In the midst of the game of life it seems as though everything is out to get us. New studies telling us that what we thought was safe is actually no longer safe, we are constantly on our own to make the best decisions with the information at hand only to learn that we were wrong according to one group and genius according to another. Social media and the popular news make the mission of truth seeking even more challenging as public opinion has its way of skewing facts.<\/p>\n
Research<\/strong><\/p>\n In their book, How to Read Number” \u00a0Tom and David Chivers share how statistics can be helpful and harmful. It is important for the reader to be aware of any fallacy that might be present. In chapter 14 they write specifically about how studies released by sciences become a part of the larger whole, but when the media releases the story it can often do so with catchy headline that throws the previous research out, it removes the context. “…every time a journalist writes a news story about a new research paper- ‘fish fingers cause snoring groundbreaking new study reveals’- without putting it into the context of the existing research.” Chivers admit that this problem between presenting valid data and catchy headlines that sell is a challenge and becomes misleading to the reader.<\/p>\n Hunger Games<\/strong><\/p>\n This might seem harmless in that its simple words and research reports and will quickly become old news. The issue is that these headlines, new stories, social media posts lead to real life decisions for real people. Decisions on what is healthy or not for someone who a serious illness, or how can someone improve their mental health, or loose weight. I grew up in a home plagued with the desire to loose weight. Fad dieting was common including the next best supplement backed by the latest “research”. Some of these things worked for a season, some where failures, some made sense and some felt like war on the mind and body. All of this left the dieter with less hope, eventually more weight, and even more detrimental, eating disorders. Had I known more about context and more about how the statistics and research worked, I may have avoided life long issues with food, and permanent damage to my body.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n In college I had a political science professor who taught us so well we never knew what side of an issue he was really on. He pushed for us to explore all the sides, to listen to the opposite side with as much attention and desire to learn. It was in these practices that we would understand more fully the truth of the issue at hand. So as a reader of this blog and many other forms of communication what is a reader to do? Become a student, desire to learn, research to understand, and seek answers from all the angles as to discover the truth in the midst of the weeds. This is an essential element to our growing leadership, as we model to those we lead healthy ways to engage in data exploration and popular media. There are no fast approaches, shortcuts, to understanding the numbers or research, but there are lots of ways to explore and discover. As consumers of information and leaders in our homes, our work, our communities, the burden is now on us, may the odds be ever in your favor.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1] Chivers, Tom, and David Chivers. 2022. How to Read Numbers<\/i>. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the midst of the game of life it seems as though everything is out to get us. New studies telling us that what we thought was safe is actually no longer safe, we are constantly on our own to make the best decisions with the information at hand only to learn that we were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":160,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2450],"class_list":["post-29533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-chivers-dlgp01","cohort-dlgp01"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/160"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29533"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29538,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29533\/revisions\/29538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}