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A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

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Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#101
post #56
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! Similarly, I remember a few years back being shocked at the attitude toward the replication crisis, where authors of irreproducible work were miffed that no one talked to them first. I was like, "Um, the whole point of science is that it's knowledge in the public record . If you need to 'chill' with the original researcher to get critical details, that's not science anymore." Remember, the studies might form the…

> If you need to a 'chill' with the original researcher to get critical details, that's not science anymore. Certainly there is always the possibility that there was some details misunderstood, something that needs to be clarified, a print error, etc. Your "that's not science anymore" statement seems highly exaggerated. People are not supposed to communicate only via papers.

> People are not supposed to communicate only via papers.

That we use written communication that persists through generations is the basis of science and society in general. If we cannot communicate sufficiently via papers, we're in a world of trouble.

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok. So this is semantics and in this science there is a different meaning for the word "fact." What is the utility of redefining a fact as a human construct of accepted information, rather than as data points corresponding to components of objective reality?

Because you're putting the cart before the horse. Science is building a picture of """objective reality""" from human subjectivity. Data points aren't reality, they have to be interpreted. No matter how you try to do it, at some point you have to accept that a human being is doing science and the way science is done is fundamentally an intersubjective phenomenon. Science isn't reality. Scientific knowledge isn't real…

There's this funny thing I've noticed with your posts where the more words you use, the less utility I get from understanding the post. It's almost like you use overintellectualization to bury that you aren't saying much at all.

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#103
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That anyone in the field of psychology would even be comfortable publically espousing a non-scientific worldview like that means that psychologists are not being properly educated in the scientific method. This is a generalization about psychologists from a sample size of one psychologist, to suggest that they don't understand science?

One ex-president of the psychologists professional association, a person who was literally deliberately selected by the community of psychologists to represent them. It would similarly be completely inappropriate to generalize the policy positions of Hillary Clinton to the Democratic party, yes?

[deleted]

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#104
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fact is a human construct. It is a symbol. You just conflated facts with reality. A cursory examination of reality will reveal that observations of reality are observer dependent. So what is an objective fact? An objective fact must be one that is covariant in change of observer interpreting the fact. Physical laws like General Relativity are covariant in this way: the facts of relativity differ symbolically depend…

And yet, would the feminist science claim that intersubjectivity is the correct view to take? Can it? Or must it be that intersubjectivity is only the view of certain feminists and itself depends on the observer -- to some observer, independent observable facts exists, and to some others, they do not as they are intersubjective? I think your position is interesting if odd and completely alienated from the way science…

Intersubjectivity is a major part of modern psychology. It is a relatively new concept. Its influence grows slowly as more and more people find it usefully applicable to their work. Like most science, actually. Intersubjectivity is not a normative idea or a theory, but more of a point of view. It is a heuristic that says, in order to study a thing, study the subjective experiences of that thing and their relations. Observer-invariance is too strong of a constraint on what is a fact: physics already embraces this. What you want instead is covariance, which is how observations transform when you change the observer.

Studying the covariance of observations is intrinsically a study of intersubjectivity, although I need to point out here that I am merely making an analogy between human observers and the abstract observers of physics, which are themselves simplifications of human observers.

> independent observable facts

Independent of what? Observation? A fact is necessarily tied to how it is observed. That's what I'm talking about here. It is a fundamental aspect of the scientific method that scientific observations can be made by different people and then their results can be compared. The dependence of facts on observation is absolutely crucial, so I'm not sure what sort of independence you're talking about.

W.r.t. masculine and feminine, I wrote my first post on a phone while in a taxi and I think one of my paragraphs clarifying this point got eaten by a pothole. I clarified in a sibling post but I'll expound here: I don't mean anything intrinsic to men or women. I am referring to archetypal masculinity and femininity, which are social constructs. Every society has had these archetypes, for example the ideas of Yin and Yang, the feminine and masculine principles of ancient Chinese thought. There is little physical basis as they apply to the human sexual dimorphism for these archetypes and they vary from society to society.

There is well established scientific literature observing these aspects of society. For example, women are expected to understand the emotions of others far more than men are. I'm time constrained so I won't cite this; it's not hard to peruse the literature. Does this mean that men can't empathize or that it makes them girly if they do? Of course not!

> What does adding these incendiary labels to the positions you outline and contrast add to the discussion, other than encouraging your mostly male and mostly skeptical-of-gender-politics audience not listen?

I don't feel like I'm being incendiary. Why are you receiving my words that way? It's an interesting phenomenon.

And this might sound pedantic but, I don't care if you're skeptical of gender politics because gender politics are real, and they have been real for thousands of years. Masculinity and femininity as social concepts are real in that sense whether you acknowledge their existence or not. Feminists did not invent gender politics, they merely scrutinize them. There was a time when gender was considered an inviolable concept writ large across the cosmos by a male deity. Was a time? Still a time for hundreds of millions of people. The fact that people, mostly women because they were the most incentivized to do so, started critically engaging these ideas philosophically (thus laying the groundwork for scientific investigation) is a boon to me and you. I would suggest y'all stop taking gendered analysis of social phenomenon personally because it can only enrich your conceptual toolbox.

> I think your position is interesting if odd and completely alienated from the way science is done or thought about in all of human history.

I did math research a long time ago. I'm still pretty connected to the mathematical research community. These ideas are corroborated by my own experiences. We need to make a distinction between what people say is the way science is done and what the actual way science is done. We need to make a distinction between the way science is thought about and the way people think they think about science is done. This isn't pedantry or navel gazing or postmodern bullshit, this is hard-nosed critical thinking.

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#105

I find it very disconcerting that people are trying to fend off criticism of previously published studies by calling it "bullying" or sometimes worse. What do feelings have to do with science?

Objectivity is listed as a problem with science curriculum. Welcome to the future. http://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2467&co...

Based on my experience with feminist though in academia, objectivity as a mask for bias is the issue. The preferred method to address is to surface as much of the implicit bias a possible so the whole can be considered. I don't find this problematic.

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#106
post #34

> and whether online critiques of past work constitute “bullying” or shaming. The PubPeer comments are just a tiny part of that debate. But it can hit a nerve. > Susan Fiske, a former president of the Association for Psychological Science, alluded to Statcheck in an interview with Business Insider, calling it a “gotcha algorithm.” > The draft of the article said these online critics were engaging in “methodological t…

You are entirely correct (pBut apparently we also have Susan Fiske. I think that the real difficulty with psychology is that people care too much. Its a little easier to be objective around the decay of atomic particles than about the intelligence of different genders and races.

Additionally, many psychologists are not comfortable with statistics. A large proportion went into psychology to avoid maths, and are somewhat disappointed to discover that this does not work.

So they follow guidelines, and paste tables from SPSS into MS Word (no automation for some reason), and stuff like this happens.

They don't use cross-validation and they are too much in love with their models, and the theory that said models facilitate.

I suppose this was a pretty long-winded way to say "Not all psychologists!"

Cohen, J: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~sternh/courses/210/cohen94_pval.pdf (The World is Round (p< 0.05))

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#107
post #84
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what happens when a new fact-checking algorithm comes out? What I said in my comment.

Only if they're also rude about it and run it on a huge set of old papers, and do a big PR campaign to get attention. Otherwise, the only thing that happens is papers quietly get better and everyone on all sides is happy.

So they shouldn't run it on the old papers, so as to not offend anyone's sensibilities?

Do we just declare said papers completely useless then? Or do they keep getting cited by new papers, and used to guide policy? If the latter, then not vetting them using the newer and better methodology would be unethical.

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#108

I find it very disconcerting that people are trying to fend off criticism of previously published studies by calling it "bullying" or sometimes worse. What do feelings have to do with science?

Well, scientists are people too, so they have feelings and are not perfect. I think there are polite ways provide criticism and corrections, hopefully without humiliating people with good intentions. If it's a simple mistake, they can email the author and suggest an erratum. If it's more serious, then it's common to write a response in the journal. I think more public forms of criticism are perceived as bullying beca…

I find it hard to understand how something that is clearly an automated bot, posting comments that are 100% factual ("I checked this paper; N things looked wrong"), could be perceived as humiliating.

I guess it would be the case if you assumed that all people are perfect and never make mistakes. I would hope that psychologists, of all people, would know better than that.

So if it's not that, where's the humiliation part in pointing out math mistakes?

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#109
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Objectivity is listed as a problem with science curriculum. Welcome to the future. http://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2467&co...

Based on my experience with feminist though in academia, objectivity as a mask for bias is the issue. The preferred method to address is to surface as much of the implicit bias a possible so the whole can be considered. I don't find this problematic.

The problem is when "as much as possible" becomes subjective personal experiences. Basically treating un-aggregated anecdotes as data, while also drawing a line at questioning the validity or applicability of it (aka "just shut up and listen").

Re: A bot crawled thousands of studies looking for simple math errors

#110

Haha! What if this is actually a marketing ploy for their web-app? Stir up some shit so everyone gets talking, and provide a service.

And what if? Does that negate the results?

Oh no not at all! The results are still solid. So, "ploy" isn't the right word, not really. "Stunt"? "Technique"?

I was just thinking - They could have found a way to email or otherwise contact the authors, instead of just posting comments, but posting comments (and getting some news on it) drives more traffic due to scandal effects.

This rabbit hole can go deeper - what if private disclosure was expected to backfire? By surprising people publicly, they're more forced to admit there's an issue; and then by providing both the issue and a solution, there's an easy way at hand to fix it....

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