Quite some time ago I remember reading a viral tweet from an American dentist that made me laugh out loud. If I recall properly, the dentist was sarcastically replying to the typical press story of: “9 out of 10 dentists recommend…”.
The dentist said something along the lines of: “I’ve been in this profession for 20 years and nobody has ever asked me anything… and the thing is, I talk to my colleagues at the conferences, and I’ve never once met a single dentist who was asked anything either.”
I think my automatic, almost involuntary laugh came from realizing that every industry is dealing with the same issues. It also made me realize that I tend to read news about surveys, trends, and market research in our own sector with a mixture of amused disbelief and skepticism.
And I couldn’t help but start wondering since when, and how, all this happened to me.
How did I go from being a believer in market research and the power of data to a sarcastic skeptic?
This is a story that spans the replication crisis in Academia, the erosion of trust in the Press and Media, and, ultimately, the challenges of building reliable knowledge from data in our sector.
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