The dilemna dilemma

I had this happen to me today while writing another post. It got me thinking enough that I decided it was worth a post of its own.

https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/dilemma-or-dilemna

I guess it has been awhile since I needed to write the word dilemma — even after two years full of experiencing dilemmas of various magnitudes. The desire to spell dilemma as “dilemna” is deeply engrained in my brain. When I prep myself to spell it, I explicitly split it into three syllables to remind myself (wrongly!) that it is “di – lem – na” and not simply “di- lemma.” In my brain, it feels exactly like I’m appealing (correctly!) to a useful trick to remind myself of less-than-intuitive spellings, like “con – science” to spell conscience. I would swear I was taught that trick — would I really just make up a wrong spelling, a trick to remember it, and the convincing feeling that I was “taught it”? But, like Grammar Girl, I have no evidence that I actually was taught this in school (though I would love to be able to scroll back through my elementary school spelling tests for the chance of finding some). I also must admit that spelling has never been my forte and I do tend to repeatedly misspell the same words.

I can’t help but thinking more about how this phenomena shows up in the use of statistical methods. As a collaborative statistician, I used to get the “But I was taught…” comment in response to my suggesting an approach that differed from discipline defaults and norms. I often wondered what that statement really meant — “taught” in terms of a formal class, “taught” from copying what was done by others? What were the credentials of the “teachers”? It’s quite possible I saw the misspelled word “dilemna” in print early in life and it stuck. I feel like I was “taught it,” but really I was copying the work of someone without sufficient knowledge of how to spell the word. I probably trusted because it superficially looked legitimate and correct, without a second thought at the qualifications of the author.

While this is an understandable oversight for a kid learning how to spell, it is not as understandable for scientists with multiple degrees doing serious work. However, to the defense of the scientists — I don’t think it is at all clear how to judge qualifications relative to advice about data analysis and statistical inference, so this is not a simple problem to fix. Much of the information available now has had decades of being passed through teachers who themselves only drew on the knowledge of the teachers before them — a long distance from the original work and thoughts. It is a long game of telephone and I can’t help but appeal to one of my favorite quotes from RA Fisher in 1955. And, I think it is safe to say the suffering of Science is far worse now than it was 65 years ago.

The History of Science has suffered greatly from the use by teachers of second-hand material, and the consequent obliteration of the circumstances and the intellectual atmosphere in which the great discoveries of the past were made.

RA Fisher 1955 (in an introduction to papers Experiments in Plant Hybridisation by Gregor Mendel, edited by J.H. Bennett and published in Edinburgh by Oliver & Boyd, p.6.)