Strange little turn in the story of the Facebook emotional contagion study. Last months press release from Cornell highlighting the study had said at the bottom: The study was funded in part by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Army Research Office. Why would the military be interested? I wanted to know. So I asked Adam D.I. Kramer, the Facebook researcher, that question on his Facebook page, where he has posted what he called a public explanation. (He didnt reply to my or anyone elses questions.) See: https://facebook/akramer/posts/10152987150867796 Now it turns out Cornell was wrong! Or it says it was wrong. The press release now reads: Correction: An earlier version of this story reported that the study was funded in part by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Army Research Office. In fact, the study received no external funding. Why do I call this strange? Any time my work has been featured in an NYU press release, the PR officers involved show me drafts and coordinate closely with me, for the simple reason that they dont want to mischaracterize scholarly work. So now we have to believe that Cornells Professor of Communication and Information Science, Jeffrey Hancock, wasnt shown or didnt read the press release in which he is quoted about the studys results (weird) or he did read it but somehow failed to notice that it said his study was funded by the Army when it actually wasnt (weirder). I think I would notice if my university was falsely telling the world that my research was partially funded by the Pentagon... but, hey, maybe theres an innocent and boring explanation that I am overlooking.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 13:27:22 +0000
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