The Failures of Research
Whilst often not publicized, there are times where poorly done research has been detrimental to the success of a project. In this post I am going to investigate a few of these failures to analyze where it all went wrong.
LISA
LISA or “Local Integrated Software Architecture” was one of the first computers with a GUI as it’s main interface available for purchase by regular consumer. It was pitched as being a affordable computer which can be used by those untrained in using computers… Sounds great right? But in reality it was far from it. Apples idea of “Affordable” might be different than the average consumers. Whilst they invested a whopping 150 million USD, the consumers would have to fork out 10,000 USD to be lucky enough to own one of these bad girls.
As a result of as lack of informed research, it was Assumed by apple that there would be strong enough demand for this product to cover the hefty investment they put towards it. This was obviously not the case and LISA became a huge financial failure for apple.
NASA was one of their biggest customers, which goes to show that this computer was not primarily even being sold well in it’s target consumer demographic
SOURCE: http://www.mac-history.net/apple-history-2/apple-lisa/2007-10-12/apple-lisa
Unreproducible
effective research needs to be conducted in a way which allows the research process to be reproduced by others to yield similar, if not the same results.
This was not the case in this widely cited psychology research paper from 1988 titled:
“Inhibiting and facilitating conditions of the human smile: a nonobtrusive test of the facial feedback hypothesis.”
When Martin Hagger and fellow researches from Curtin University in Australia tried to recreate the paper in 24 different labs. There were varying results. With 8 of the labs showing similar results to the findings of the original paper and the others.. well showing something which differed vastly.
So whilst the original information found wasn’t outright “Wrong” the amount of variance between the 24 labs suggests that the original research was unsuited to be reproduced and the methodology(Procedure/methods of the research) need be improved to once again become a viable study.
The fact that this paper was widely cited has certainly had an impact (Intangible at that) on the credibility of psychology studies field in general, and all projects which cited this information have jeopardized their credibility/viability too for unknowingly including poor research in their work.
Afghan Uniforms
In 2017 the office of the inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction posted an article titled
“Afghan National Army: DOD May Have Spent Up To $28 Million More Than Needed To Procure Camouflage Uniforms That May Be Inappropriate For the Afghan Environment”
The title of the paper almost speaks for itself.. The US spent up to 28 million dollars on camouflaged uniforms for the afghan army. The problem was that only roughly ~2 percent of the terrain in Afghanistan is forest. Rendering the woodland camouflage not fit for purpose at all, and actually detrimental to the wearers outside the forest areas.
The decision to go with this particular pattern was primarily because the Afghan defense minister “Liked what he saw (The pattern)”
This poor managerial decision to go with the defense ministers opinion on top of the lack of research into the terrain in Afghanistan is what led to the whopping 28 Million dollar investment into what is essentially reverse cam o.. making the wearers more visible than they would be otherwise in Afghanistan terrain… Perhaps there were other motives by the US here… hmm
