Evidence Soup

New way to present evidence: Dance Your Ph.D.

Happy Fun-with-Evidence Friday. Since I do rattle on about the need for better ways of presenting evidence, this caught my eye: Now you can compete in a contest called Dance Your PhD. Really. The official site says "the human body is an excellent medium for communicating science -- perhaps not as data-rich as a peer-reviewed article, but far more exciting."

Success! The contest is a bonafide hit, earning lots of media coverage (NYTimes Tierney Lab writeup here). To get in the game, you have to upload a video of your, um, presentation to YouTube. My personal favorite is the 2009 winner in the professor category, Vince LiCata, with A Molecular Dance in the Blood, Observed (view YouTube here). Sue Lynn Lau, this year's winner in the grad-student category, interpreted "The role of vitamin D in beta cell function."

Live! On stage for one night only! February 13 in Chicago, the group presented a live performance, "a dance synthesized by 4 choreographers based on the published research of the 4 scientists who won the AAAS/Science Dance Contest" (Facebook invitation here). As the Gonzo Scientist explained it after the competition's 2008 maiden voyage, "No one quite knew what to expect as the lights came up on a pair of astrophysicists dressed as binary galaxies. To the tune of an old tango, Ruth Gruetzbauch stalked and twirled around Jesús Varela before surrendering to his supermassive gravity. The rowdy audience of scientists exploded with applause. The world's first Dance Your Ph.D. Contest, with Christoph Campregher at the controls of the sound system, was off to a good start."

Happy FEF, everybody!

Miller-McCune is working to turn evidence into solutions.

I received a review copy of Miller-McCune magazine -- since its tag line is "Turning research into solutions," I had to take a look. The publication comes to us from the Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media, and Public Policy in Santa Barbara, California (I can't think of a better place to ponder the Big Questions). Miller-McCune also has a really nice web site and online community.

My first impression is that the magazine is worthwhile... though I hesitate to grow the stack of unread publications in my office. However, I will subscribe to some of their pubs online.

Evidence, please? The magazine recaps recent research, plus it includes articles by practitioners -- it has a light, non-academic editorial voice (one of the sections is titled Wonking Class Hero ...cute). But some of the articles I reviewed provide evidence without any source (things like stating how many hospital admissions could have been avoided with high-quality primary care... supposedly 5 million in the U.S. during 2000). I wholeheartedly support their effort to "turn research into solutions," but they make the same mistake lots of publications make -- they don't specify exactly what the research is, along with a succinct summary of the findings/evidence.

Extra credit for M-M.com: Kudos to Miller-McCune online for linking to the research studies they reference (why can't journalists do that?). For instance, in their piece about the Wal-Mart effect, which reports on some of the research exploring whether or not the company 'damages' communities (apparently it doesn't). I've blogged about the big sign in Bentonville claiming Wal-Mart saved U.S. families $250+ billion last year.

Social capital = ? Pardon me while I digress. One of the referenced studies, Does Wal-Mart reduce social capital?, appears in the peer-reviewed journal Public Choice. Since I wasn't sure how one would go about measuring something called social capital, I thought I'd take a look. According to the abstract, they used "several proxies for social capital — such as club membership, religious activity, time with friends, and other measures" and determined the data do "not support the thesis that 'Wal-Mart destroys communities' by reducing social capital." (Seriously? Club memberships? Based on these proxies, someone could try to blame the Internet for destroying communities.) In this study, they had two ways of measuring "exposure" to Wal-Mart: Stores per 10,000 Residents, and Stores per 10,000 Residents, aggregated since 1979 "to capture a more cumulative 'Wal-Mart Effect.' We find that the coefficients on Wal-Mart’s presence are statistically insignificant in most specifications."

Hmmm... 30-page report offers evidence about the information-overload problem.

[Correction: My original post didn't include the right links to the Basex report. Here they are: IOCalculator.com, which also provides a calculator for estimating the information overload impact on your organization; and the Basex online bookstore.]

I respect what Basex is trying to do with their report Information overload: We have met the enemy and he is us. But... it's a 30-page document.

Believe me when I say my purpose is not to tear down what they've done. By publishing a white paper in pdf format, Basex has followed a standard approach to disseminating findings. Rather, I'd like for us all to remind ourselves that we need to explore different ways of presenting knowledge.

Quantity vs. quality? Their take on information overload is different than mine: The Basex report focuses on quantity, asking questions like "How much information can any one person manage at a given time?" I'm more interested in information quality (such as whether a particular communication clearly provides valid and useful evidence). Both are important.

I'm committed to finding better ways of getting evidence to people as quickly and concisely as possible -- without destroying the integrity of the information. No, you won't see me on rooftops shouting "Death to Narrative!" However, I strongly believe executive summaries, abstracts, and marketing blurbs need to morph into something more structured, specific, and reusable. The way I see it, information overload is a major obstacle to evidence-based management. But a laser-like focus on evidence could play a substantial role in solving the information overload problem.

Please rise and remove your caps. The Basex report focuses on lots of behavioral stuff, which I believe is essential to reducing information overload. In the section "What We Can Do Now" (page 22),  10 steps are recommended: These range from lighter stuff like "I will not get impatient when there's no immediate response to my [instant] message." to more far-reaching actions, such as "I will do whatever I can to facilitate the transfer and sharing of knowledge."

Incidentally, one of the report's authors, Jonathan Spira, is a member of the Information Overload Research Group. I'm also an IORG member. The report contains an interview with IORG's president, Nathan Zeldes. I'm looking forward to the group's April meetup in Palo Alto.

Want to get involved?  Basex is conducting an Information Overload Strategies Multi-Client Study -- they say participation will "help position your organization as a visionary in the struggle to make knowledge workers more productive and lower your organization’s cost of doing business." More information here.