More fundamentally the reason I call out that specific section is because I strongly doubt that the “businesses with engaged workers have 23% higher profit” sentence is based on statistics that are of any nontrivial evidentiary value for whether better workers lead to more profit, and if this part of the post is totally wrong then that calls into question whether the other statistics cited in the post are similarly totally wrong.
However, in spot-checking whether the statistics were totally wrong, I found myself struggling with wading through signups and links and long mostly irrelevant articles. Of course some nonzero amount of this is likely to happen with spot-checks but it seemed like the layers of links just made it even worse.
I was about to say that maybe I handled it wrong to begin with and should have just pointed out this problem. But looking back at my original comment I think I handled it right, in just asking OP to explain what data/model it was based on; the problem is that then OP responded back with repeating the links instead of explaining what he had read in the links. But I guess my followup response to OP responding back with repeating the links might be a problem.
However, in spot-checking whether the statistics were totally wrong, I found myself struggling with wading through signups and links and long mostly irrelevant articles. Of course some nonzero amount of this is likely to happen with spot-checks but it seemed like the layers of links just made it even worse.
This is dishonest, the vast majority of the sources are primary scientific studies and the few times I do refer to secondary sources it isn’t irrelevant.
You did handle it right, especially your deleted comment.
OP to explain what data/model it was based on; the problem is that then OP responded back with repeating the links instead of explaining what he had read in the links
Yeah, because the primary source is right there?! What value would me explaining in my second language bring to the explanation, when you can click on the link and immediately download the primary source?
This is dishonest, the vast majority of the sources are primary scientific studies and the few times I do refer to secondary sources it isn’t irrelevant.
I wasn’t talking about the vast majority of the sources, I was talking about source 3, which turned into source 2, which turned into some other source that I had to find myself.
You did handle it right, especially your deleted comment.
My deleted comment was nearly identical to one of the non-deleted comments. It’s just that I realized there was a problem with one of my comments after posting it and I needed to take some time to look at it.
Yeah, because the primary source is right there?! What value would me explaining in my second language bring to the explanation, when you can click on the link and immediately download the primary source?
The problem is that the primary source does not seem credible without additional information.
A spot check is supposed to take a number of random sources and check them, not pick the one claim you find most suspicious (that isn’t even about co-ops) and use that to dismiss the entire literature on co-ops.
A spot check is supposed to take a number of random sources and check them, not pick the one claim you find most suspicious (that isn’t even about co-ops)
There seem to be three parts to this objections:
I did not spot-check sufficiently many claims
I filtered the claim to spot-check based on being the most suspicious
I did not filter the claims based on being about co-ops
With regards to point 1, I agree that I cannot know your accuracy very precisely without doing more checks, but the problem is that each check takes time and there are a lot of posts on the internet to read, so I have to limit how much I search.
With regards to point 2, it’s not that I spot-checked the most suspicious one, rather it’s that I spot-checked the first suspicious one. This is still a filter on suspiciousness, but a much weaker one. I think some filter on suspiciousness is appropriate since suspicious claims are also the ones I can learn the most from if they turn out to be true, as claims become suspicious through a combination of being unlikely and having big implications.
With regards to point 3, if you put much more effort into verifying the accuracy of your claims about co-ops than your claims about other stuff, then your accuracy on co-ops might not be that correlated with your accuracy on other stuff, and I ought to do a spot-check specifically on your claims about co-ops. I don’t know if that is true. If it is true, it might also be helpful to mention it as a disclaimer in the post so people know what claims to mostly focus on.
and use that to dismiss the entire literature on co-ops.
So it’s not so much that I’m dismissing the entire literature on co-ops. (Or well, I would generally dismiss any social science that I haven’t done some surface checks of. But that’s different from my comments here.) It’s more that I’m dismissing your literature review of the literature.
More fundamentally the reason I call out that specific section is because I strongly doubt that the “businesses with engaged workers have 23% higher profit” sentence is based on statistics that are of any nontrivial evidentiary value for whether better workers lead to more profit, and if this part of the post is totally wrong then that calls into question whether the other statistics cited in the post are similarly totally wrong.
However, in spot-checking whether the statistics were totally wrong, I found myself struggling with wading through signups and links and long mostly irrelevant articles. Of course some nonzero amount of this is likely to happen with spot-checks but it seemed like the layers of links just made it even worse.
I was about to say that maybe I handled it wrong to begin with and should have just pointed out this problem. But looking back at my original comment I think I handled it right, in just asking OP to explain what data/model it was based on; the problem is that then OP responded back with repeating the links instead of explaining what he had read in the links. But I guess my followup response to OP responding back with repeating the links might be a problem.
This is dishonest, the vast majority of the sources are primary scientific studies and the few times I do refer to secondary sources it isn’t irrelevant.
You did handle it right, especially your deleted comment.
Yeah, because the primary source is right there?! What value would me explaining in my second language bring to the explanation, when you can click on the link and immediately download the primary source?
I wasn’t talking about the vast majority of the sources, I was talking about source 3, which turned into source 2, which turned into some other source that I had to find myself.
My deleted comment was nearly identical to one of the non-deleted comments. It’s just that I realized there was a problem with one of my comments after posting it and I needed to take some time to look at it.
The problem is that the primary source does not seem credible without additional information.
A spot check is supposed to take a number of random sources and check them, not pick the one claim you find most suspicious (that isn’t even about co-ops) and use that to dismiss the entire literature on co-ops.
There seem to be three parts to this objections:
I did not spot-check sufficiently many claims
I filtered the claim to spot-check based on being the most suspicious
I did not filter the claims based on being about co-ops
With regards to point 1, I agree that I cannot know your accuracy very precisely without doing more checks, but the problem is that each check takes time and there are a lot of posts on the internet to read, so I have to limit how much I search.
With regards to point 2, it’s not that I spot-checked the most suspicious one, rather it’s that I spot-checked the first suspicious one. This is still a filter on suspiciousness, but a much weaker one. I think some filter on suspiciousness is appropriate since suspicious claims are also the ones I can learn the most from if they turn out to be true, as claims become suspicious through a combination of being unlikely and having big implications.
With regards to point 3, if you put much more effort into verifying the accuracy of your claims about co-ops than your claims about other stuff, then your accuracy on co-ops might not be that correlated with your accuracy on other stuff, and I ought to do a spot-check specifically on your claims about co-ops. I don’t know if that is true. If it is true, it might also be helpful to mention it as a disclaimer in the post so people know what claims to mostly focus on.
So it’s not so much that I’m dismissing the entire literature on co-ops. (Or well, I would generally dismiss any social science that I haven’t done some surface checks of. But that’s different from my comments here.) It’s more that I’m dismissing your literature review of the literature.