So I guess the lesson to be learned after class in relation to research: play the rules, or else. Well, at least ‘or else’ for now. With open access journals and free massive online courses coming to kill the university, I guess this will all go away soon. Yeah, I don’t buy that one either. Personally, I would like to see a healthy system of open access continue to grow alongside what we already have. I don’t mind playing in some one else’s sandbox by their own rules, as long as I can also have my own sandbox to do whatever I want.

A co-author and I already ran into these clique rules this last month. We worked on a research study about cyber bullying together. She is the main author, of course, but is helping me see the process by letting me be a co-author. It was a good, qualitative study. The peer reviewers shredded it quite unprofessionally. They had a huge problem with us examining sexuality and how those with an alternative sexual preference identified a much higher level of bullying in their life. But nothing about the actual study or results itself. My co-author has been published many times and was just baffled on what the reviewers were upset about. But like was said this week, people don’t want you to come in and rock the boat with something that changes what they have been saying. We challenged their power structure in some way we weren’t aware of.

So far, the readings and class times have been giving me a distaste of empirical methods. Not that I hate them, but I just think too many people put too much stock in numbers. They just tell us likelihoods when they are generalized, not absolutes. But people read these studies and then spew all over Facebook how some study says vaccines cause autism, or whatever the case may be.