Unless your bias gets in the way
I'm interested in bias because so many people think they see traces of it in newspapers. Some of the commenters here seem to be obsessed with it. So I've added Overcoming Bias blog, hosted by the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, to my newsreader. (Thanks to Mark for the tip.)
Read the opening post and it's hard to argue against following the blog.
How can we better believe what is true? While it is of course useful to seek and study relevant information, our minds are full of natural tendencies to bias our beliefs via overconfidence, wishful thinking, and so on. Worse, our minds seem to have a natural tendency to convince us that we are aware of and have adequately corrected for such biases, when we have done no such thing.
In this forum we discuss whether and how we might avoid this fate, by spending a bit less effort on each specific topic, and a bit more effort on the general topic of how to be less biased. Here we discuss common patterns of bias and self-deception, statistical and other formal analysis tools, computational and data-gathering aids, and social institutions which may discourage bias and encourage its correction.
Sounds more technical and esoteric than it is.
I've written about this many times. I'm trying to understand inbred bias in our work, not only in our writing, but also in which stories we select and how we approach them. Bias isn't as blatant, purposeful and focused in the paper as our critics believe, but it does exist. The next challenge is what to do about it.
I encourage you to join me there.
Comments (1)
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Here's a suggestion: have your reporters verify the facticity of their claims. Here's a paragraph from yesterday's article on Kaya, the single mother:
"But her depression took over as the months of her pregnancy wore on, and Kaya began separating herself from her friends. Going out was hard, considering that most adults she saw would press her with accusatory questions."
Your paper reports that "most adults she saw would press her with accusatory questions." Is that a fact? You know and I know that it's not even close to factual, just as we both know why your reporter accepted and repeated the claim (as a fact, not as a claim) at face value. That's where bias comes in.
We also learn that "depression took over" and (later) that "She finally realized that she was suffering from postpartum depression." Scandalously, this appears to be a self-diagnosis. Although the article provides medical statistics, it never documents that Kaya was EVER MEDICALLY DIAGNOSED AS (OR SOUGHT TREATMENT FOR) HAVING POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION. But since the story (in a literary sense) is about depression (that is, depression is its "theme"), that fact is either passed over or consciously obscured. Indeed, the story is conspicuously sparse with facts, which tend to compromise literary effort.
Bernard Goldberg will explain why, if you care to know.
Posted on August 21, 2007 3:18 PM