When reading chapter four in Luker, her use of the
term “natural experiment” (pg. 57) grabbed my attention. I had heard the term
before when reading Jared Diamonds Gun,
Germs and Steel. Thinking back I remembered Diamond arguing that as there
was no possibility to create a traditional experiment to determine causal history
of societies in the distant past, so he looked to “natural experiments” to determine
what variables could have affected the societies. This made me think when
reading Luker’s views on natural experiments and the quasi-experimental method
used by social scientists. A social scientist cannot control all of the
variables in the way that the traditional use of the scientific method calls
for. So social scientists use their quasi-scientific method to try to account
for all the variables that could affect their result. As Luker states, variables
are not always accounted for properly. She demonstrated this though describing
the issues in a Harvard Nurses’ Health Study on Hormone replacement therapy.
The results of this study were skewed as they did not account for the variable
of the nurses’ health, as opposed the health of the greater community. To deal
with this issue of unaccounted-for variables, and by extension, flawed results,
Luker seems to suggest that a researcher should be flexible and choose to keep parts of
experimental methodologies that are most relevant to the project. In this way the
researcher will not get caught up in methodology, but be able to focus on the
variables and how they may affect the outcomes (Luker pg. 57-61). This may alleviate
the issue, but it is impossible to account for every variable, or to know
without a doubt what variables are relevant to your question. So the chapter
left me wondering how I will best account for all relevant variables and not be the
one to miss the gorilla in the room.
Ah, yes. And the NOISE in the Shannon-Weaver model of communication rears its chaotic head! I suppose the hope is that once you've narrowed down your research topic, the method most appropriate to that topic, that is, the method most likely to account for all of the relevant variables, will become apparent....that's the hope, at least!
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