Why would one expect that factor analysis provides a defense against
socially biased research?
I don't get it.
It is easy to use the sausage metaphor to talk about factor analysis.
[It's hard for me to refrain from using the word BALONEY rather than the word
SAUSAGE!!!]
One puts ground meat into the computer, and it comes out in links!
Nice and neat, and useful for generating speculation. But it is still packaged
ground meat!!! Sausage -- ughhh, I needed to bite my tongue once again I
almost started typing that B word.
I'll support John on that one -- factor analysis is nice stuff -- but
it never leaves us free from imposing our social constructions on the links --
and trying to show that the people who produced the ground meat also were using
constructions generated during social intercourse.
Jim Mancuso
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