Neil Postman's Argument is Unreliable

I have claimed that Neil Postman's argument is unreliable. First, this is because his ethos is flawed. Neil Postman is a writer, educator, critic, communications theorist, and chair of the Department of Communications Acts and Sciences at New York University. He has a doctorate from Columbia University. He is a well-respected man in his field: media ecology. He is well-educated, but he is not educated in the social sciences. He is not trained in statistics, or polling. He is not an expert in the field of methodology. He is neither a sociologist or psychologist. His argument is unreliable, because he is not well versed in the area of social science. I do not trust his claims, because he doesn't have the training necessary to fully understand statistics and polling techniques and therefore criticize them.

Secondly, I find his argument flawed due to the examples and sources he uses. Postman claims, "Perhaps the most abusive example [of statistics] is found in the work of Francis Galton, who was born in 1822, died in 1911, and therefore lived during the richest period of technological invention." (129) Granted, Galton was the developer of the correlation method in statistics, but I find the example a bit outdated. Galton was interested in the study of intelligence, and his theories are not accepted today by social scientists. It is easy to defend your argument with an example that is considered flawed by the professionals today. Postman goes on to cite three points made by Stephen Jay Gould. Gould is a well-respected paleontologist, not a social scientist. Postman uses Gould totally out of context. In addition, Postman fails to provide any kind of corollary data to back up his assertions. He doesn't prove that statistics and polling are useless. I think he is unable to do so, because he truly doesn't understand sociological methods. I really don't know exactly why Postman decided to attack these "invisible technologies," especially since he didn't have the supporting evidence to prove his claim.

Postman does quote from E.L. Thorndike, a major figure in several fields of psychology, but again he uses the example of intelligence tests, which are highly controversial to begin with. When Postman is discussing the problems with polling, he doesn't even use any sources. In order to make his argument stronger, Postman should have cited from professionals in the field of social science: sociologists, psychologists, etc. He didn't cite from a single sociologist except where he used their work as an example of what not to do. With expert sources (trained in the field under discussion), Postman would have a much stronger argument.