Talk:Positive deviance

Puzzled, people!

I am very puzzled by the assertion that this article should be deleted. I recently learned of positive deviance and was looking for a good reference to share with colleagues and I find this to be extremely brief and clear about the essence of the process, and not at all like an advertisement. I am a scholar of processes that enhance collective intelligence and this is an emerging and very promising one. Please retain it here in Wikipedia. Disclosure: I have NO connection to those who use the process professionally. 67.171.234.232 (talk) 04:30, 13 June 2009 (UTC) Tom Atlee, Co-Intelligence Institute

have there been any failures?

While I agree with the now-aging comment above about the validity of this page's existence in Wikipedia, and have found the discovery of PD useful, even exciting, in my ongoing study of models for social change, I wonder whether every PD project has been successful. It seems that projects with successful results have been cherry-picked as examples. If anyone has information about a PD project that did not produce the same sort of remarkable results -- such as when resources in an area are simply lacking (areas of extreme drought or food scarcity), or when a population has been so brutalized by fellow humans or natural circumstances that there simply are no PDs among them -- I hope you add to this page. We need to know when to apply this approach, vs when external help and resources might be indispensible. Ilyse Kazar (talk) 13:44, 25 June 2012 (UTC)

There are several problems here, foremost (in my mind anyway) is the file drawer problem. As the positive deviance model is not the gold standard in any particular area, studies that do exist are most likely to be written to determine if the model works (with no effect being the null hypothesis). Statistically significant (in this case, positive) results are more likely to be published. Null studies are boring and rarely see press. - SummerPhD (talk) 01:09, 26 June 2012 (UTC)