--- In [email protected], "L B Shriver" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: <snip> > PANDITS HAD BEEN PART OF THE ORIGINAL PROTOCOL.
They were not any part of the protocol that was made public, nor any part of the discussion and planning by the independent review board that was made public. I got on the mailing list for everything that was released about the study from its early stages, and there was no mention of pandits anywhere in it. > They had been bought and paid > for. Then they didn't show. So the group that participated was not > as powerful as the group that had originally been anticipated. > > After the scaling back of original reports claiming 25% reduction > (might have been 20% come to think of it), Yes, it was 20 percent. there was an ongoing effort of several months to make the data fit. > My graduate student friend Mark ______ (last name still not remembered) was a part of > this. I had a standing joke with him about it: whenever I bumped into him I would ask, > "Seen any good statistics lately?" Then he would give me an informal update. Let me be > clear that this was not a conspiratorial relationship. Mark was completely sold on the > program and convinced that the correct interpretation of the data would reveal the results. > I was just an innocent bystander. Sort of. > > Since I was not recording all the details for posterity at the time, only the impressions > remain. The impressions indicated that it took quite an effort to "rectify" the findings > based on their original model. I do not remember a single alteration or adjustment, but > something more like a scavenger hunt. > > It is interesting to me how we are all quibbling about the details. > If anything is revealed here, it is that the "demonstration" > demonstrated nothing. Except, perhaps, to the participants. Even the *raw data*--the crime rate statistics--showed a very significant reduction from the rate the previous year for that period, considerably more than would have been expected from the overall crime trend. What's more, that reduction occurred only during the demonstration period and for a few weeks afterward. Then it went right back up. One of the problems the researchers encountered was obtaining the crime data in the way they had originally anticipated. They had apparently been told by law enforcement (FBI or DC police, not sure which) that they would get it in a certain form, broken down into certain categories, and they constructed their methodology around that understanding. Whether they misunderstood or had been misinformed isn't clear, but a good deal of the fumfing around they had to do afterwards involved redoing the analysis to deal with the form in which they *did* get the data. Plus which, there was a long delay in obtaining one major part of the data. I don't remember the details, just the general outline. Some of this may be described in the study itself. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Get fast access to your favorite Yahoo! Groups. Make Yahoo! your home page http://us.click.yahoo.com/dpRU5A/wUILAA/yQLSAA/JjtolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
