View Single Post
  #12  
Old 01-09-2009, 12:11 PM
DrPhil DrPhil is offline
Banned
 
Join Date: Nov 2008
Posts: 14,730
I'm a social scientist so this is "obvious" to me but this is news to the average layperson that I talk to and my average student. There will be a "wow" factor for some, some will be angered because they think this study is telling them they aren't as nice or as progressive as they thought they were, and the rest will be like "DUH."

That's what I find amusing.

These types of studies are to keep the dialogue going and to use updated methods to either debunk or reinforce the things that many consider to be "conventional wisdom." Conventional wisdom is rarely so and we need qual and quant studies to tell us whether we're completely wrong about our assumptions.