Survey findings by foreign organisations are often quoted with respect in this country. But they can have serious inherent flaws
Many of us in urban India woke up a few days ago to screaming headlines in many English dailies, almost lambasting Indians for being indolent and “among the laziest” in the world. Citing a massive “46-country” study by the indisputable and iconic Stanford University, the reports luxuriously indicted Indians for being far behind — in walking — the Chinese, and even the Ukrainians, Japanese and the Indonesians. According to this cited study, India ranked 39th with people averaging “just” 4,297 steps a day. The Chinese, particularly those living in Hong Kong, lavishly cited these newspaper reports, averaged 6,880 steps a day, making them the most-walking nation. With an edge of additional 2,583 steps, on an average, which is less than a full round of the inner circle of Connaught Place, the study would have us believe, the Chinese do wonders!
For eternity, for journalists, research findings from reputed institutions have made for good stories, and especially when it came from one of the world's best, such as Stanford University. Such findings, undisputedly, become credible and make for compelling copies, and captivating page one headlines. What may, at times, miss our sharp cognitive sieve is the methodology and sample universe. And that can be hugely perplexing, and embarrassing at times, as in this case.
The anti-GM groups are known to leverage fallacious research to augment and propagate their doctrine. In 2010, based on a ‘study’ titled, ‘Picking Cotton — The choice between organic and genetic-engineered cotton for farmers in South India’, Greenpeace proclaimed that in 2009-10, farmers cultivating cotton through organic practices earned 200 per cent more net income than farmers who grew genetically engineered or Bt cotton. While for average readers, this finding, which naturally found its way in mainstream newspapers, would have certainly created a perception against Bt cotton as was desired, a closer analysis revealed gaping holes. What was perplexing was the rabid generalisation based on this ‘study’ which had factored in 27 farmers as sample covering an estimated 148 ha of land, a tiny fraction of total number of farmers and acreage of Andhra Pradesh.
Come to the Stanford research and you find stark similarities, at least as far as the sample size is concerned. This study took as its sample over seven lakh people across 111 countries, as per the Stanford report — which makes it approximately 6,300 iPhone users per nation. For a country of a billion plus, generalising a finding based on habits of 6,000 people is nothing less than a statistical overkill, and absurdity of a queer kind. This is journalism of a lazy variety. One wonders if we lap up to such findings simply because they are seductive and make for compelling headlines.
India is far more big, and diverse, to be looked at from the prism of such narrow statistical and analytical framework. Even a common sense observation would reveal that on an average Indians are far more active than many other people in the world. We are not as yet as mechanised as many developed countries, and those cited in this study. The amount of physical activity undertaken by our millions of farmers and workers would far outweigh the inactivity of a handful of urban dwellers, who are the subject of this study. Terming Indians lazy or India as lazy based on such findings is nothing less than an abhorring aberration.
However, aberrations apart, one cannot dispute the the massive significance that research has in our lives. Tim Dean, philosopher at the University of New South Wales, Australia while celebrating research and researchers says, “If we value fact over falsehood then we should constantly remind ourselves of the dangers of certainty and the poverty of intuition. We should remind ourselves that our belief in something should be held with a conviction proportional only to the evidence we have in support of it. And if we haven't undertaken the rigours of research ourselves to uncover that evidence, then we should place greater credence on the words of those who have. Certainty is seductive, wishful thinking is alluring and anecdote can be compelling. But they are also symptoms of a disease for which rigorous research is the only cure.”
Perhaps rigour is something that we all must always get allured by, be it in journalism or research.
(The writer is a strategic communications professional)