall and that's what I saw. It's my story and I'm sticking to it. I'm not going to make it more complicated by talking about variables and operational definitions and all that crap that if I were doing this, I would have to decide on.
2. Now, I have to turn my theory into a hypothesis. No, this is not a triangle. But close. It is arrived at logically from the theory. It is a prediction that can be tested. So I'll go out on a limb and say that "Men will look more often at women who are wearing high heels than they will at women wearing flat shoes." We can test this prediction by counting while we are observing. And, you'll notice I already decided that I'm right. I am sure that what I think is true, so I posed it in the positive. It will, rather than it will not happen.
3.This is where it gets messy. You have to set up the experiment. And there are certain rules you are supposed to follow, or it won't be kosher and if you try to publish, people will laugh at you.
Is it possible for me to study the entire population of women on earth? Where could I even begin? The science people are very understanding, so they told me I could take a sample of the population. In order to mirror the population more closely, they told me to collect a random sample. It I can randomly look at these women, there's a better chance that I'll be able to generalize to the larger population. And, the larger your sample is, the more likely that is to happen.
I'm spending a lot of time on sampling, because it's so important and so not what I've heard the drug companies actually do. And that freaked me out when I heard about it.
So, where do I find these women to wear shoes? And where do I find the men to look at them? How many would consist of a large enough sample?
And who will do the looking? How will they measure what they see? Will they agree on what a "look" is? Oh God. So many questions. No wonder I hate doing this.
For everybody's sake, I'll say this. It's hard to find samples. So, depending on the research they may bend the numbers. Sometimes they're like, okay, you could only find fifty people, I guess that should be enough.
Or, you need at least one thousand for that one to fly.
This leads back to the story I heard at a workshop when I needed to get continuing ed. credits for my license.
I can't recall what the name of it was. Only that the Dr. who gave it started out by telling us that he and his psychologist research colleagues, would do studies for drug companies to fund their own research. They referred to it as drug money.
 That was funny until he started to describe how the drug studies were done. First, they had round A. Getting lots of people for the experiment. Only, they disqualified some because they didn't meet some requirement. Hmm, wasn't this supposed to be random? Then, at round B, they would disqualify some more, and then on round C, at this point I raised my hand because as you can tell, I'm very patient. I asked how many rounds did they go? And he basically laughed and said as many as they needed to find the population they wanted to work with. I didn't really , but I like the vernacular and it describes how I felt. I wanted to shit myself.
He went on a bit more about what I wouldn't believe about the drug testing. I left not long after that. Mostly because the workshop was really more for the medical community and I was in way over my head. In drug dung.
Let's work this out kids. I make a hypothesis. I choose the people I want to fulfill the hypothesis. I manipulate everything so that I come up with a wonder drug that I can sell when it gets FDA approval.
You and I both thought. Ah Ha. There is someone watching out for us.
However, if you read any part of the book "Drug Pharma" you will know that in none of the European or American cases is the oversight agency, really doing their job.
Sometimes boys and girls, they are appointed by the drug companies they are to watch. Sometimes they know nothing about drugs. And, their studies
 that they do, are not released to the public. And maybe, some of them aren't honest and take bribes. Or are so overwhelmed that they can't meet their deadlines.
And so drugs are approved and we get to pay top dollar for them
because it cost the drug company so much money to research all the drugs they make.
Do you remember Viox ? I'm pretty sure that was the name of the drug. It created quite a scandal. I believe it was an anti-inflammatory, and for arguments sake, it doesn't matter. The piece they knew about but decided not to divulge, was that there would be a small population of people who would be young, and die of a heart attack. Only after several deaths and law suits did the internal memo come out.
 What the companies do is to calculate how much money they will make selling the drug vs. how much they will lose in law suits. They didn't care that innocent people would die. They knew it. And I don't care how much money you give me, it's not worth getting dead over.
And the point of this long winded post is like an old game show called "who do you trust?"
Each industry, operation, corporation, agency, charity, government has it's own axe to grind. It needs to be sharp so they can cut off the heads of anyone they don't like or who disagrees with them.
The point is, that it scares me that I'm eating and drinking poison, taking drugs that are more harmful than helpful, and the good people who are doing this to "us" are rolling in money. Not that it matters 'cause they've destroyed the planet they live on so eventually they'll pay the consequences too. Still.
 
Coffee and eggs were bad for us. Now they aren't. Red wine and dark chocolate are good for us. Maybe fat isn't so bad as we were told. Being fat, well, that's still not good. Although the more they stress that, and the more "they" do something about it, the fatter we Americans get.
I'd best stop ranting because I have no idea how long this is. It's just one giant page while I write it, so it could be 47 pages. Sorry if it is.
But I believe there is a silver lining. Who are the experts? Not the people who lie. Not the people who don't care. Not the people on line who think they are helping and don't even know that the wool is being pulled over their eyes too.
That make US our own experts. You and I know just as much as the next guy, even if he has MDs and PhDs. and all sorts of initials after his or her name. Even if they are actual real writers who have published books.
We don't know who to trust, so let's trust ourselves. If you want to research something on line, go ahead, but you'll probably get a headache and a panic attack with the information you find.
Me, I'd rather just decide for myself. Don't get me wrong. I'll go to my doctors and if the medicines appear to be working, I'll take them. I'll also decide to eat what I like. If I feel better after exercise, then I'll do it. If I feel worse, I won't. So don't believe everything you read. Just because it's been printed don't make it so. Even this. I too, could be blowing smoke up your ass.
Not that I would do that. I quit smoking 25 years ago because it was bad for my health.
*ad(I'm so spent from this, I'm not proofing it. pardon errors, please)
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