{"id":117,"date":"2005-05-05T03:56:17","date_gmt":"2005-05-05T07:56:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/metasj\/2005\/05\/05\/unverified-research-part-i-mass-hyster"},"modified":"2005-05-05T03:56:17","modified_gmt":"2005-05-05T07:56:17","slug":"unverified-research-part-i-mass-hysteria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/2005\/05\/05\/unverified-research-part-i-mass-hysteria\/","title":{"rendered":"Unverified Research, Part I : Mass Hysteria"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a876'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking and writing a lot about trust recently, ever since<br \/>\ngetting involved in a heated debate two years ago about the efficacy<br \/>\nand<br \/>\nusefulness of information generated by collections of anonymous people.<\/p>\n<p>My first reaction was, that <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">all <\/span>information<br \/>\nis generated this way.&nbsp; No matter how well you know someone else,<br \/>\nit is never possible to truly shake the shackles of anonymity.&nbsp;<br \/>\nSome people look to Wikipedia et al and assume original sin, then write<br \/>\nabout the mediating<br \/>\nadvantages of letting people add content directly &#8211; rather than<br \/>\nrequiring a &#8216;licensed practitioner&#8217; to go out and extract and parse<br \/>\nsuch content.&nbsp; I figure all sources are tainted;&nbsp; I&#8217;d like to<br \/>\nhighlight the kind of<br \/>\nunverifiable and unsourced reporting that passes as research today&#8230;<br \/>\nstarting with the mainstream media and academia.<\/p>\n<p><b>I.<\/b> MSM : Mass Hysteria and the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tanganyika_Laughter_Epidemic\">Tanganyika Laughter Epidemic of 1962<\/a><\/p>\n<p>(a) Here is a credulous report, by the Chicago Tribune, of research done by academic Christian F. Hempelmann (who <a href=\"http:\/\/csep.psyc.memphis.edu\/mcnamara\/pers.htm\">received his PhD in linguistics<\/a> from Purdue around that time) :&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.crackmonkey.org\/pipermail\/crackmonkey\/2003q3\/037129.html\">reprint via a mailing list<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There is no original data; it is hypothesized that none<br \/>\ncan be obtained. When the issue comes up in earnest, the author<br \/>\nmentions he may try to go interview people who were there, but he does<br \/>\nnot seem to feel that the lack of such evidence should prevent him from<br \/>\ndeclaring the event to have been mass hysteria, nor from going off on<br \/>\ntangents about the physiological limits of laughing. Having myself been<br \/>\nincapacitated by laughter for slightly more than &#8220;a minute&#8221; (an upper<br \/>\nlimit he places on one&#8217;s ability to laugh, adding elsewhere that one<br \/>\ncan only sustain laughter for 20 seconds), I find myself wondering<br \/>\nwhich if any of the statements in that article could be backed up by<br \/>\ngood research.<\/p>\n<p>(For reference, the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tanganyika_Laughter_Epidemic\">Wikipedia article<\/a><br \/>\non the same subject is slightly more skeptical, but has no further<br \/>\ninformation on the subject. It repeats the unsourced claim that there <b>is<\/b> no good information on this event.)<\/p>\n<p>(b) Here is a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.genista.de\/kai\/tanganyika.html\">fictional story<\/a><br \/>\nbased on the same event. Equally informative, if not moreso&#8230; equally<br \/>\nunsourced. I would prefer a well-sourced historical narrative,<br \/>\nfictional or not&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been thinking and writing a lot about trust recently, ever since getting involved in a heated debate two years ago about the efficacy and usefulness of information generated by collections of anonymous people. My first reaction was, that all information is generated this way.&nbsp; No matter how well you know someone else, it is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[216],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fly-by-wire"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7iVvB-1T","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/sj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}