‘A boy is better unborn than untaught’ By Prof Dr Sohail Ansari

make mistakes, but  never make the mistake of claiming that you ever made one. As-Sindi said, “It is not befitting for the believer to be mindless and unaware. Rather, he should be alert and rational.”Source: Sharh Sunan Ibn Majah 3982

Learning at the expense of others

‘Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes’ but often the cost is paid by the people subjected to it. Notable gains and incremental improvements at the expense of subjects make the cost payers wish that a boy is better unborn than untaught.

·        Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.

·         James Anthony Froude, Short Studies on Great Subjects, Party Politics.

A boy is better unborn than untaught.

 Teaching Quotes, by James Anthony Froude 

·       I have made mistakes, but I never made the mistake of claiming that I never made one. ~ James Gordon Bennett

Social Threats and Their Influence Upon Cause and Effect

Social threats are a big problem for social researchers simply because they are one of the most difficult of the threats to minimize. These types of threats arise from issues within the participant groups or the researchers themselves. In an educational setting, with two groups of children, one treated and one not, there are a number of potential issues.

·         Diffusion or Imitation of Treatment:
With this threat, information travels between groups and smoothes out any differences in the results. In a school, for example, students mix outside classes and may swap information or coach the control group about some of the great new study techniques that they have learned. It is practically impossible and extremely unfair to expect students not to mix, so this particular threat is always an issue.

·         Compensatory Rivalry:
Quite simply, this is where the control group becomes extremely jealous of the treatment group. They might think that the research is unfair, because their fellow students are earning better grades. As a result, they try much harder to show that they are equally as clever, reducing the difference between the two groups.

·         Demoralization and Resentment:
This jealousy may have the opposite effect and manifest as a built up resentment that the other group is receiving favorable treatment. The control group, quite simply, gives up and does not bother trying and their grades plummet. This makes the educational program appear to be much more successful than it really is.

·         Compensatory Equalization of Treatment:
This type of social threat arises from the attitude of the researchers or external contributors. If, for example, teachers and parents perceive that there is some unfairness in the system, they might try to compensate, by giving extra tuition or access to better teaching resources. This can easily cause compensatory rivalry, too, if a teacher spurs on the control group to try harder and outdo the others.

These social effects are extremely difficult to minimize without creating other threats to internal validity.

For example, using different schools is one idea, but this can lead to other internal validity issues, especially because the participant groups cannot be randomized. In reality, this is why most social research programs incorporate a variety of different methods and include more than one experiment, to establish the potential level of these threats and incorporate them into the interpretation of the data.

Cause and Effect - The Danger of Multiple Group Threats

Multiple group threats are a danger to causality caused by differences between two or more groups of participants. The main example of this is selection bias, or assignment bias, where the two groups are assigned unevenly, perhaps leaving one group with a larger proportion of high achievers. This will skew the results and mask the effects of the entire experiment.

While there are other types of multiple group threat, they are all subtypes of selection bias and involve the two groups receiving different treatment. If the groups are selected from different socio-economic backgrounds, or one has a much better teacher, this can skew the results. Without going into too much detail, the only way to reduce the influence of multiple group threats is through randomization, matched pairs designs or another assignment type.

As can be seen, establishing cause and effect is one of the most important factors in designing a robust research experiment. One of the best ways to learn about causality is through experience and analysis - every time you see some innovative research or findings in the media, think about what the results are trying to tell you and whether the researchers are justified in drawing their conclusions.

This does not have to be restricted to 'hard' science, because political researchers are the worst habitual offenders. Archaeology, economics and market research are other areas where cause and effect is important, so should provide some excellent examples of how to establish cause and effect.

Hard science and soft science are colloquial terms used to compare scientific fields on the basis of perceived methodological rigor, exactitude, and objectivity. Roughly speaking, the natural sciences are considered "hard", whereas the social sciences are usually described as "soft".