{"id":326,"date":"2011-08-12T20:29:07","date_gmt":"2011-08-13T01:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/?p=326"},"modified":"2011-08-12T20:43:37","modified_gmt":"2011-08-13T01:43:37","slug":"trusting-our-stuff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/2011\/08\/12\/trusting-our-stuff\/","title":{"rendered":"trusting our stuff"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I spent some time in court today, taking the stand to share some research on voting and disenfranchisement. I’ve done this sort of thing a few times before, but courtrooms, sworn oaths, and cross-examinations are still a little scary to me — more like heebie-jeebies<\/em> scary than howling fantods<\/em> scary — but scary nonetheless. Whenever I get anxious, though, I try to “do as I say” in my capacity as advisor, editor, or chair.<\/p>\n

When my students are\u00a0anxious about\u00a0presentating their\u00a0work, I tell them what my little league coach told me on his (frequent)\u00a0trips to see\u00a0me\u00a0on the pitcher’s mound: trust your stuff.\u00a0<\/em>I remind\u00a0them about all the\u00a0preparation, hard work,\u00a0painstaking research, analysis,\u00a0and careful writing they’ve done on the subject.\u00a0If they”re well-prepared, know what they’re doing, and have good stuff to present, there’s really\u00a0little reason for anxiety. And, at that point, they can direct their energies into communicating effectively, rather than worrying about freaking out, melting down, or curling up in a fetal position before a room of stunned observers.<\/p>\n

Social scientists are trained to be\u00a0appropriately cautious in presenting our work to peers and to the public,\u00a0but\u00a0such caution shouldn’t morph itself into\u00a0learned helplessness or defeatism. As editors, we’re often encouraging writers to trust their stuff — “We\u00a0actually know a lot about that right? You don’t need to put “may,” “perhaps,” “preliminary,” and <\/span>“exploratory,” in the\u00a0concluding sentence.\u00a0You’ve actually written some good stuff that’s\u00a0quite convincing on those very points, right?”\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

So, while it makes good\u00a0sense to worry about “overselling” a particular study or finding, there’s also a danger in “underselling” the real knowledge we’ve gained on a topic of importance. When I see social scientists overselling or overreaching, it\u00a0is usually because\u00a0they’ve gotten\u00a0away<\/em> from their stuff and\u00a0started popping off about things they haven’t researched or thought much about.<\/p>\n

I was\u00a0thinking of\u00a0this after raising my right hand and\u00a0striding across the courtroom\u00a0to take the stand\u00a0— just stay on\u00a0your research and trust your stuff.<\/em> And it seemed to work\u00a0out okay\u00a0today — I said “I don’t know” <\/em>when I\u00a0lacked the information to\u00a0answer a question responsibly, but I\u00a0also made clear that we\u00a0have\u00a0<\/em>learned some information relevant to the case at hand.<\/p>\n

Learning how to trust your stuff comes in as handy in\u00a0the courtroom as it does in\u00a0the\u00a0lecture hall\u00a0or on the pitcher’s mound. Of course, it\u00a0won’t\u00a0eliminate all <\/em>sources of anxiety. While 95 percent of my attention may have been devoted to responsibly communicating the research, about 5 percent was still pretty anxious.\u00a0So, however much\u00a0I may trust my research,\u00a0I’m still\u00a0mortified\u00a0that\u00a0my fly\u00a0may be\u00a0down\u00a0when I feel\u00a0a cool\u00a0breeze\u00a0on my way\u00a0to the witness stand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I spent some time in court today, taking the stand to share some research on voting and disenfranchisement. I’ve done this sort of thing a few times before, but courtrooms, sworn oaths, and cross-examinations are still a little scary to me — more like heebie-jeebies scary than howling fantods scary — but scary nonetheless. Whenever […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":346,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326\/revisions\/346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/editors\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}