by david allan van nostrand | Oct 19, 2020 | Misinformation traps, Organizational Behavior, Unintended Consequences
When interviewing study subjects, researchers hear many of the same themes and comments repeated, as you can easily imagine. No one liked how cassette tapes snarled, for example, and everyone hates long wait times. The temptation for impatient researchers and study...
by david allan van nostrand | Oct 5, 2020 | The Myopia of Experts, Unintended Consequences
Asymmetry is when two sides of a thing are out of whack, like the male Fiddler Crab’s pincers. They eat with the tiny one and use the big one to wave at females. There are two types of imbalance we hear about among humans. The most obvious one is that most of us...
by david allan van nostrand | Aug 24, 2020 | Organizational Behavior, Unintended Consequences
Most of us know brainstorming is the technique of stimulating creative thinking by unrestrained and spontaneous participation in group discussion. That’s what advertising executive Alex Osborn of Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn had in mind when he coined the...
by david allan van nostrand | Mar 23, 2020 | Items in the News, Organizational Behavior, The Myopia of Experts, Unintended Consequences
Konrad Putzier wrote in the Wall Street Journal how after years of crowding office workers into ever-smaller spaces, we are finally coming to realize that our high-density offices are ideal places to spread disease. Because so many of us are spending so much time in...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 1, 2019 | Items in the News, Research, Unintended Consequences, Using Information
The most common ad testing research waits until the very last moment to do the fastest and cheapest research possible. Paid study subjects are shown an ad that has been slickly produced and is ready to go. The only purpose of this research is to make sure the...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 17, 2019 | Unintended Consequences, Using Information, Voodoo Statistics
Volume of ramp is 1920cu in vs 3 cu in for test. If you saw those exact words, would you have cancelled the Challenger launch because conditions were dangerous and the likelihood of failure was high? Me neither, and here’s why. Westerners read from top to...
