[LEAPSECS] final report of the UK leap seconds dialog

[Kevin Birth]

I've looked at the report and it is bad social science.  The protocols are
too leading to provide reliable information.  Basically, from a
methodological perspective, the deck was stacked in this "research" to
ensure the results it obtained.

That said, the report does reflect a dominant opinion of the UK if for no
other reason that it reflects how sophisticated some stakeholders in the
UK have become at pushing public opinion in a particular direction.
Embedded in the questioning and report was even former minister Willets'
concern about US influence.

There is an incredible need to sound social scientific research on the
consequences of eliminating leap seconds, but a protocol based on
information sessions followed by soliciting opinions is completely
unsound.  In social scientific research, it is extremely easy to shape the
opinions of those studied so that those opinions reflect one's own views
rather than learning anything new. In fact, most of the report merely
echoes things that have already be said on this listserv.

This report does demonstrate how hard it is to do quality social
scientific research on this topic, and how likely those who enter into
such research with an opinion will shape that research to support their
opinion.

Cheers,

Kevin






Kevin K. Birth, Professor
Department of Anthropology
Queens College, City University of New York
65-30 Kissena Boulevard
Flushing, NY 11367
telephone: 718/997-5518

"We may live longer but we may be subject to peculiar contagion and
spiritual torpor or illiteracies of the imagination" --Wilson Harris

"Tempus est mundi instabilis motus, rerumque labentium cursus." --Hrabanus
Maurus





On 2/4/15 9:49 AM, "Steve Allen" <sla at ucolick.org> wrote:

>The final report of the UK leap seconds dialog is at
>http://leapseconds.co.uk/reports-findings-dialogue/
>
>Search for the word "congestion" where it looks as if it once had a
>footnote mentioning a system which has avoided leap second problems by
>adopting a purely atomic time scale.
>
>--
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