Much of the “science” used in design is bullshit (2014)

Teaming up with the famous Alan Sokal, they discovered that the entire mathematical foundation of the paper – Losada’s (1999) initial work into the dynamics of business teams that first derived the 2.9013 ratio – to be flawed. The truth or falsity of it was irrelevant – it’s unlikely the Android design team was really looking to get a good 3:1 ratio of positivity, and at no stage was the number 2.9013 utilised. It could be that the Android team cited the positivity ratio to give their design work the sheen of respectability that society affords “science”: as long as there is a published paper to back it up, it must be true.

Source: mjparnell.com