51–60 of 265 posts
Each study is a weak classifier and would have a 'reproducibility crisis' if retested on new data. However after lots of studies of similar phenomena, a strong classifier emerges. In the field, we call this converging lines of evidence.
Recently I have been beginning to question university education. It seems that today's education system has mismatched priorities which may have an impact on the reproducibility crisis. You see, to come up with a fantastic new alloy, you don't have to be a genius. Or even very good. You have to be persistent, and clever enough to realize when you've found something interesting. You will need to understand your field…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Racial 'science' was used by the Nazi's to justify antisemitism, eugenics, and everything they did beyond that. The scientific method is important to be used, but don't trust something just because another person believes it to be science. You need the hypothesis and the verification method. Others (all of us) have the obligation to challenge both the hypothesis as well as the verification methods.
So, 'science' not science? Got it. That was a pretty quick Godwining, by the way.
More seriously, it wasn't just this group that believed in this stuff, it was the many many institutions in the western world, as emodendroket points out. Certain departments at Yale, most notably, supported eugenics.
https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/american-eugenics-society-1926-...
edited portion in case people think I meant all of Yale, bad generalization, my bad.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, 'science' not science? Got it. That was a pretty quick Godwining, by the way.
The issue is that it's not easy for the populace to tell the difference between 'science' and science in a lot of cases. You see this on all parts of the political spectrums. Soviet Lysenkoism, left wing anti vax crap, and neo liberal austerity. EDIT: Krugman had this to say about the R&R austerity paper "What the Reinhart-Rogoff affair shows is the extent to which austerity has been sold on false pretenses. For thre…
This is the exact reason I don't believe science should be used blindly to affect government policy. It flies in the face of democracy and is subject to falsehoods just like any other human endeavor.
If we don't use science to make decisions, what are we supposed to use? Gut instinct? Of course science is imperfect, but it tends towards truth over time, whereas dogma and populism have no way of correcting mistakes that isn't just as likely to introduce new ones.
Being reproducible is only critically important if people treat individual studies as meaningful. That IMO is a far more dangerous stance. Any study can have hidden flaws, none should be trusted without some form of replication.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The report (not a paper) is actually written for a lay audience and very readable: https://www.nas.org/images/documents/irreproducibility_repor...
It's a position paper from a conservative think tank and needs to be treated as such.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is why, as a (global) society, we should spend our resources in making sure the data we have is accurate by funding research and repeated studies, and that data should be open to all to verify and build upon.
I think we're passed the point where studies can be reproduced effectively. I actually think the scientific model is falling apart. We've discovered the easy things, and those studies were easy to reproduce. We built a model of science around the low hanging fruit. How are you going to reproduce a study about a cancer drug? Synthesizing the drug itself is a huge endeavor, never mind finding a group of participants wi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we don't use science to make decisions, what are we supposed to use? Gut instinct? Of course science is imperfect, but it tends towards truth over time, whereas dogma and populism have no way of correcting mistakes that isn't just as likely to introduce new ones.
Even if science were perfect it couldn't tell us about moral axioms or value judgments. Additionally, using science and other expert judgments can easily tend toward simply choosing experts and studies that align with whatever policy you want to push for unrelated reasons, or outright seeking to manipulate research for political ends.
Of course it can, but that's equally true for any other way of making decisions. So it's not a downside of science in particular.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lysenkoism happens in the American and European scientific establishments as well. As an example I would suggest Ancel Keys and the cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease.
That's a bad example. It's a much more complex scenario, where the drugs that fight the expected cause of the disease does in fact help protecting against it. Confusing causality is very hard to solve.