Science Should Discover Deming

There’s a monster threatening scientific research. It’s called measurement.

Tue, 10/14/2014 - 10:57

W. Edwards Deming was a frequent critic of quotas. One of his famous 14 points presented in Out of the Crisis (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1982) is “Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.” There is little room to misinterpret this point, but arbitrary quotas are still being used.

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As I described in “SPC Where Are You?” forklift operators are evaluated based on productivity rates. Productivity, however, is heavily dependent upon the routes the operators are assigned, meaning productivity is largely out of the control of individual operators.

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Comments

Hi Matt,

a very dangerous and sad evolution indeed and one that already has led to several cases of scientific fraud. But off course, this is related to the overall increase in distrust that we see throughout society. The fundamental belief that a researcher reseraches out of curiosity and for the intellectual pleasure of discovering and understanding things, has long gone. The starting point now seems to be that by definition researchers are lazy bumbs living of tax payers money that need to be pushed to do some actual productive work, like publishing, preferably a lot then we see that he or she works hard. How sad. 

It does not only lead to a decrease in quality of the research but also in quality of university education as no points are gained for spending time on sharing knowledge with young people. Our most recent Belgian Nobel Prize winner - 2013 François Englert - noted at one point in time that in todays academic world he would never have been able to do the research he did.

Kind regards,

Willy Vandenbrande 

Hi Willy,

I think one of the biggest problems today is finance. The best and brightest can go into science (at least in America) and spend years working long hours for low pay while paying off college debt and hoping for a tenure track job or they can go into finance and make a lot of money for finding new ways to make money.

One option benefits society and the other puts dinner on their plate. I can’t say I blame them when those are the options.

Best regards,

Matt

Submitted by Dr Burns on Tue, 10/14/2014 - 13:17

I've often wondered if companies will ever wake up and return to Deming, after so many years lost in the utter nonsense of Six Sigma.  It's hardly surprising that science has followed business on a downward spiral, with 1/3 of researcheres admitting to questionable ethics.  No wonder the global warming scam took hold of the world, despite a complete lack of evidence of any kind to support it.The numbers on bad science:http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/07/the-numbers-on-bad-science/

... while measurement always does. Measurement equipment manufacturers and sellers strongly sponsor and finance many kinds of institutions and publications, and it's fairly easy to guess why: they want to sell their pieces of equipment, independently if they are useful, meaningful or not. In my more than twenty years auditor and certification manager career I've met all too many so called leaders spending huge money to buy brand new measurement equipment - just like as if it were luxury cars - instead of training their employees or improving often obsolete production machinery or computer system or R&D department. The saying that what can't be measured doesn't exist is not completely true, after all, and offends Man's perception capabilities. Thank you. Umberto Tunesi, e-mail umbertotunesi@gmail.com 

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