Will those insights be tested, or simply used to justify the status quo and reinforce prejudices? When I consider the sloppy and self-serving ways that companies use data, I'm often reminded of phrenology, a pseudoscience that was briefly the rage in the nineteenth century. Phrenologists would run their fingers over the patient's skull, probing for bumps and indentations. Each one, they thought, was linked to personality traits that existed in twenty-seven regions of the brain. Usually the conclusion of the phrenologist jibed with the observations he made. If the patient was morbidly anxious or suffering from alcoholism, the skull probe would usually find bumps and dips that correlated with that observation - which, in turn, bolstered faith in the science of phrenology. Phrenology was a model that relied on pseudoscientific nonsense to make authoritative pronouncements, and for decades it went untested. Big Data can fall into the same trap. Models like the ones that red-lighted Kyle Behm and black-balled foreign medical students and St. George's can lock people out, even when the "science" inside them is little more than a bundle of untested assumptions. Cathy ONeil
About This Quote

There is a new way to understand the world that will help you get along with others and understand your place in it. You can learn new strategies that will help you improve your life and lead a better life. The new science of big data demonstrates how we can see, with clarity and accuracy, the "most important" parts of our lives. This science lays out the steps you need to take so that you can be more effective and efficient and make smarter decisions about your life. It also shows how to avoid the pitfalls that led to the failure of many other attempts at predicting or improving human behavior.

It's not hard to see why Kyle Behm was rejected by St. George's Medical School after he submitted his application essays through an online application process. The essays are not "self-serving" or "sloppy," but they certainly are not "scientific." They were written by a young man who doesn't have any experience in medicine, who grew up in South Africa, who took five years off between high school and medical school, who was rejected by another medical school before getting into this one, who has no interest in being a doctor when he graduates, but wants to be an engineer when he graduates because this is what he's always wanted to do.

That's not where his interests lie. That may be where his interests lie in 2043 when he looks back on his life - when he looks back on it subjectively - but right now his interests lie in being an engineer in California making $100,000 a year. And that's why Kyle Behm's essays were rejected by St George's Medical School, even though they're perfectly fine essays for any other medical school in the country.

Many people have made similar mistakes in thinking about the world like Kyle Behm does. But this new science reveals flaws in all sorts of popular wisdom about human behavior - flawed models of what motivates people; flawed models of how decisions are made; flawed models of how people make change; flawed models of how decisions are made; flawed models of how people make change; flawed models of how decisions are made; flawed models of how people make change; flawed models of how decisions are made; flawed models of how people make change; - and it shows exactly how these flaws play out every day, all over our society. The new science helps us avoid their mistakes because it provides us with tools for understanding human behavior.

Source: Weapons Of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality And Threatens Democracy

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