[Sigia-l] conflict of interest (was: usability testing)

[jamie foggon]

Ziya Oz:

> For the last time: I've said "Conflict of interest *is* bias" and NOT "Bias
> is conflict of interest."
>

Wikipedia's 'Bias' entry:

"one is generally only said to be biased if one's powers of judgment
are influenced by the biases one holds, to the extent that one's views
could not be taken as being neutral or objective"

My take on it:

Having a bias is not something that can be measured, it just means
that someone's viewpoint or behaviour cannot be taken as neutral. The
only way bias could be separated from conflict of interest is if the
degree of bias could be mesaured quantitatively. Then you could say
person x was in a conflict of interest position, but this resulted in
0% bias when they made decisions.


-- 
Jamie Foggon