Using self-interested interviewers undercuts a study’s credibility regardless of findings
Evidence
Others, however, maintained that the study was seriously flawed. “This report is characterized by … an ignorance of epidemiological issues,” wrote one reviewer at the federal Centers for Disease Control. The American Industrial Health Council, an industry research group, denounced the study as biased, and even one of Zelen’s colleagues at Harvard stated, “It was an incredible mistake to use as interviewers people who have a self-interest in the outcome. To my mind, that just destroys the credibility of it right there.” — , Harr Jonathan - A Civil Action, 640
Categorization
- SEED: Angle: ‘The community health study as double-edged sword’ — when the very activism that makes data collection possible is what discredits it.
- QUESTION: Was the interviewers’ self-interest objection ever empirically tested, or was it a reputational argument dressed as methodology?
- XREF: connects to: Interviewer prior knowledge of subjects biases questioning and recall. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 597; Scientists lose objectivity when the subject of study is their own perception — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2061
Broader Connections
- Interviewer prior knowledge of subjects biases questioning and recall.
#corroborates(0.85) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 597 - Scientists lose objectivity when the subject of study is their own perception
#corroborates(0.80) — Eric J. Heller, Why You Hear What You Hear- An…, 2061