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02/03/2008: "Six degrees of separation, "global village" disproved"

Kleinfeld assumed that Milgram’s study must have been replicated for his results to have been so widely and enthusiastically accepted. Confirming the validity of a finding by repeating experiments is, after all, a hallmark of the scientific process. Kleinfeld scoured the academic literature but found only two follow-up studies, one done by Milgram himself. And neither one, Kleinfeld says, substantiated the six-degrees claim. “I was disappointed in Milgram, who was one of my idols, for avoiding the limitations of his research in the arresting and well-written article he had published in Psychology Today,” Kleinfeld says. “My students, however, were not surprised. The results supported their notions of the limitations of social research.”

Kleinfeld’s interpretation of all this—which she also published in Psychology Today (March/April 2002)—is that Milgram was so in love with the idea of six degrees that he overlooked the weak statistics backing it up. And worse, he promoted his sketchy results to an unsuspecting public. Not that she thinks the public minds. In talking to others about their coincidental experiences running into friends and friends of friends in unlikely places, she’s become convinced that the idea of six degrees has deep psychological appeal. “The belief in a small world gives people a sense of security,” she says.

[ Fear of death, again. Ho hum. The "global village" idea was based on this six degrees illusion and it, also, is an illusion. ]

http://discovermagazine.com/2008/feb/if-osama.s-only-6-degrees-away-why-can.t-we-find-him/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=