Kiriakakis on the importance of questions

An inspired Kostas Kiriakakis comic about the importance of questions . . . (and thanks to Madhumita Das for sending this to me).

Dilbert on 'facts' and arguments . . .

Really needs no commentary . . . 

Ice cream sale and crime

Whenever I am lecturing on or discussing Waltz's chapter on 'Laws and Theories' (in Theory of International Politics) in an IR theory class or my part of the methodology course, I am fond of repeating an example a Professor of mine mentioned (a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far way) of the correlation between ice cream and violent crime.  The punch line is of course that correlation is not causation and that correlation requires an explanation before pure correlations make any sense.  I didn't realize that this particular example was very popular, nor that it had any basis in any real study.  I used it assuming it was just a social science equivalent of an urban myth.  Apparently, the example is quite popular and even has some empirical support.  Nice story in Slate.  

Not exactly IR, more RM . . .

Another interesting essay I just read, by way of The Browser . . . 

I usually say something about the whole 'dark matter' controversy in my Research Methodology (RM) class.  I am no theoretical or astrophysicist, and any of you who know more on this (or not!!) are welcome to correct me or comment.  (Here's the Wikipedia link on dark matter).  But in simple terms, there is way more gravitational pull in space than is accounted for by the amount of matter available.  Since no one knows where the excess gravity is coming from, they simply call it 'dark matter' (. . . and they sneer at social 'science'!).  The problem is that no instrument has so far detected it.  But scientists who question the theory are cast out into the netherworld.  As Fry points out, "Astrophysicists who try to trifle with the fundamentals of dark matter tend to find themselves cut off from the mainstream."  Remember Kuhn's 'normal science'?  As Fry suggests, no one wants to say there is something wrong with the theory, because it will be too "drastic".  "Physicists could take non-detection as a hint to give up, but there is always the teasing possibility that we just need a better experiment."  I wonder how they would do in the social sciences!! 

Here's the link:

http://www.aeonmagazine.com/nature-and-cosmos/alexander-b-fry-dark-matter/

Hope you enjoy it.

Updated on May 2, 2013:

After I emailed some of my graduate students this essay, I had an exchange with one of them, Kasturi Moitra.  I am pasting the relevant part of our email discussion (with her permission) because it carries the discussion forward.