Social media is becoming a more and more vital role in our society to make connections between our friends and family even when we are miles away from those people. Many new studies are now emerging that are attempting to find out the amount of time being spent online and what the main uses of social media are. I was reading a study (College Students Social Networking Experiences on Facebook, Pempek et. Al, 2009) about this idea. As I was reading this study, I questioned the validity and reliability of the methods when it came to where the information was gathered. The researchers gathered a group of college individuals who were different levels of education and different ethnic backgrounds and made them complete questionnaires about their usage of the site. My main query comes from the selection of the sample and whether or not it is an actual representation of the amount of time the average person uses social media. The results of this study are probably very accurate for the general population of university students but can they be generalized across populations of non-students? My guess is probably no. I personally believe that being able to apply the results of one study to an entire population (even with random sampling) is impossible on account of the diversity of people in the world. Even though the sample in this study appears to be reliable at face value, when we look deeper into the study it leaves out a vast majority of social networking users who are not in school. Would this have a huge change on the outcome of the study? It is tough to tell but it may have a massive effect (positively or negatively) on the results of the research by leaving them out.

This idea raises the question if we can ever have a truly reliable sample population for any study that will give an accurate representation of a general population as a whole. I am interested in hearing all of your opinions on this subject. What are your takes on whether or not we can ever achieve an unbiased and equal sample size that will allow for the generalization of the results to span over a population. What ways have you seen this be attempted and what are your thoughts on the effectiveness of these methods used?

The world of medical testing is a slippery slope when it comes to the ethical side of things. In many ethical manuals, the main aim of any experiment is to not bring any harm to any human being. That is the basis of ethics and the driving force behind it. This raises a rather thought provoking question: Whether or not it is ethical to allow human trials of drugs even if they have been tested on animals and had few negative side effects? Should the chance of harm to humans outweigh the possible health benefits of the drug? This question continues to plague many researchers even after years of thought into this. This paradox is created every time a new drug comes out of animal trials. The main question that needs to be asked is what is the lesser of the two evils between these two concerns?

I don’t know if there will ever be a simple solution for this conundrum. As a society, we are always looking for a quick cure for everything, which creates this problem of needing to test drugs on volunteers before they are released to the masses. This raises the question of even if these volunteers still agree to the side effects of these drugs, does that make it anymore ethical? Does it actually make it okay to test on humans drugs that may actually put them in pain or discomfort even if they agree for the benefit of the rest of humanity?

As I stated earlier, there will be no easy fix for this, as we will always have a big pharmaceutical culture in our society. As long as people still keep getting sick, there will always be a need to test drugs on animals and humans alike.