Seems like there’s a risk in these cases that blinding will be applied in ways that bias the outcome. I don’t know anything about basketball, but I assume the statistics you gave us aren’t literally the only ones we’d want to look at? So whoever chose to look at those instead of some other statistics, maybe they’re doing so because they want the outcome to go a certain way?
Or, in the singularly case, it matters a lot for example who the supposed “experts” are. If the experts turn out to be experts by virtue of “only a handful of people study this and they’re the experts, no one else takes it seriously” maybe we shouldn’t worry.
Of course you can unblind after the fact, that probably helps, but you’ve already set the framing by then.
So like. Probably a good tool to have, but I’d still be suspicious of its use.
I feel like this is a useful tool, but also.
Seems like there’s a risk in these cases that blinding will be applied in ways that bias the outcome. I don’t know anything about basketball, but I assume the statistics you gave us aren’t literally the only ones we’d want to look at? So whoever chose to look at those instead of some other statistics, maybe they’re doing so because they want the outcome to go a certain way?
Or, in the singularly case, it matters a lot for example who the supposed “experts” are. If the experts turn out to be experts by virtue of “only a handful of people study this and they’re the experts, no one else takes it seriously” maybe we shouldn’t worry.
Of course you can unblind after the fact, that probably helps, but you’ve already set the framing by then.
So like. Probably a good tool to have, but I’d still be suspicious of its use.
I’m in full agreement! Good point. I see it as a tool to be used, but we have to be careful about this downside.
And FWIW in basketball people don’t leave the blinders on. They just use it as a debiasing tool to kick things off.