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Linear Fraud

Interesting review of  book about kinds of frauds - would love to read the book itself but my queue is full for a while. so much to read and so little time. How fraud works in scientific research seems to transfer well into areas of business where there is pressure to demonstrate "innovation"

..in research, a misunderstanding of scientific method can really help you out, if your goal is to produce publishable, Gladwell-able, Freakonomics-able, NPR-able, Ted-able work. The less you know and the less you think, the further you can go. Indeed, if you approach complete ignorance of a topic, you can declare that you’ve discovered an entire new continent, and a pliable news media will go with you on that. And if you’re clueless enough, it’s not cheating, it’s just ignorance!

You only need to waste a couple of hours on LinkedIn to see the big leaps of faith the legions of visionaries and thought-leaders take on a topic that is about one month old at the time of their wisdom dispensation. The more "reputable" the person opining away, the higher the likelihood that their opinion will be amplified in every way possible. Ignorance is a force to be reckoned with science or not. 

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