Author Archives: legallysociable

A company offers to replicate research study findings

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A company formed in 2011 is offering a new way to validate the findings of research studies:

A year-old Palo Alto, California, company, Science Exchange, announced on Tuesday its “Reproducibility Initiative,” aimed at improving the trustworthiness of published papers. Scientists who want to validate their findings will be able to apply to the initiative, which will choose a lab to redo the study and determine whether the results match.

The project sprang from the growing realization that the scientific literature – from social psychology to basic cancer biology – is riddled with false findings and erroneous conclusions, raising questions about whether such studies can be trusted. Not only are erroneous studies a waste of money, often taxpayers’, but they also can cause companies to misspend time and resources as they try to invent drugs based on false discoveries.

This addresses a larger concern about how many research studies found their results by chance alone:

Typically, scientists must show that results have only a 5 percent chance of having occurred randomly. By that measure, one in 20 studies will make a claim about reality that actually occurred by chance alone, said John Ioannidis of Stanford University, who has long criticized the profusion of false results.

With some 1.5 million scientific studies published each year, by chance alone some 75,000 are probably wrong.

I’m intrigued by the idea of having an independent company assess research results. This could work in conjunction with other methods of verifying research results:

1. The original researchers could run multiple studies. This works better with smaller studies but it could be difficult when the N is larger and more resources are needed.

2. Researchers could also make their data available as they publish their paper. This would allow other researchers to take a look and see if things were done correctly and if the results could be replicated.

3. The larger scientific community should endeavor to replicate studies. This is the way science is supposed to work: if someone finds something new, other researchers should adopt a similar protocol and test it with similar and new populations. Unfortunately, replicating studies is not seen as being very glamorous and it tends not to receive the same kind of press attention.

The primary focus of this article seems to be on medical research. Perhaps this is because it can affect the lives of many and involves big money. But it would be interesting to apply this to more social science studies as well.

Encourage research collaboration by overlapping daily walking paths

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Lots of academics are talking about interdisciplinary research and teaching and a new study helps point the way forward: make sure different groups have overlapping daily walking paths.

Researchers who occupy the same building are 33 percent more likely to form new collaborations than researchers who occupy different buildings, and scientists who occupy the same floor are 57 percent more likely to form new collaborations than investigators who occupy different buildings, he said.
One of these assumptions is that passive contacts between inhabitants of a building—just bumping into people as you go about your daily business—makes it more likely that you’ll share ideas and eventually engage in formal collaborations. This assumption is based on the work of ISR researcher Leon Festinger, who studied the friendships that developed among dormitory residents in the 1950s.
Owen-Smith and colleagues examined the relationship between office and lab proximity and walking patterns, and found that linear distance between offices was less important than overlap in daily walking paths. They developed the concept of zonal overlap as a way to operationalize Festinger’s idea of passive contact. “We looked at how much overlap existed for any two researchers moving between lab space, office space, and the nearest bathroom and elevator,” Owen-Smith said. “And we found that net of the distance between their offices, for every 100 feet of zonal overlap, collaborations increased by 20 percent and grant funding increased between 21 and 30 percent.”
Owen-Smith and colleagues also found that the likelihood of passive contacts can be more simply assessed by using a measure of “door passing”—whether one investigator’s work path passes by another’s office door.

This sounds like a more small-scale study but it ties into the broader concept of compulsion of proximity. Put people in spaces where they are more likely to run into each other and they are more likely to interact face-to-face. This would go for making friends on a dorm floor in college (random assignments lead to college long or life-long friendships), finding marriage partners through social networks , and apparently works for researchers.

Increasing racial segregation in the American workplace

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Two sociologists argue there is evidence that some American workplaces have become more racially segregated in recent decades:

The results of our research found in part that there has been a trend toward racial re-segregation among white men and black men since 2000 and increased segregation since 1970 between black women and white women in American workplaces — so much so that it has eliminated progress made in the late 1960s. This is not simply an academic question, but a fundamental problem with American society. While most of us morally embrace equal opportunity and race and gender equality, we find that America is still a long way from those commitments. Only by confronting our shortcomings as a society can we address them…Distressingly, 19 of the 58 industries we surveyed — nearly one-third of all industries — showed a trend toward racial re-segregation between white men and black men over the last dozen years. Transportation services, motion pictures, construction, securities and commodities brokerages are some of the sectors that reflect this trend. In addition, re-segregation since 1970 between black and white women in workplaces has eliminated progress made in the late 1960s.

Transportation services, railroads, publishing and many low-wage manufacturing industries show increased segregation between black and white women. Unfortunately, increased access to private sector managerial jobs for black men and black women came to a grinding halt more than 30 years ago as well. Meanwhile, black women’s employment segregation from white women has actually grown somewhat, as white women made continued gains into traditionally white male jobs…

Where has there been progress? In general, African Americans tend to do better in workplaces that use formal credentials to make hiring decisions. Minorities and white women have made the most progress in professional jobs. These occupations require specific educational credentials to be considered for employment. African Americans also progress in those relatively rare large, private-sector firms that monitor their managers diversity track record.

It sounds like jobs based on social networks tend to be more segregated while jobs based on credentials allow more opportunities for non-whites. This reminds me of the sociological study Race and the Invisible Hand: How White Networks Exclude Black Men From Blue-Collar Jobs. Royster found in studying vocational schools that although black and white students were getting similar educations, the instructors and school gave white students more access to the primarily white social networks in the vocational trades while black students were left more to fend for themselves.

 

I would be curious to know how job segregation lines up with residential segregation, one of the more persistent features of American life in the last century. In other words, are workplaces in more diverse areas less segregated?

Since having a good job is tied to income, building wealth, accessing social networks and social capital, and new opportunities, this is important information. Also, this is a reminder fighting segregation is not a linear process.

 

More builders looking to offer multigenerational homes

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More builders are constructing multigenerational homes:

To be sure, multigenerational living is nothing new. For years people have found creative ways to make space in their house for a friend or relative. The concept is a mainstay in many parts of the world, especially in places where housing is expensive. In the U.S., multigenerational living was relatively common until a suburban building boom helped make housing more affordable.

The Pew Research Center said the trend is on the upswing. Last year almost 17 percent of Americans lived in multigenerational households, including households with parents and adult children, as well as skipped generations with grandparents and grandchildren. That’s up from 12 percent in 1980.

The primary driver in recent years is economic. The recession forced many families to double up to save money, and a tough job market meant that many college grads had to move home. The Pew report showed that the trend actually helped reduce the poverty rate. There’s been a cultural shift, too, in the way of new entrants to the U.S. who are more accustomed to such arrangements.

Stephen Melman, director of Economic Services for the National Association of Home Builders, called it an “underserved market,” and said that a significant portion of these households have the buying power to choose high-quality housing that specifically meets their needs. Future growth of multigenerational households largely depends on the direction of the economy, he said.

Several thoughts on this:

1a. The article hints that the American preference for houses solely for immediate families is an American cultural value (perhaps also helped by relative economic prosperity) as immigrants might be more interested in multigenerational homes. Americans have a tendency toward mobility and weaker extended family ties.

1b. In recent decades, there have been numerous skirmishes in suburbs about how many people can live in a household. Such complaints are commonly directed at immigrants and minorities. So now this would be okay or even desirable if the homeowners are middle- to upper-class whites?

2. The houses mentioned in this article are still quite expensive and cost over $500,000. A multigenerational home might be desirable but how many could afford a new multigenerational home with over 3,500 square feet?

3. It is interesting to note that this article mentions nothing about the possibility of renting out space to people instead of only accommodating family members. Buying a home could be a more attractive prospect if renters helped pay the mortgage. I suspect this is where many suburban neighborhoods would draw the line: family can be trusted but renting out space to people then becomes too much like multi-family housing. Suburban residents think this is linked to transience, a lack of care for the neighborhood, and more unseemly activity.

Neither Obama or Romney tackling issue of housing

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There are plenty of issues to talk about this election season but neither Obama or Romney have done much to address housing:

For existing homeowners and the government, though, housing remains an enormous issue. If new government initiatives are not implemented, it could take another three to five years for the market to fully recover, analysts estimate. And The Wall Street Journal reports that neither candidate has offered ways to remake failed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have already cost taxpayers $140 billion and face further losses.

Across the United States, nearly 10.8 million properties — 22 percent of homes with a mortgage on them — remain underwater, according to CoreLogic, a data analysis firm. The numbers of properties where owners owe more than their home is worth is shrinking, but analysts say the process can, and must, be sped up.

Both Obama and Romney, though, have been silent on the issue. Why?

“It turns out to be a lose-lose issue for both candidates,” John Vogel, a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, recently told MarketWatch. “And therefore gets ignored.”

For each candidate, the reason for staying mum on housing is different. Obama does not have the strongest record to run on. And Romney has found that wading into housing opens himself up to being painted as a heartless corporate mogul.

So housing greatly contributed to the economic crisis yet neither candidate wants to bring it up. Perhaps this topic might top an unfortunate list titled something like “topics that candidates absolutely do not want to talk about.” They can discuss a range of controversial topics like abortion, education, social security and medicare reform, the outsourcing of jobs, and tough foreign policy topics but not housing…

After seeing a variety of opinions on the topic of housing in the last few years, I wonder if most people, including the experts, are just hoping it comes back. Thus far, government policies do not seem to have helped much. As some have noted, without a more robust housing market, it is difficult for people to move and take advantage of the jobs that might be available. Local governments need increasing property tax values to bring in more revenues. Mortgage lenders, the real estate industry, and builders and developers would benefit from more activity. And if the housing industry doesn’t come back quickly? There doesn’t seem to be much in place for this possibility.

I wonder what Americans would want to hear about housing, if it even rates highly enough (or might simply be part of “the economy”). In the earlier stages of the economic crisis, there was a lot of talk about not providing a lot of support to people who should have known better than to take out mortgages they might not be able to afford. Who deserves to get help? Would Americans be happy with more regulation of mortgage lenders so they won’t be allowed to offer mortgages homeowners that could harm borrowers?

State Budget Crisis Task Force: big debt trouble in Illinois

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Even if politicians in Illinois don’t talk about this much, outsiders such as the State Budget Crisis Task Force are noticing the debt trouble in Illinois:

For years, Illinois has racked up billions in public debt to plug budget holes, pay overdue bills, and put money into its mismanaged pension funds. And for the people who live there, this has resulted in decrepit commuter trains and buses, thousands of unsound bridges, 200 hazardous dams and one of the most inequitable public school systems in America…

The group, led by the former Federal Reserve chairman, Paul A. Volcker, and the former New York lieutenant governor, Richard Ravitch, recommended an overhaul of Illinois’ budgeting practices, to make it harder to kite money from year to year and raid special-purpose funds. It also warned that tax increases may be in store…

Illinois has the lowest credit rating of the 50 states and has America’s second-biggest public debt per capita, $9,624, including state and local borrowing. Only New York State’s debt is bigger, at $13,840 per capita. But Illinois has not been able to use much of the borrowed money to keep its roads, bridges and schools in good working order, because years of shoddy fiscal practices have taken a heavy toll, the report said…

While many states have heavy debt burdens and unfunded pensions, the task force warned that Illinois’ problems had been building for decades and were advanced. The state was “insolvent” even before the financial crisis hit in 2008, the report said, but that was hard to detect because “budget gimmicks became a standard practice.”

Not exactly a rosy outlook.

This could relate to the discussion at the national level about how the federal government doesn’t have to balance its budget while other levels of government do. Well, states and other government bodies can still mess up the process even if they are “balancing the budget.”

Facebook owes a debt to sociological research on social networks

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At a recent conference, two Facebook employees discussed how their product was based on sociological research on social networks:

Two of Facebook’s data scientists were in Cambridge today presenting on big data at EmTech, the conference by MIT Technology Review, and discussing the science behind the network. Eytan Bakshy and Andrew Fiore each have a PhD and have held research or lecture positions at top universities. Their job is to find value in Facebook’s massive collection of data.

And their presentation underscored, unsurprisingly, the academic roots of their work. Fiore, for instance, cited the seminal 1973 sociology paper on networks, The Strength of Weak Ties, to explain Facebook’s research showing that we’re more likely to share links from our close acquaintances, but given the volume of those weaker connections, in aggregate weak ties matter more. As Facebook attempts to extract value from its users, it’s standing on the shoulders of social science to do it. It may seem banal to point out, but its insights are dependent on a rich history of academic research…

These data scientists were referencing an article written by sociologist Mark Granovetter that has to be one of the most cited sociology articles of all time. I just looked up the 1973 piece in the database Sociological Abstracts and the site says the article has been cited 4,251 times. Granovetter helped kick off a exploding body of research on social networks and how they affect different areas of life.

Some of the other conclusions in this article are interesting as well. The writer suggests the pipeline between academia and Facebook should be open both ways as both the company and scholars would benefit from Facebook data:

Select academics do frequently get granted access to data at companies like Facebook to conduct and publish research (though typically not the datasets), and some researchers manage to glean public data by scraping the social network. But not all researchers are satisfied. After tweeting about the issue, I heard from Ben Zhao, an associate professor of Computer Science at UC Santa Barbara, who has done research on Facebook. “I think many of us in academia are disappointed with the lack of effort to engage from FB,” he told me over email.

The research mentioned above and presented at EmTech was published earlier this year, by Facebook, on Facebook. Which is great. But it points to the power that Facebook, Google, and others now have in the research environment. They have all the data, and they can afford to hire top tier researchers to work in-house. And yet it’s important that the insights now being generated about how people live and communicate be shared with and verified by the academic community.

This is the world of big data and who has access to the more proprietary data will be very important. More broadly, it should also lead to discussions about whether corporations should be able to sit on such potentially valuable data and primarily pursue profits or whether they should make it more available so we can learn more about humanity at large. I know which side many academics would be on…

Can you publicly pronounce that you like McMansions?

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One Internet user posted about their fondness for McMansions earlier this week in a City-Data.com forum:

I just love them.

The exception is if it’s a historic area/themed area, that I consider a bad thing.

I think it’s so cool when you’re driving around a plain jane area and then this gigantic flashy fancy suburban house pops out of knowhere and makes you look at it. I think it’s amazing when you as one homeowner can add so much niceness to a block.

If I become rich one day then I want to one day live in a McMansion in an average area. Most wealthy [suburban] areas have huge lots with very little tight-knitness & interaction; those type of areas are not my cup of tea.

I can’t tell if sarcasm is involved here or not but regardless, this is an uncommon statement. Some of the features that critics dislike, such as the size, gaudiness, and the wealth that is implied, are the very thing this poster likes. One might be able to praise larger houses or defend the need for more space but to publicly express that you like McMansions? The term itself has been given so many negative connotations in the last 13 years or so that it makes a statement of liking a rarity.

At the same time, this person also suggests two things they don’t like about McMansions:

1. McMansions in older, historic neighborhoods. This is one dimension of McMansions that is sometimes forgotten since such homes are often tied to suburban sprawl; teardowns can also be considered McMansions. I’m not sure exactly what it means to have a McMansion in an “average area” as this seems like it could be a teardown situation.

2. Neighborhoods of McMansions on big lots where neighbors don’t know each other. This is the opposite of an older neighborhood and is tied to ideas about McMansions being for wealthy people in sprawling areas.

Perhaps this post just reinforces the negative ideas about McMansions: even when defending the homes, the poster has to also say they don’t like all McMansions or all of their traits.

New developments tower over Mecca

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Several new developments in Mecca threaten to dwarf the holy sites:

Shooting 26 searchlights 10km into the skies, and blaring its call to prayer 7km across the valley, the Abraj al-Bait is also the world’s second tallest building. Encrusted with mosaics and inlaid with gold, it is the most visible (and audible) sign of the frenzied building boom that has taken hold of Saudi Arabia’s holy city over the last 10 years. “It is truly indescribable,” says Sami Angawi, architect and founder of the Jeddah-based Hajj Research Centre, who has spent the last three decades researching and documenting the historic buildings of Mecca and Medina, few of which now remain. In particular, the house of the prophet’s wife, Khadijah, was razed to make way for public lavatories; the house of his companion, Abu Bakr, is now the site of a Hilton hotel; and his grandson’s house was flattened by the King’s palace. “They are turning the holy sanctuary into a machine, a city which has no identity, no heritage, no culture and no natural environment. They’ve even taken away the mountains,” says Angawi…

Along the western flank of the city are the first towers of the Jabal Omar development, a sprawling complex that will eventually accommodate 100,000 people in 26 luxury hotels – sitting on another gargantuan plinth of 4,000 shops and 500 restaurants, along with its own six-storey prayer hall. The line of blocks, which will climb to heights of up to 200 metres and terminate in a monumental gateway building, share the clocktower’s Islamic-lite language: a cliched dressing of pointed arches and filigree grillwork plastered over generic concrete shells…

Another development of repetitive slabs, echoing Jabal Omar’s toast-rack urbanism, is slated for the northern side of the Grand Mosque, at al-Shamiya, while a $10bn plan to provide an extra 400,000 sq metres of prayer halls there is almost complete. Standing like a gigantic triangular slice of wedding cake, this building will accommodate 1.2m more worshippers each year, but it has come at a price…

The Kaaba is the holy black cube in the centre of the Grand Mosque, around which pilgrims walk; proximity to it has become the ultimate currency, allowing hotel suites with the best views to charge $7,000 per night during peak seasons. This unique concentricity, with everything determined by its orientation towards the hallowed centre, has spawned a strangely diagrammatic radial urbanism. From above, like a sea of iron filings pulled by a magnet, the whole city appears to crowd round a core, the vortex of pilgrims giving way to an equally swirling current of tower blocks. It is the axis of prayer writ large in concrete.

The contrast seems stark: a holy site versus ultra-modern development. Is this growth machine development, meaning development primarily about generating profits from pilgrims, run amok? That this is emerging in Saudi Arabia shouldn’t be too surprising. Oil money has to be spent somewhere. Plus, cities like Dubai and Abu Dhabi have been getting a lot of attention in recent years for their massive developments and I imagine Saudi Arabia would like to match some of that. Yet, Dubai and Abu Dhabi aren’t also known for being major religious sites.

Also, whenever I see stories like this, I am reminded of the amazing pace of development in some cities (particularly in China and oil-rich Middle East nations) around the world: from populated, primarily low-rise cities to massive, tall, expensive developments.

Tom Wolfe and Max Weber’s ideas about status

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In the wake of the release of his new book Back to Blood, Tom Wolfe talks about his “sociological approach to writing”:

On his sociological approach to writing

“This attention to status … started when I was in graduate school and I was in a program called American Studies, which was a mixture of different disciplines but one [in which] you were forced to take sociology. I had always looked down on sociology as this arriviste discipline that didn’t have the noble history of English and history as a subject. But once I had a little exposure to it, I said, ‘Hey, here’s the key. Here’s the key to understanding life and all its forms.’ And the great theorist or status theorist was a German named Max Weber. And from that time on, I said this obviously is the way to analyze people in all of their manifestations. I mean, my theory is that every moment — even when you’re by yourself in the bathroom, you are trying to live up to certain status requirements as if someone were watching … It’s only when your life is in danger that you drop all that.”

If you have read any of Wolfe’s novels, you know his characters are constantly worried about status: what do people think of me? In The Bonfire of the Vanities , Sherman McCoy starts at the top of the world as a bond trader but the story traces his path to the bottom as he loses his job, his family, and, most importantly, his previous status as “Master of the Universe.” On the other side, the title character in I Am Charlotte Simmons comes from a more humble background and has to learn how to negotiate within an elite university.

Weber built upon Marx’s ideas about the means and modes of production by adding the dimension of status. Marx argues social class was determined by economic factors; you either had access to and control of economic resources or not. But Weber suggested status, or prestige, was also tied up with economic resources. Thus, one might be high status but relatively lower on the economic ladder or vice versa. An example of this in today’s society would be a measure of occupational prestige where Americans are asked to rate different occupations on a prestige scale from 1-100. Here is one such table from Harris Interactive in 2009:

Firefighters don’t make the most money nor do nurses but both are considered more prestigious, probably because they involve caring for people. In contrast, look at the bottom of the list: occupations where the actors may be perceived as looking more for money or their own interests are considered less prestigious.

If you want to read more on the connection between Tom Wolfe, sociology, and the concept of status, Joel Best wrote an interesting 2001 piece titled “‘Status! Yes!’: Tom Wolfe as a Sociological Thinker. I also wonder if there isn’t a hint of Goffman in Wolfe’s work as well. What he describes above also could play out through the concept of impression management and the constant need to change our behavior to fit the changing social situations.