The Trouble with Research, Part 2

Abstract

A OU MUST BE kidding. It i / can't be true. This is the 20th / E t anniversary of the Research column in the Kappan. Time sure flies when you're too busy to think about it. Although some of the pos itive trends I noted in the 10th anniversary edition have continued, overall the past dec ade has not been kind to educational First, some has been subordinat ed to and corrupted by ideology. Second, there has been substantial questioning of what educational research should be and a fear that the federal government is moving to a rigid orthodoxy in defining what counts as science or research. I had planned to deal with both problems here, but they're too much for one column. Darrell Huff's 1954 publication, How to Lie with Statistics, is still in print and still worth reading. So is my own (no false mod esty here) Bail Me Out!, the first third of which is called Principles of Data Inter pretation, or, How Not to Get Statistically Snookered. It's the flip side of Huff how to know when someone is lying to you with statistics. techniques in How to Lie with Statistics have been increasingly practiced to influence education policy. Huff titled one of his chapters The Gee Whiz Graph. In it, he first presents an ap propriate graphic depiction of monthly na tional income increases over a year and says, That is all very well if all you want to do