NNSquad - Network Neutrality Squad
[ NNSquad ] Irresponsible science and academic fraud
The more I think about it the worse these studies are. They are fraudulent. If do real science and try to isolate the factors youâll find that the one factor most antithetical to these results is the broadband business model. I argue that keeping that service-based pricing out of the home was a key enabler what weâve gained from todayâs connectivity. I can understand companies proffering marketing bad studies as marketing hype â thatâs their job. But when academics get in the business thatâs irresponsible and even fraudulent. Sometimes itâs just a result of sloppy work, especially with statistics which get tricky. In statistics people can also fall back an accepted practices such as significance testing even if they turn out to be very problematic. But these kind of studies, Duke is far from alone and I havenât look at this one in particular, have no such excuse. They are simply a race to publish and prove their thesis. This is also normal part of the grant process â you better know the answer before you âwasteâ the governmentâs money on âresearchâ. I put all this in quotes to emphasize factors that prevent discovery. Iâm mulling an essay on this. The general topic is too deep and pervasive but focusing on broadband might be useful for making the point. Too bad people donât understand science and see it as discovering the one true truth rather than refining our ability to deal with an ambiguous world. The idea of revealing the truth is more religion than science and leads us to confirm our naÃve assumptions rather than challenging them. And it leads to terrible policy decisions From: Frank A. Coluccio [mailto:frank@fttx.org] Bob, you've touched on a recurring theme whose frequency and breadth is on the rise and expanding near-universally. I'm currently discussing the "NBN" prospects of several countries with their leading proponents who are holding out social agendas and attempting, whether wittingly or not, to shoehorn network infrastructure, which has already been contaminated by "broadband", to meet the contours of specific vendors' municipal applications (similar to the far-sweeping social platforms now being proffered by vendors doing exactly the same thing under the guise of CSR, or corporate social responsibility) in the most gratuitous and self-serving ways. It's pervasive. Green, smart-grid, broadband, the list goes on. This is what happens when the elasticity of legitimate enterprise reaches its limit and becomes entirely exhausted: Madison Avenue FUD. |