On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 12:23 PM, Nicholas Thompson < [email protected]> wrote:
> > > The closest I have ever come to shading the truth in my writing is in a > series of essays under a pseudonym in which I included examples of events > that - blush - never quite actually happened. I rearranged "extraneous" > details to make a sharper, shorter, clearer examples. As a writer, I felt > fine about it; as a scientist, it gnaws at me to this day. Who am I to > say > what is "extraneous"? > > I don't have an issue with this. When we want to explain simple arithmetic to a young student, we may "make up" an example of shopping that never actually happened. Then you show that, adding the cost of the bread, milk, and butter, you get the final total. Now, I agree that you have to be careful as to what you leave out. The kid may be confused if his answer never agrees with the store clerk, because you "left out" sales tax. But that doesn't detract from the method itself - only the implementation. You're job as a scientist is to decide what is extraneous, to help simplify the domain for non-experts. Now, making up an example and presenting it as a true anecdote may be counter-productive. So I wouldn't suggest that. But *any* example - even a true one - will have stuff left out. Just like that quotation: "All models are wrong, but some are useful." A "model" is just a general example that simplifies, by leaving stuff out. If this extraneous stuff actually is extraneous, then the model is probably useful. -Ted
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