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This morning, I wrote a commentary on how the self reinforcing policies of native self-governments further reinforce the establishment of a divided society(1). And a few weeks ago, I pointed out how our internationally renowned health economists were full of themselves when they stated that there was no medical crisis in Canada(2) while it is a fact that Saskatchewan is poaching South African doctors(3). And it was three weeks ago that I commented how incompetent were both The StarPhoenix and the University of Saskatchewan in making conclusions out of their survey "Taking the Pulse of Saskatoon and Saskatchewan(4)."

And today, I hear that the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRCC) and the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. will pump nearly a million dollars into research on Native housing in Saskatoon(5). And it is ironic to know that the beneficiary of this one million dollars are going to be the same researchers who participated in the above mentioned survey. And after the many failures of our past social researches, SSHRC president March Renaud says that there is the need of more researches to spawn additional connections between academic institutions and the communities they serve.

In accordance to the past social researches reviewed by Ensign, we can state that many of our researchers have no clues on how to solve our social problems. In many instances our researchers have been predicting results of their studies in accordance to the expectations of their funding agencies; in other instances, the results of their studies have been as linear as their statistical tools.

Therefore, we remind our researchers that our social problems are not linear but complex, that the behaviour of social systems is counterintuitive(6), and that the implementation of their linear conclusions might cause the reverse of desired results.

References/endnotes

Relevant political and economics articles http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign

1. It is not only a matter of self(ish)-rights, but it is a matter of whole rights, by Mario deSantis, February 7, 2001 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/2001_300/desantis319/wholerights.html

2. Dr. Michael Rachlis & Co. have the paper solution to save Medicare: Revitalizing Medicare: Shared Problems, Public Solutions, by Mario deSantis, January 25, 2001 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/2001_300/desantis314/rachlis.html

3. Doctor poaching must stop: South African official, CBC Saskatchewan, February 7, 2001 http://sask.cbc.ca/cgi-bin/templates/view.cgi?/news/2001/02/07/doctors010207

4. The open loop thinking continues: Taking the Pulse of Saskatoon and Saskatchewan, by Mario deSantis, January 21, 2001 http://www.ftlcomm.com/ensign/desantisArticles/2001_300/desantis312/openloops2.html

5. Social research pays dividends, Opinions, February 7, 2001, The StarPhoenix, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

6. Counterintuitive behavior of social systems, by Jay W. Forrester ftp://sysdyn.mit.edu/ftp/sdep/Roadmaps/RM1/D-4468-1.pdf