by david allan van nostrand | Sep 14, 2020 | How to tell good research from bad, Items in the News, The Myopia of Experts, Using Information
Andy Devine was a college football player who moonlighted as a professional footballer, using an alias (Jeremiah Schwartz) in order to maintain his amateur status. His father operated a hotel and his mother was the granddaughter of the first Navy officer killed in the...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 31, 2020 | How to tell good research from bad, Misinformation traps, Using Information
Ron Sellers at Grey Matter Research wrote me recently, saying “The attached report is probably the most important thing I’ve done in the insights industry.” Teaming up with Harmon Research, Grey conducted an online survey and wrote a report called Still More Dirty...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 10, 2020 | How to tell good research from bad, Items in the News, Surveys
When people do the same sort of thing while away from work as they do while at work, they are said to have taken a busman’s holiday. In London in the 1800s, horse-drawn “carriages for everyone” were called omni-buses. The driver and the conductor were called busmen....
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 22, 2020 | How to tell good research from bad, Using Information
There is a skeptic inside each of us. Tell people there’s an invisible man in the sky who created the universe and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure. Skeptics want to see the world for what it...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 8, 2020 | Focus Groups, How to tell good research from bad
The father of the focus group despised how his methodology had been hijacked and bastardized. Robert Merton said “Focus groups are supposed to be merely the source of ideas that need to be researched.” They were meant to be no more than a jumping off point and a...
by david allan van nostrand | Apr 27, 2020 | How to tell good research from bad, Using Information
Long before the Europeans came, the Iroquois tribe lived across most of New York, Pennsylvania, and Eastern Canada. Like most societies, they had a creation story. “They swam to the Great Turtle, master of all the animals, who at once called a council. When all the...
