Amazon’s Kindling 2 for Poor Research Habits in the New Generation of Young Researchers

Posted on September 5, 2010 by Robin L. M. Cheung

This entry is part 1 of 2 in the series Scholarly Research

When I began work on my honours thesis in receptor-ligand kinetics during my biology and biotechnology degree, in 1998, electronic journals were not on the minds of legitimate mainstream research scientists. At the time, Carleton University introduced an extremely-beneficial agreement it had reached with the National Research Council to allow fourth year honours students working on their theses access to the NRC CISTI Library Stacks–as a government agency, the NRC CISTI library did provide services to the public, but the actual stacks were out of bounds, public patrons could only access the extensive resources in their East Ottawa library

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facilities by submitting reference lists on paper and waiting for library staff to retrieve them. As fourth year honours thesis students, we benefitted from the more intimate time we got to spend with the references, and the ability to follow the chain of research articles much faster. Remember, this was all during a time when there was no way to conduct research comprehensively in one pass;

you simply had to look up a set of initial promising-looking references, find only about 75% of them are in the library collection to begin with, and a further 25% are misplaced, out for binding, or waiting to be returned from the photocopy room. And even then, you had very little idea whether those articles were of any value at all until you actually read them. Only then, could you begin to make a second generation of references to look for, based on that first pass.

Normal research papers would take several passes of this process, and although the library was open every night until 23h (Walden University’s Librarians still provide personalized research reference services by telephone and email until 1am!). This is one aspect of the rigorous research process that consumed the lion’s share of time it took to conduct research, and emphasized in us as developing researchers, the importance of the iterative critical evaluation process.

The young students nowadays probably can’t even conceive of what tremendous effort this research process necessarily was, and that you couldn’t rush journals to come back from the bindery or being located misplaced on shelves. Today’s generation of young students has not only the belief, but the expectation, that an entire legitimately-researched and supported scholarly paper can be–indeed, many of them even believe that it should be–researched defensibly in one pass. Although databases like ProQuest, LexisNexis, and ScienceDirect do indeed facilitate and vastly improve research productivity. But the new generation of computer-based journal databases and their reliance on keyword searches and abstracts undermines the significantly-more valid critical process of evaluating references for their actual findings and content before dismissing a reference, considering it further, or determining what articles to follow next in the chain. I encourage Interested students to visit the following resources to on literature surveys and research skills:

Research Resources

Resources on Evaluating Resources
Common Literature Review Errors (Video, MP4)
Walden University’s Webinar Archive of Library Tips and skills

Dear Robin Cheung,

Thank you for taking part in our eBook survey at the Springer booth at Academy of Management 2010 in Montreal.

Your feedback was a valuable source in getting more information about the experiences with eBooks our readers already have. I am happy to announce that you are the winner of the Kindle 2. Congratulations!

Please inform us about your shipping address so we can send it to you.

You then will receive the Kindle within the next few weeks by mail. Enjoy reading Springer eBbooks and eJournals! More than 20.000 Springer eBooks are available in Kindle format at Amazon. Please make also sure you will have access to our eProducts through your library. You and your librarian can find more information here: http://www.springer.com/librarians/e-content/ebooks?SGWID=0-40791-0-0-0

Best regards,

Margit Dann, Springer Product Manager

After I had tried, for a few months, to use Sony’s PRS-505 eBook reader, the frustration of being unable to highlight research or add marginalia meant I was still printing out research and annotating by hand; the eBook reader’s ability to bring around myriad research papers to read whilst out of the home or office is entirely eclipsed by the inability to highlight or even recall later which reference had the interesting bit of information you wanted to remember.

But the Amazon Kindle 2, which has wireless support here in Canada, does support highlighting, though by a slightly-annoying five-direction “joystick” that you can really only reliably manipulate by reoriented the edge of a fingernail to catch on. And it does have a keyboard, though the linear layout is quite uncomfortable to type much more than a few words, unlike the curved keyboard of the original 1990s Blackberries.

All that remains now is for Mendeley to improve the core paradigm that it based its schema on, and someone to leverage the open API access they recently launched and write a value-added application to let us accomplish more than just reading and annotating on Kindle, but then due to the Kindle’s non-support of native PDF, manually re-annotating on Mendeley, where we might eventually be managing both the PDF and the citation. And for journal publishers, like Springer, to facilitate adoption of these devices into the research workflow; they allow much more ready-access, portability, and confidence in citations–everything that is research.

The Kindle provides a way for established researchers to improve portability, availability, and accountability by facilitating the migration to electronic journals. In my bachelors honours thesis days, I could legitimately get away with photocopying all the journal articles that supported my research (the rule of thumb most professors expected was approximately one scholarly reference cited directly for each page your paper was in length), since I might have one or two 30-page (article-length) papers for a whole term, and only one thesis around 100 pages in length. I could easily handle annotating in the margins by hand, putting a phrase or two in big letters on the first page of each so I could find each reference at a glance, and filed in file boxes.

When I began working on my PhD, I began to find that my old system was too inefficient. It was simply taking too much time and to try to locate a single reference that I needed to support a single fact I needed to assert. Even worse: when I tried to find a reference from which to synthesize and deduce a specific application of theory, requiring more than one paper to support and qualify restrictions on applicability, it become virtually impossible to locate all the references in a reasonable amount of time. And managing the mountain of file-boxes in my spartan accommodations was more than my meagre Toronto basement rental could accommodate.

(I think people have a bit of a misconception of what a doctorate is intended to do and what it involves. Writing doctoral-level papers does not simply mean more complex; in fact, complexity is not a requirement for doctoral work–it’s more a symptom. Doctoral work must be appropriately-specific so that a reasonable-length 200-page dissertation can be authoritative and comprehensive, but stay within scope. Doctoral work, in start opposition to my MBA work, requires not only every assertion you make to be supported with reliable references, but that you demonstrate that your assertion is supported by all relevant accepted theory. So when people believe that doctoral level work is simply the same as bachelors, undergraduate work, that is simply not the case. Whilst your Bachelors degree aims to develop higher order reasoning with a certain known introduction to a body of knowledge, to earn a doctorate, candidates must develop rigorous research skills, develop rigorous scholarly reasoning to ensure research is maximally-valid, and apply research to produce a dissertation that must demonstrate a significant, scientifically-valid contribution to humanity’s body of knowledge that was not shown before.)

Walden should encourage its students to present their research: My impressions of AOM 2010 so far

Posted on August 9, 2010 by Robin L. M. Cheung

I’m currently in the second last day of the Academy of Management 2010 annual meeting in Montréal

http://annualmeeting.aomonline.org/2010/ , with over 8,000 primarily academics.

This afternoon I had the opportunity to sit in on four paper presentations, two of which I had the opportunity to review and critique earlier this year as part

of the blinded review process. Being able to

interact with scholars from other institutions and evaluate their research increasingly shows me that whilst Walden’s quantitative requirements are probably less than most PhD programmes’, that their introduction to research theory and design in their newly-redesigned 8008 Foundations, RSCH 8100, and RSCH 8200 that I have completed so far, really allow us to make sure we’re asking the right questions when we get to the micro level.

AOM2010

Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2010

This afternoon, one of the questions posed to a presenter who is a PhD student and faculty-member at the University of Maryland, was about the epistemological foundations of his definition of “aggressiveness” in terms of competitive signalling (the four papers were themed on competitive signalling in the Business Policy and Strategy division), and he could not answer the question. Walden’s systematic approach to research design necessarily would have addressed the fundamental epistemological and ontological issues as a matter of necessity in refining the right research questions and selecting the right research designs and methodologies and analyses to address them with the most validity as well as remaining cognizant of social relevance–not forgetting why we’re doing any of this in the first place. Walden’s Scholar-Practitioner model tries to keep this issue front and centre, but must therefore caution that much more that academia cannot compromise on theory construction and compromise internal or external validity to encourage practitioners to see the value in theory and expend effort to adapt it rather than eschew theory altogether. I feel that much of the time that practitioners claim that theory has no value in the real world and dismiss it, they do not know the theory in the first place; just as I did not feel right asserting how much I didn’t like LOST until I’d watched the entire series, I don’t feel that rejecting a theory without first demonstrating some mastery of it and a true willingness to adopt it if you later find value in it, is an informed decision.

Although I feel that abstracting a general theory from empirical data is already meeting practitioners halfway (and that to claim that they cannot apply theory–which was derived from data from the real world in the first place–and expect academics then to deduce back for them a specific application, when they are the ones getting paid the big bucks too, is to ask to meet us 3/4 of the way), sometimes academics do forget why we are doing any of this in the first place.

This experience has also reinforced my belief that Walden should encourage its doctoral students much more strongly to participate and present their research at events such as these, not only for the benefit of the students’ academic careers, but to showcase these strengths Walden has and mitigate the uphill aspect of the battle to legitimize Walden despite the bad reputation of diploma mills that already handicap us ceteris paribus. I wanted to note also that only Qiang Li’s presentation alluded that different cultures may also differentially reflect and value signalling behaviours. In spite of the Academy of Management claiming a 43% non-US membership at last night’s New Member Orientation, I still feel that many American researchers tend to portray an ethnocentric approach to research, not by claiming that Western attitudes and values are the best or even that their research only considers that specific case (external validity, in research design terminology), but simply seems naive of any other views or value systems.

The listing for this afternoon’s BPS division paper presentations was as follows:

Paper Session
Program Session #: 804 | Submission: 18163 | Sponsor(s): (BPS)
Scheduled: Monday, Aug 9 2010 11:30AM – 1:00PM at Le Palais Des Congres in 513D

Competitive Signaling
Competitive Signaling

View Map

Chair: Dorota Piaskowska; U. College Dublin;

BPS: The Role of Competition and Incentives in Rating Markets
Author: Paul Seaborn; U. of Toronto; In this paper I examine rating agencies, organizations that assign ratings to products based on an evaluation of product characteristics. I focus on rating markets with inter-agency competition and examine the role that a rating agency’s source of revenue has on their rating activity. I conduct my empirical evaluation in the US credit/bond rating market where some agencies derive their primary revenue from sellers (bond issuers) while others are paid by buyers (institutional investors) via subscription. Using a series of model specifications I quantify the importance of this revenue source as well as competitor actions on agency decisions of “who to rate” and “how to rate”. While I find that revenue source matters, so does market power, resulting in three distinct groups of competitors – issuer-paid market leaders (S&P and Moody’s), issuer-paid challengers and subscriber-paid challengers. I demonstrate how each group responds differently to the rating activities of competitors. The results of my research are relevant to both firm strategy and public policy in a variety of settings where information disclosure between sellers and buyers takes place.

Search Terms:

Incentives , Rating , Agency

Paper is NOT Available: Please contact the author(s).

BPS: Threat of Entry, Asymmetric Information and Pricing
Author: Robert C. Seamans; New York U.; Empirical research on incumbent pricing response to entry has provided mixed results. Limit pricing theory shows that the use of low price to deter entry is an equilibrium strategy only when there are information asymmetries. Prior empirical studies have neglected the importance of asymmetric information when the incumbent determines its strategic response. I argue that variation in asymmetric information between the potential entrant and incumbent allow for identification of the incumbent’s use of limit pricing; limit pricing should only be used when there exist high levels of asymmetric information, not low levels of asymmetric information. I study a market, the US cable TV industry, in which the incumbent interacts with two types of potential entrants: telecom overbuilders and cable overbuilders. There are information asymmetries between the incumbent and potential telecom entrant, but fewer information asymmetries between the incumbent and potential cable entrant. As predicted by limit pricing theory, I find evidence that the incumbent firm uses low price when telecom overbuilders threaten entry, but not when cable overbuilders entry. Evidence of entry deterrence comes from non-monotonic price changes in response to changes in entry probability.

Search Terms:

entry , pricing , information

Paper is NOT Available: Please contact the author(s).

BPS: Do Signals Matter in Competition? The Relationship Between Signals and Reaction Intensity
Author: Qiang Li; U. of Maryland – College Park; There have been lots of studies examining the effect of competitive actions on responses. Such studies help predict competitive responses from competitors when a firm initiates competitive actions. Observing the reality, what we find more frequently is competitive signals instead of real competitive actions. Do these signals matter in competition? This is the question this study attempts to answer. This study theorizes the relationship between competitive signals and competitive responses. Due to the time-consuming nature, data collection of this study is still in progress but according to the pace of data collection, we should be able to provide all the results by AOM conference in Montreal, Canada.

Search Terms:

signal , competition

Paper is NOT Available: Please contact the author(s).

BPS: Reputation, Altruism, and the Benefits of Seller Charity in an Online Marketplace
Author: Daniel Walter Elfenbein; Washington U. in St. Louis;
Author: Raymond Fisman; Columbia U.;
Author: Brian McManus; U. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; We analyze “natural experiments” on eBay where sellers offer identical products with and without charity donations. Charity-linked products are more likely to sell and attract higher prices. These benefits accrue primarily to sellers without extensive eBay histories, suggesting that consumers view charity as a signal of seller quality and a substitute for reputation. We do not find evidence that bundling products with charitable contributions is directly profitable.

Search Terms:

social responsibility , corporate philanthropy , reputation

Paper is Available: View/Download

Arrogance of Science, and Rubiks Cubes

Posted on March 6, 2010 by Robin L. M. Cheung

I have found that modern scientists have a certain arrogance that was not as evident in the past–a sense that “science has arrived,” and “we didn’t know better back then, but we got it right, now.” And it is this feeling that science cannot do wrong now, I believe, more than anything else, that is dangerous. The other day, I heard on CBC radio (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is Canada’s public broadcaster, and might be compared to NPR, but it also comprises three radio streams and does broadcast content from alternative, contemporary, and classical music to talk radio) the other day that some scientists had begun to think that the greenhouse gases were out of control and that a viable solution would be to build an orbiting solar shield to counter global warming. That is precisely the kind of thinking that I find is absolutely irresponsible that happens across the pure, applied, and social sciences. We see it in medicine when a researcher makes the leap from “low blood levels of X result in Y,” to a drug that raises X and causes all sorts of complications with Z, W, and the other due to complex interactions that were difficult to anticipate given the rigid framework of quantitative methods. We see it in economics when we build increasingly accurate econometric models that are great for explaining what is causing economic crises and then try to operate these models in reverse to fix economies.

Some of the most famous and pivotal scientific developments of our time were once developed by Catholic priests and monks. Some of the most compelling mathematical and engineering developments have been made by devout Muslims in the earlier years of Islam. Yet now, the divide between science and religion has never been greater; indeed, the father of modern genetics can be considered a Catholic priest, Gregor Mendel, who studied heritability in pea plants. Having completed my own degree largely in molecular genetics (although I also extensively studied evolutionary and population genetics) before I had converted to Catholicism, people look at me in amazement and wonder how I can responsibly call myself a Catholic, knowing what I do as a scientist. Still more are shocked that I converted from no religion to Catholicism after completing my degree.

Before beginning my MBA in 2000, I was faced during my GMAT exam with a question pertaining to government funding of the arts, as part of my Analytical Writing Assessment. I cannot, of course, go further into detail about the question since I signed an agreement not to disclose test questions, but at the time I still held the belief that arts, such as literature and visual arts, should be maintained as hobbies, while artists supports their own–and society’s–needs through being a regular employed contriburing member of society. I now see the value of government funding of the arts. I now see the value of what could not be achieved without this freedom. I extend the same belief to science. With increasing funding coming from industry–with its associated expectations to do science that satisfies an intermediate- to short-term business goal–it is vital that the government maintain adequate funding–especially to the pure sciences–such that research without directly obvious commercial application or that runs afoul of current industry wisdom will still be carried out. University research must not be allowed to become an extension of a pharmaceutical R&D lab.

It is interesting how I arrived at that belief through inductive reasoning. I have recently become a huge fan of the Rubiks Cube, and subsequently, all of its larger cousins available commercially, ranging from the 2x2x2 Rubiks Cube to the 7x7x7 V-Cube 7. I have made many discoveries in pure inductive reasoning through it. I often found that traditional logic puzzles have a weakness where any critical thinker can “outsmart” the questions by thinking of exceptions and “what ifs.” Indeed, that might be the *responsibility* of a critical thinker. But reduced to coloured cubelets moving around, the Rubiks-type cube puzzles present to me a pure opportunity to study reasoning, much like Chess is to strategy.

I realize that there exist many algorithms to solve the cube, some of which involve no problem-solving or strategic skills whatsoever, and while I do not find much value in using these mindlessly following steps to solve the cubes, I do now encourage all beginning cubers to learn the simplest beginner methods–which reduce solving the basic 3x3x3 cube to six basic steps, recognizing a simple situation, and repeating a series of repeated moves–in order to be able to solve the cube well enough without thinking that the cuber can begin to focus on watching the behaviours of the cubelets. When I begin teaching someone to DJ or play the piano, for example, it is impossible to learn things like phrasing or articulating motifs while still trying to learn the technical skills; thus, beginners to musical instruments must focus on technique before interpretation. Likewise with cubing, a beginner set of algorithsms helps be able to solve the cube and focus entirely on studying the cubelet movements without being distracted by also thinking how to solve the cube.

But once someone is able to solve the cube in under roughly two minutes, I advise abandoning the beginner method for more intuitive ones. My favourite of these, the Jessica Fridrich method, eschews the initial first- and second-layer algorithms for a set of intiutive steps that complete the first two layers simultaneously.

When one progresses to the 4x4x4 cube (and higher order cubes), they will recognize immediately that the most common general solutions for them are to reduce the cube into a 3x3x3 and solve as usual–all centre cubelets are filled in and move as a single centre, and all edge cubelets between corners are paired and move as a single edge piece. There are issues that can arise in a 5×5 that could not exist in a 4×4 (a 5×5 has a 3×3 centre, whereas a 4×4 has only a 2×2 centre–in order to fill in 5×5 centres, it is necessary to fill in a 2×3 on one face, and a 1×3 on a separate face; then displace a 1×3 line of the 2×3, rotate the face, and return the displaced 1×3 in the empty 1×3 slot). This strategy had to be deveoped because the 4×4 only had two 1×2 slots for centres, whereas the 5×5 has three 1×3 slots.

When generalizing, therefore, is the pattern to fill in centres layer-by-layer, or to fill in two separate halves of a centre and join them? That is also not evident yet because the 5×5 does not have enough layers to abstract that information.

Moving onto the 6x6x6 cube (which has a 4×4 centre), it is readily apparent that the way to fill in centres is buiding two separate 2×4 segments and merging them because once a 3×4 block is created, attempts to displace and replace a1×4 block will disrupt the portion of the block between the middle of the cube and the second layer. Moving onto the 7×7, new challenges to the approach that worked so well for the 4×4, 5×5, and 6×6 come into view that could not exist because of the fewer layers in previous cubes.

But all other strategies and algorithms remain the same as lower-order cubes.

It is that elegance, beauty, and simplicity, the complexity, that I have come to appreciate from cubing. And the process of abstracting generalizations that apply to all (n-layer) cubes that I learned by developing strategies for solving (n-1)-, (n-2)-, and (n-3)-layer cubes, for example.

The same inductive reasoning do we strive for in qualitative research designs.

MbAlog

Business & Education Blog of an MBA Grad and PhD Student

Tag Archives: science

Amazon’s Kindling 2 for Poor Research Habits in the New Generation of Young Researchers

Research Resources

Walden should encourage its students to present their research: My impressions of AOM 2010 so far

AOM2010

Arrogance of Science, and Rubiks Cubes

February 2012
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