Single Blind Spot Bias

A metaphor for a researcher's (or field's) one major, unconscious area of ignorance that systematically skews how they design experiments and interpret data. It's the one big thing they cannot see about their own assumptions—often their cultural, gendered, or economic viewpoint—which acts as a hidden lens distorting everything.

*Example: A 20th-century psychology field dominated by wealthy Western men designing studies on "human" motivation using only male undergraduates as subjects. Their single blind spot bias—assuming their experience was universal—led them to pathologize women and non-Westerners for differing.*

by Dumu The Void February 9, 2026

Triple-Blind Bias

An even more extreme form of methodological worship, where blinding the data analysts as well is believed to purify the study of all human contamination. This bias fosters the dangerous myth that science can and should be a fully automated, personality-free process, denying the essential role of interpretation, theory, and judgment in discovery.

Example: A journal priding itself on only publishing "triple-blind" studies, creating a culture where surprising, anomalous, or interpretively complex findings are rejected because they don't fit the sterile, bias-free narrative. Triple-blind bias can stamp out scientific creativity in the name of robotic rigor.

by Dumu The Void February 9, 2026

Double-Blind Bias

The assumption that a double-blind protocol is a flawless truth machine, creating an infallible "fact." This bias ignores how the study's fundamental design, question framing, population selection, and statistical analysis are all loaded with human choices and cultural values before the first pill is blinded.

*Example: Citing a double-blind study "proving" a new antidepressant works, while ignoring that the study only measured a narrow, questionnaire-defined "depression" over 8 weeks in a hand-picked cohort, excluding people with complex comorbidities. The double-blind bias mistakes a specific, constructed result for universal, contextless truth.*

by Dumu The Void February 9, 2026

Single-Blind Bias

Not just the flaw in a single-blind study, but the broader cultural bias that assumes a problem is solved once the subject's bias is controlled for. It ignores how the researcher's unchecked expectations, culture, and design choices still massively shape outcomes, creating an illusion of objectivity that is really just hidden subjectivity.

Example: A pharmaceutical company runs a study where patients don't know if they get the drug or placebo (single-blind), but the doctors hoping for a blockbuster drug do. Their unconscious encouragement of the treatment group skews results. The single-blind bias is the false confidence that blinding the subject alone guarantees neutrality.

by Dumu The Void February 9, 2026