I've been reading a very interesting book called “Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)” regarding the psychology of self-justification. In the book, the authors review data on how research sponsored by companies tends to bias the results of the research, even when the researchers claim that it doesn't.

I think that we need to be very careful to not let the funding from Honda bias our conclusions about the right way to use robots to help children. We definitely need to test whether imitation is useful so that we fulfill our obligations to Honda, but we don't want to be guilty of bias toward imitation as the right therapy if other therapies appear to be better.

Our goal has to be to do what is best for the kids and not to push a particular agenda or technology.

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