Deconstructing Diffusion
通过重新审视医学创新扩散数据的四次再分析，指出脱离背景的数值证据会导致持续矛盾的结果，对社会科学研究方法论有警示意义。
Four published reanalyses of part of the celebrated medical innovation data focus on network effects on the diffusion of tetracycline. Each reanalysis rejects the findings of the previous analysis. This article shows that in the early 1950s, when the original data were collected, private practice physicians, swamped by demand, but facing threats to their autonomy from the federal government and from university medical centers, struggled to keep up with new therapies and relied on colleagues and friends within the profession for help and advice. This article examines the reanalyses' judgment calls concerning the use of a psychophysics power function, the employment of a time-sensitive model, the imputation and exclusion of data, and the addition of new variables. Given the radical undecidability of numerical evidence in the absence of context, the reanalysis of stand-alone data is likely to produce a continuing series of conflicting results.