I wonder if this article would exist if the first one had been by Harvard instead of Princeton (given that Harvard was the origin of Facebook).
The apparent author is also a Harvard alum, fwiw.
Debunking Princeton
91–100 of 150 posts
Re: Debunking Princeton
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're probably basing your opinion that FB may die by 2018 on better insights than they were basing the study on honestly.
well not necessarily die by 2018, just the fact that social media is mostly moving fads. everyone wants to be the social network that high school and college girls post their vacation photos to, if you are that then you will likely be somewhat relevant for the lifetime of these girls.
Or maybe it's the opposite: if a teenager has an account with lots of pictures, he/she will probably want to kill that account as soon as they get to adult life to avoid awkward moments. I think this explains why many young kids are leaving FB.
Re: Debunking Princeton
#93I hope this becomes a bigger story than the original. I can't tell you how many times someone has thrown a junk science article in my face, thinking that the issue in question was now settled. A survey with a small sample size, outsized extrapolations and numbers that don't match the accompanying conjecture. There should be consequences for the people who publish these things. People have a tendency to believe anythi…
Technically, this isn't even published, it's a preprint service, and it's hardly the worst thing I've ever seen come out of arXiv.
If you want to blame someone, blame an uncritical media.
Re: Debunking Princeton
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bullshit. 4500 undergrads, 1500 graduate students, and hundreds of faculty, and you think that every little paper they give or study they conduct is a product of the whole in a meaningful sense? The study was practically just a thought experiment by two grad students looking at something outside of their expertise. It _only_ got any attention, because it was about Facebook, and so the media saw a chance to sell more…
The students also published it online before it was peer-reviewed. I think the grandparent is more referring to the typical corporate cop-out of "the actions of a few employees", even though the damage is done regardless of who did it--and the employees (or students) did it under the name of the organization.
These students did absolutely nothing wrong.
They submitted their paper to a well known, well regarded preprint service (arXiv), which is pretty normal for a number of fields.
Then, presumably, the paper would go to peer review. Where one would hope the reviewers would point out a few glaring flaws (like that an SIR model without either the creation of new susceptibles or waning immunity must go to 0 and they are 'dooming themselves to success').
The paper would get rejected, or heavily revised, and the world would keep spinning.
They didn't actually do anything wrong. If you want to blame someone, blame an overexcited media that grabbed something off a preprint server and ran with it, knowing full well arXiv has no 'Is this right' quality checks, and isn't peer reviewed.
Re: Debunking Princeton
#95Very nice. I think the bigger issue is that there is a huge amount of academic research in which a fancy model (usually involving the latest academic fads) is considered a substitute for serious statistics.
I think Facebook's models with linear time trends are actually much more believable than the original paper.
Re: Debunking Princeton
#96What drove Cannarella and Spechler, two mechanical engineering Ph.D. students, to prerelease a paper about network theory and epidemiology, without coauthoring/consulting with epidemiologists or people experienced in viral communications theories, is beyond me. But the title "Debunking Princeton" seems to suggest this should be considered representative of all of the quality of research Princeton outputs, which is ce…
I don't think that an expert is viral communications theory would have done any better.
Almost everything involving networks is a fad. Networks are an interesting mathematical structure, but on their own, they rarely enable one to build a compelling statistical model. E.g. people join Facebook for very complex social reasons, that go beyond local interactions between individuals. The image of Facebook has changed significantly since it started, and new products have entered the market, like snapchat and kik.
Re: Debunking Princeton
#97What drove Cannarella and Spechler, two mechanical engineering Ph.D. students, to prerelease a paper about network theory and epidemiology, without coauthoring/consulting with epidemiologists or people experienced in viral communications theories, is beyond me. But the title "Debunking Princeton" seems to suggest this should be considered representative of all of the quality of research Princeton outputs, which is ce…
It would seem the Harvard Face Book team is having a bit of fun with you, chum.
Re: Debunking Princeton
#98Re: Debunking Princeton
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
while I think the original wasn't close to real science, don't be surprised if they are somewhat right
what the heck is "real" science? A lot of the greatest science started the same exact way. Making connections that nobody else could see. Finding purposefully playful, surprising analogies. Doing things so ludicrous that everyone said would not work. Exploring ideas and sharing them.
Real science is something you prove
Re: Debunking Princeton
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
" There should be consequences for the people who publish these things. " Many who are published deserve obscurity. And some who have obscurity deserve more funding. Can you give it to them? Do not be so eager to deal out censorship; for even institutional review boards cannot see all ends.
For a throwaway, you are remarkable.
FYI, half the people with the name "throwaway" aren't throwaways. :P