Throwing “lifeboat ethics” thinking overboard

by Carl V Phillips

Readers of this blog should check out a newly published short booklet that includes a cartoon by Marewa Glover and an essay by me (plus a brief introduction) on the theme in the title of this post. It speaks for itself and is shorter than many of the posts here, so I will just suggest you go read it.

One of my favorite observations to teach is, “the quality of an answer is highly dependent on what question is being asked” (most often in the context of what is the “best” research method — it depends on the question!). In this essay, I give it the companion observation, “asking the wrong question usually results in the wrong answer.”