Don't Be Bamboozled! Always do Your Own 4 P Analysis
How do you choose to spend your valuable time and money? What information do you use to choose a product to buy, a movie or program to watch, or a politician, scientist, doctor or public policy to trust? Humans can be called the selling species. Everybody and every information channel seem to be selling us some product or idea. Remember doctors and scientists promoting (selling) cigarette ads in the 20th century, decades after smoking was linked to cancer by Doll and Hill?
Why is it hard to get useful, reliable and quality insight and information?
We live in a world saturated with data and information, which are often conflicting and confusing even to specialists and experts. The two main channels getting data to us are:
News and mainstream information networks: These are now mostly sponsored by large advertisers so they are under a lot of pressure to be biased and compromised in the data/news/information they choose to broadcast.
Social media: The business model here is selling the most advertised space by maximizing attention-getting through topics that engage our minds. Unfortunately, most humans (and the many bots that use these media) get heavily engaged in controversies, political divisions, sensational debates, acts/theatrics and mob attacks. As a result, information boosted through the social media channels are often sensational fluff without direct relevance to our daily lives or teaching us anything about the fundamental principles governing our body and mind. It’s like candy for the mind. Feels good and it’s addictive but not healthy or nutritional.
What are the 4 P’s of Strategic Data Analysis and Insight?
My years of experience in the corporate and academic worlds has shown me that proper analysis of any product or idea requires that we act like our own investigative analyst focusing on the following 4 factors, which I call the 4 P’s of analysis as a mnemonic:
Process: Always ensure a good clean process was used to generate the product or idea, not one that was defective, rushed or compromised with conflicts of interest, profit motives, political agenda, etc. For example, did you know that the global oversight processes (and people) ignored the reports linking cancer to smoking for about 40 years (Read my blog The Story of Doll and Hill: Why Millionaires and Wise People Should Hire A Scientist/Analyst Like They Hire a Plumber!). Did you also know that about a third of the drugs that passed the FDA regulatory process between 2001 and 2010 had safety issues after reaching the market, according to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. This is in addition to the officially-reported serious and sometimes lethal side effects of approved drugs on people. Always know the limitations of processes involved in the production or oversight of a product. An ideal process is one which freely and publicly shares raw product and evaluation data for anyone’s inspection.
People: Many of us forget that behind any idea, product, oversight and quality control process, are people (humans) who could be unskilled or compromised. Companies know this so they spend a lot of time collecting data on people before they hire or trust them. Apply for a loan or professional job and see how they review every bit of your track record and history. Yet ordinary people loan their valuable attention and time (often to famous people) without checking their personal track record. Always research the personal history (including controversies) of key people behind developing or approving or promoting products or ideas specially if they are powerful people who can influence the media and stories. Many people now trust search engines like DuckDuckGo for their research and do not trust Google (Youtube) or Wikipedia because of their pro-sponsor biases. Remember, an investigative data analyst should filter through biases of their data sources too.
Product: Even if we have good clean processes and honorable humans and experts with integrity behind a product or idea, the product itself still needs to be assessed independently for quality and performance. We should review independent unbiased data supporting and criticizing the product before we judge its merit. We should also collect anecdotal samples of a product’s quality from people we know. This is an approach reportedly used by some top investors like Warren Buffet before they invest in any product or company.
Price: Even the best products on the planet should be analyzed for cost-benefit or risk-reward ratio offered to each person because benefits and costs are different for different people. For example, if a certain new electronic or mobile device which has been only around and tested for a decade, is suspected of causing cancer after 20 years of exposure, the product may offer elderly populations a better risk-benefit ratio than to younger people because any device-induced injuries or cancer (homeostatic disruptions in body’s natural feedback loops) would have a much longer lasting impact on the life and health of a young person than the life of an older person who may not even live for another 20 years to be harmed by the induced cancer. Ironically, younger people adopt new untested products a lot faster than older more cautious (wiser?) populations do! Another example of risk-benefit classification: Certain SUVs or larger cars which are costlier but also safer (for their drivers in accidents) than sedans may offer a better value (benefit-cost ratio) to people commuting in areas with high accident rates than to people who don’t drive much or use safer less crowded roads (with low accident rates). Very few products can act as one-size-fits-all so each person should do their own cost-benefit analysis using objective data or hiring objective experts. For example, research now shows that women and men have vastly different immune systems and immune-related cost-benefit exposure: “There is a serious lack of attention to gender in vaccine trials. This leads to inappropriate dosage of vaccines as evidenced by the fact that the same magnitude of protective immunity is achieved by half the dose of seasonal influenza vaccine in women compared to men. Likewise, these gender-blind vaccination strategies lead to increased adverse effects in women. Increased hospitalizations and mortality have been observed in female infants and girls following DPT, measles and oral polio vaccinations.”1
Although thinking about the 4 P’s of product/idea selection/analysis is more time consuming than trusting sponsored promoters guide your decision, doing your own research often saves you a lot of headache down the road.
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.02147/full