"Publication Bias" and Learning from Failure.

in an academic setting one of the most
important forms of bias is so-called publication bias now what does this mean it means that if you did a bunch of studies if you undertook 10 different research projects probably only the research that had a very decisive outcome would be published now there may be different reasons for that it may be that if the donor is paying for the research don't like the outcomes of the study they're going to put it on a shelf they're not going to try to publish it or or promote it or let anyone know about it um but it may also just be an aspect of human nature that you know you want to publish a study that proves something shocking or surprising or new that shows some very clear and decisive results good bad or otherwise and if you have a study where the results are kind of murky or conflicted the data didn't turn out the way you wanted it to and that may simply not get published at all this is true in the social sciences this is not merely the medical science this is true I think even in something like philosophy or God knows anyone again do I mean something like Buddhist philosophy publications of Buddhism publication bias is unbelievably strong unbelievably you know this okay filters into something like a business business studies context you know people pay a lot of money to get an MBA get a diploma in business school and a lot of these business schools will bring in speakers successful businessmen people who start at their own companies and one after the other maybe every week or every month they've they're bringing in someone who's a former student of the business school went on to great success and you got to ask the question where are the failures the only way failure creeps into that discourse is if one of the guys who was successful talks about the failures he had leading up to his success where the people who took the gamble and the business was wiped out by whatever in Clements circumstances and who are now you know had to move in back into their parents home after they graduated from business school and tried to try to be entrepreneur if you just look at the rate at which even companies on the stock market get delisted that's those are companies that have achieved a very very high level of stability and success to get listed on the stock market the rate at which they get delisted its tells you something something important about failure and the important role of you know learning from failure you can't just learn from success you got to learn from failure in this life also now I've said many times that the nature of YouTube and the vegan demi-monde within YouTube everybody is playing a different game by different rules so there's no common sense of what success means or what failure means I got here three examples of females on YouTube vegans who are you know presenting some combination of what I eat in the day videos them in bikinis fitness videos you know they're exploiting their beauty to whatever extent on Instagram and they all have in the tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of subscribers so Angelina Draper over 50,000 subscribers um Hollie Wakeham over 140,000 subscribers Meg's lemansky about eighty thousand subscribers now is this successor as this failure well I don't know you got eighty thousand subscribers Magnus your most recent video has only three thousand viewers in two weeks Hollie Wakeham over a hundred thousand one hundred forty thousand subscribers her last video has only 2,500 viewers the one before that about 5,000 so very very small percentage of the people who clicked on the subscribe button think your content is worth watching now you know some people in this category again is this success or is it failure Claire Michelle is somebody who's really taking some big risks in life because she dropped out of school she has no job she has no career she has nothing going for except for YouTube and Instagram so on YouTube she has now about eighty thousand subscribers and her most recent videos of about 20,000 viewers and it's the same mix diet exercise personal beauty her in revealing clothes that kind of that kind of content now I really think you know what is success and what is failure for any of these people if they were playing to actually earn their living by coming on YouTube I mean again they're all vegans coming on YouTube and Talia vigas we talking about their life they're all failures all them you know it's like it's like that old catch phrase from the the seatbelts movement you know car safety movement you know there's a famous book titled unsafe at any speed you can be a failure at any size you can be a failure in any schedule you know um I do think that for some of us the content of what we're sharing whether that's content about veganism or content about our own lives justifies the effort we're making on social media whether we have 200 viewers per video or 2,000 or 20,000 but there's this very strange form of publication bias here on YouTube you normally hear people when they make a lot of noise when they have a lot of optimism about the channel and then you don't hear about them when they just stopped uploading or disappear or delete their channel entirely right that doesn't make any noise you know certain types of conflict and controversy make you pay attention to a channel briefly and quite likely during that controversy that channel maybe it's briefly getting a hundred thousand viewers per video and you see all this optimism and you know within veganism it's a very specific on its optimism that you can earn your living spreading the vegan message you can you can you can make lifestyle activism your full-time job and that does that very often involves bikinis and you know what I eat in the day videos showing off cuisine you're cooking and so on this is a black beans job's tears and mushrooms I guess you'd call these shitake mushrooms by the way no sauce just the ingredients putting a putting a pressure cooker anyway um you know there was definitely this this very clear pattern of come on camera be yourself get the adoration of millions of people start earning a hundred thousand dollars a year saves the planet save the animals it's this very compelling package of you know personal ego driven goals fame money etc and you know just people appreciating of your beauty and those humanitarian and political goals thats really ought to say in this video I now know I've been in this game long enough I can think of examples of channels where I really valued their content whether was their content about veganism in a strict sense or if it was their content just talking about their lives because you know I like a mix of both I like real talk and you know I don't know some of those people I wish they hadn't quit even if they were only reaching 200 viewers or 500 viewers whatever it was and there are all kinds other people who are reaching 20,000 viewers but to me they're content isn't just garbage their content creation is obviously having a really negative impact on their lives it's bringing them into a very short-term way of thinking where they're dropping at a school in quitting their job and not building any kind of career because they believe they're going to be in the tiny minority of people like vegan gains who actually pay their rent with their youtube income that's it man unsafe at any speed a failure on social media can happen at any size