echoes…

A few days ago I saw a ‘news article’ purporting to show some sort of ‘clinical’ results of a test of the relative speeds that readers might have with: a book, an iPad, a Kindle 2, and a PC screen. As you might be able to see (at the end of this post), I have collected quite a few articles which cover this same article… I have quite a few problems with this, especially since I only found one of these articles which was of real value (from psychcomp.com)which very quickly and effectively showed how utterly flawed this ‘scientific research’ was. This misuse of scientific method and incredibly flawed use of statistics seems to have gone over the heads of quite a few people in the tech-news business…

This is just an example of what the internet seems to be sliding into an online world where people and ‘sites’ just crow whatever they see. This list of URL’s I have showcases the potential triviality that lies implicit in blogs. It is alarmingly easy to copy and forward these sorts of bits of newsiness (as in: ‘truthiness’), the problem is that while the internet can allow for a lot of free expression, this would seem to be the exact opposite.

I also need to emphasize that this is certainly no sort of comprehensive list of the sites which were part of this echo chamber, this list is just what I found in a couple minutes of searching. I know that there were similar articles published in newspapers and even in some weekly news magazines, I just didn’t feel it served much value to beat this idea into the ground that hard…

I suppose I could make the comment that this activity is not solely relegated to the internet, it seems to be a growing part of our information culture. I suppose this is also an alarming way to show how little most people (even those in the ‘tech’ industry) are oblivious to the scientific method and empiricism in general.

Oh…here’s the list…

http://news.google.com/news/story?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&ncl=dx2fKfKNOWH72qMZfkeFK8jRNOQnM

http://www.tuaw.com/2010/07/05/reading-a-book-is-faster-than-reading-an-ibook/

http://lifehacker.com/5580277/study-finds-reading-on-kindles-and-ipads-slightly-slower-than-print

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/07/05/1537215/Reading-E-Books-Takes-Longer-Than-Reading-Paper-Books

http://mashable.com/2010/07/02/ipad-kindle-reading-study/

http://www.macworld.com/article/152505/2010/07/ereader_study.html

http://www.pcworld.com/article/200491/reading_on_paper_is_faster_than_ibooks_on_the_ipad.html

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/ipad-kindle-reading.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20100705/tc_pcworld/readingonpaperisfasterthanibooksontheipad

http://news.iphoneworld.ca/inews/Reading+On+Paper+Is+Faster+Than+iBooks+on+the+iPad

http://www.iclarified.com/entry/index.php?enid=10451