Relevance Paradox 

This article or section may contain original research or unverified claims.
Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (December 2008)

Relevance paradox is a term for the occurrence where the attempt to gather information relevant to a decision is ineffective because the attempt to eliminate distracting or unnecessary information also excludes gathering information that is later seen to be crucial.citation needed

Contents

Definition

In many cases where action or decision is required, it is obvious what information relevant to the matter in hand may be lacking - a military attack may not have maps so reconnaissance is undertaken, an engineering project may not have ground condition details, and these will be ascertained, a public health program will require a survey of which illnesses are prevalent, etc. However, in many significant instances across a wide range of areas, even when relevant information is readily available, the decision makers are not aware of its relevance, so don't look for it. This situation has been referred to as the relevance paradox.1 This occurs when an individual or a group of professionals are unaware of certain essential information which would guide them to make better decisions, and help them avoid inevitable, unintended and undesirable consequences. These professionals will seek only the information and advice they believe is the bare minimum amount required as opposed to what they actually need to fully meet their own or the organization's goals.

Examples

Civil engineers from the 1950s onwards unwittingly caused a massive increase in the debilitating water borne infection schistosomiasis (Bilharzia) for locals as a result of irrigation schemes that lacked simple low cost counter-measures built in, simply because they had no knowledge of these counter-measures. But at the same time the UN had already published guidelines explaining cheap counter measures and how they could be built-in to the design of the irrigation schemes - matters as simple as keeping velocities above a certain level to prevent the disease vectors a water snail from attaching to the conduits. The civil engineers were victims of the relevance paradox because they only thought they need to know about concrete, water flows, etc. and not how to restrict velocities to prevent the snail species which carried the disease from multiplying so they didn't go to look for the information.2

Another example is the NASA engineers who having spent a fortune on unsuccessfully developing the complex sliding and articulating inside knee joint needed for space suits eventually went to the Tower of London and ruefully copied the armour of Henry the Eighth with just such a joint – stating “we wish we had known about this earlier!”3

The relevance paradox can and usually does apply to all professional groups and individuals in numerous ways.4 While there are many examples of willful ignorance, but there are many cases where people do not look outside the paradigms they are operating in and thus fail to see the long term consequences.citation needed An overall example is of course the present environmental and financial situation where the planned expansion of the worlds economies was planned by people who were blissfully as opposed to willfully unaware of the impossibility of continued credit and growth due to fundamental resource limitations.

Avoidance

The notions of Information Routing Groups (IRGs) and Interlock research were designed to counter this paradox by the promotion of lateral communication and the flow of Tacit knowledge which in many cases consists of the unconscious and unwritten knowledge of what is relevant.

A related point is that in many cases, despite the existence of good library indexing systems and search engines, the way specific knowledge may be described is not obvious unless you already know the knowledge.

See also

References:

  1. ^ "The Importance of Knowing the Right People", The Guardian (1980-03-20). 
  2. ^ Charnock, Anne (1980-08-07). "Taking Bilharziasis out of the irrigation equation". New Civil Engineer 1 (8). 
  3. ^ Andrews, D. (February 1986). "Information routing groups - ( Towards the global superbrain: or how to find out what you need to know rather than what you think you need to know". Journal of Information Technology 1 (1): 22-35. 
  4. ^ Andrews, David (1984). The IRG Solution - Hierarchical Incompetence and how to overcome it. London: Souvenir Press. pp.200-220. ISBN 0285626620.