At the end of a paper titled "The Futility of Decision Making Research", in which Weiss and Shanteau reflect on the uselessness of their research careers, the authors take a side-swipe at the Naturalistic Decision Making research community.
Which, what? sciencedirect.com/science/articl
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I like to joke that scientists are interested in what is 'true' and practitioners are interested in what is 'useful', but, man, this takes it to the extreme.
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I think a more accurate summary of my disgust is that Shanteau/Weiss are being very unkind.
If NDM is focused on usable, pragmatic outcomes, you should evaluate it on that. You shouldn’t say “oh, it’s not science”.
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Replying to @ejames_c and @cortexfutura
It's pragmatic to a fault, because the organisations that fund them (the military, industry, etc) want results (from decision tools that work), not theories that produce decision tools that don't work.
My problem with Shanteau and Weiss's dismissal is that it's so ... harsh.
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To be fair, Shanteau/Weiss are great researchers themselves.
And the very fact that they wrote this paper reflects well on them. So there's that.
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And how often are you mind-smacked by an opening line? "We have each spent more than 50 years doing research that has had little impact". More slams reward a full read.
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