David Chen

@zeynep I can dispute little of your piece. But it occurs to me that the priority for the videomakers was to first create a viral video.

@zeynep That the piece also functions as crappy research comes off as secondary to their primary goal.

@zeynep The one thing I feel was unacknowledged: the criteria for a good online video is WAY different than the criteria for good research.

@davechensky I don't disagree! I took the "let's take this at face value as a claim to a finding" approach. But yes.. Virality was the goal.

@zeynep Ok, so I appreciate what you're trying to do, but let's say they COULD have made it methodologically sound but the resulting video..

@zeynep ..would've only garnered 100K views instead of like 31 million. Is that a trade-off you believe the videomakers should have made?

@zeynep Should we as a society who are now benefitting from discussion (despite its lack of methodological rigor) have made the tradeoff?

@zeynep Haha I sound like I'm advocating for awful research. Not true. Just saying we should ponder the "creative" value of the video too.