I Fell For It.

Yep, I did. I didn't think I'd fall for it again so easily (and so soon!), but it happened.

I made a critical lapse in judgement.

My previous post on childhood development and television has one major, serious flaw; I wrote what I believe. Why is this a flaw? Quite simply, what we "believe" - our "world view", if you will - has a vetoing effect on what we say and do.

This may seem obvious, but bear with me.

Over the course of writing this blog I have attempt to look past my own personal beliefs, and try to understand the motivations and thought processes behind certain courses of action. Some have mistaken this for complaining; this is not the case.

In the previous post I allowed my own world view ("TV has a devastating effect on early childhood development") to interfere with my judgement. I allowed my own personal bias against TV as a shaping force in writing the piece.

I'd like to maintain that I never once supposed that the study was correct, however it led me down a train of investigation that may have implied I did.

Looking back, I can see I fell for what almost seems the (perhaps even unintentional) point of the study; To provide people like me with material to support their worldview.

So, let's start again;

• Does TV in early childhood affect development?
• How would we be able to tell?
• What was the motivation of the people writing the study?
• Were there any preconceived hypotheses?
• Given that the report will either be wholeheartedly agreed with, or wholeheartedly dismissed, what use does it have, aside from propping up existing worldviews?
• What effect would the report have if read by the uninformed or uninterested?
  

This last point is an important one, as reports such as these only ever make it to popular conversation through a headline. Leaving aside issues of whether these reports are designed solely to produce an eye-catching headline, we now have two ways for people to interact with the report;
1) Through a headline, sound bite, or hearsay
2) Through reading the report directly
It is an obvious, yet important point that interaction through the first method will far outweigh the second, such that the number of people that actually read the report is proportionally insignificant. Taking the next logical step, what then is the point of writing the report in the first place? Surely we can just publish a headline, as this is all most people read?

Unfortunately, no. Even though our "actual report readers" are a small minority, they are the gatekeepers and filters of information for the rest of us. We trust a doctor to filter information from the drug companies, we trust sites like webjet.com to filter prices from airlines, and we trust academics to filter information from research papers.

So if you're writing for publication, bear two things in mind;

1. It will most likely first have to pass inspection by someone fairly intelligent before it is trusted, and
2. It needs a good headline.