There is some well-established methodology for doing studies of text entry (the recent book Text Entry Systems by MacKenzie and Tanaka-Ishii describes it). I'm not sure User Centric's methods here are necessarily all that bad. You can get significant data from 20 people if you design the experiment correctly -- and they answer this criticism and others in their FAQ. First impressions are important (you want a customer's experience trying a product in the store to be positive), but of course they're not the whole picture.

I think what's happened here is more likely a case of PR overreach, compounded by sound-bite journalism, than of bad research. It's risky for your credibility if you present the work in a press release before a peer-reviewed forum.

(I have no connection to User Centric; I'm just somewhat familiar with this type of research.)

A more relevant Beckett reference, I think, is the Nohow On trilogy, especially Company. There are many similarities (closed space, old age, memories, etc.). This is Auster's darkest, most abstract, most Beckett-like novel. It's not his strongest recent work (I like Oracle Night best out of the past four or five) but die-hard followers will want to read it.

Daniel Dvorkin is right that minority extremists tend to dominate the public debate, but that's a reason to look beyond the headlines and listen to the middle majority of people who I believe honestly do care about these issues and have the intelligence to deal with them (perhaps in structured forums with expert assistance, as pioneered by the "Science Shops" movement in Europe).

The fact that minority extremists dominate the headlines is not a reason to dismiss the idea of oversight altogether and leave it to corporations and "scientific fundamentalists" (as this other minority extremist party has been called).

The idea that only scientists are qualified to discuss the use of science is nonsense. You don't need intricate knowledge to comprehend the ethical and social issues, and outsiders will sometimes see things to which insiders are blind.

We trust everyday people to perform on criminal juries -- not just police and lawmakers.

I was a lot like the little girl in that movie. No pageants, just no idea that I was really out of place and outgunned most of the time. I cannot sing, which I realize now, but I would happily get up in front of people and sing and dance around. (I really, really can't sing.) No one that will remember me, but hey, what the hell? And then there was that time I was an on-stage participant at a hypnotist's convention (not making this up--I'm talking doctors who use hypnotism in their practice) when I was in fourth grade, as a favor to a family friend, and that didn't go real well. But you know what? It's funny. It's all pretty funny.

Of course, I don't know what kinds of humiliations you're talking about, but my advice is time and perspective. Hold onto the fact that really, you're the only person that cares about, or even remembers (most likely), what happened. And maybe it's made you a different person and a better person, or whatever, but these experiences are part of who you are, and either you accept that and realize that everyone has this kind of stuff, or you live in horrid psychic pain for the rest of your days.

Then there's the therapist-style approach: write the most horrible ones, the ones that haunt you, in a book. Use lots of detail, get it all out of your system, and use that book as a psychic dump. Like the trash can on your computer, just move those documents from the permanent brain file to storage elsewhere. You can then decide to delete them forever (burn them), or just keep the book hidden somewhere, knowing that there's a place to put all the crap you don't want to think about.

Good luck. Remember the old tragedy to those who feel, comedy to those who think saw.

If it weren't for fancy dark chocolate, I'd eat no chocolate at all...because I'm allergic to milk, damn it! Not lactose intolerant, but lip-swelling allergic. And even Hershey's Dark (which I loved as a child) has milk in it. The proliferation of high end chocolates means that I have choices, and I don't have to settle for (ugh) carob, or a single kind of health-food chocolate bar. I don't drink wine, so I might as well go high-end on something.