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To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

economist.com

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Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#81

Post by vacri »

pdonis wrote: post #41
timr wrote: post #24

What a weird article. I agree with nearly every individual fact within it, but after reading it, I still don't know the point of the piece. I don't want to jump to conclusions, but given that this piece is mostly criticism of science the part of me that associates "conservatives" with "anti-intellectual reactionaries" suspects a hidden agenda to undermine science or give climate change "skeptics" something to point a…

the usual HN climate-change critics are in this thread, pointing at and yelling about how science is "broken". I don't think the current situation in climate science shows that "science is broken". I think it shows that climate scientists have been too quick to claim the credibility of Science when their work does not measure up to that standard. (Climate science is certainly not the only field that does this: much o…

Did you bother reading the article? Because it specifically says that not only are the usual soft targets like psychology a problem, but so are hard STEM targets like cancer research.

Also, what's with the capitalising of Science like it's some kind of club or organisation? "Science" is not a proper noun - making it one is facilitating dogma.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#82

Post by gilgoomesh »

ISL wrote: post #80
gilgoomesh wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> climate scientists have been too quick to claim the credibility of Science when their work does not measure up to that standard What the fuck are you talking about? Observations and models are repeated and challenged far more in climate science than most other fields. It is a good example of science working exactly as it should. I'm not sure where you think climate science has gone astray but considering how expens…

> Observations and models are repeated and challenged far more in climate science than any other field. That may be an overstatement; see the Standard Model of physics.

You're right, it was overstatement. I've corrected to "most other fields".

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#83

Post by pdonis »

gilgoomesh wrote: post #74
pdonis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the usual HN climate-change critics are in this thread, pointing at and yelling about how science is "broken". I don't think the current situation in climate science shows that "science is broken". I think it shows that climate scientists have been too quick to claim the credibility of Science when their work does not measure up to that standard. (Climate science is certainly not the only field that does this: much o…

> climate scientists have been too quick to claim the credibility of Science when their work does not measure up to that standard What the fuck are you talking about? Observations and models are repeated and challenged far more in climate science than most other fields. It is a good example of science working exactly as it should. I'm not sure where you think climate science has gone astray but considering how expens…

Observations and models are repeated and challenged far more in climate science than most other fields.

You're kidding, right? Please show your work. [Edit: I saw your correction, and have adjusted my quote above, but my response is still the same: please show your work.]

science does not require every paper to be accurate (in fact, you need a few extremist ideas to try to shake things up).

I quite agree, and I wasn't trying to claim that all, or even most, papers published in other fields are accurate.

Climate science's problem is non scientists misrepresenting, misinterpreting and misunderstanding. The science itself is exactly what you'd want for every scientific field.

I disagree, but I doubt we're going to resolve the question here.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#84

Post by pdonis »

vacri wrote: post #81
pdonis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the usual HN climate-change critics are in this thread, pointing at and yelling about how science is "broken". I don't think the current situation in climate science shows that "science is broken". I think it shows that climate scientists have been too quick to claim the credibility of Science when their work does not measure up to that standard. (Climate science is certainly not the only field that does this: much o…

Did you bother reading the article? Because it specifically says that not only are the usual soft targets like psychology a problem, but so are hard STEM targets like cancer research. Also, what's with the capitalising of Science like it's some kind of club or organisation? "Science" is not a proper noun - making it one is facilitating dogma.

so are hard STEM targets like cancer research.

Yes, that's true; I shouldn't have singled out social sciences.

what's with the capitalising of Science like it's some kind of club or organisation?

It's meant to convey the fact that climate scientists basically tell politicians "look, Science says you have to do X, Y, Z or we're doomed". They are claiming that their results are good enough to drive policy choices that have huge consequences, and politicians believe it because it's Science--they see it as the same as if astronomers came to them and said "look, we've calculated that asteroid A is going to hit the Earth unless we do X, Y, and Z; we've checked the numbers every which way and there's no other option." But climate science as a field is simply not accurate enough to justify that.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#85

Post by pdonis »

lamontcg wrote: post #78
pdonis wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the usual HN climate-change critics are in this thread, pointing at and yelling about how science is "broken". I don't think the current situation in climate science shows that "science is broken". I think it shows that climate scientists have been too quick to claim the credibility of Science when their work does not measure up to that standard. (Climate science is certainly not the only field that does this: much o…

+1 on "what the fuck are you talking about?" Climate science even got a physics prof from Berzerkely (who was convinced that only physicists knew how to do science right) who went in with an anti-climatology bias, and was funded by the Koch brother, and he replicated climatology results in the "BEST" study -- to the point where journals like Nature turned down publishing the BEST study because it was not new informat…

a Koch-backed study has actually determined that climate science really is science

Reference, please?

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#86

Post by capnrefsmmat »

cousin_it wrote: post #67
capnrefsmmat wrote: post #45

I am sometimes amused to read failed replication studies which do not calculate their own statistical power -- so they do not know whether, assuming the original study was correct, they will have the sample size to reliably detect an effect. A failed replication then says nothing about the original conclusions. Statistical error is a hobby of mine. The Economist mentions a few pervasive errors, but there are many mor…

That's great work and I want more of it!

The version I linked to is about half the size of my work-in-progress, and I'd be happy to share the draft with anyone interested in 25,000+ words on doing stats wrong. My email is in my profile.

Right now I'm a first-semester graduate student in statistics, so my writing has slowed down a bit; once I get some confidence in what I've learned I'll try to wrap it up. I'm not sure how or where to publish it, though.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#87

Post by azernik »

timr wrote: post #33
frogpelt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did this article mention climate change? If you agree with every fact in the article, why would you look for a hidden agenda? Your comment makes you seem a bit paranoid.

It didn't mention climate change. I know from past experience that this line of argument -- indeed, any that casts doubt on scientific research -- is a favorite of the "climate skeptic" world. Moreover, I know that the Economist has a center-right political bias. Maybe they're advocating for something specific here (it's honestly unclear), but given that the Economist almost never writes anything of substance about s…

Their lean is far more center than right, and their right-wing nature is more in the European liberal style (think the German FDP, not the CDU/CSU and definitely not the Republican party's views on environmentalism). Very pro-business, but not socially conservative or anti-environmentalism.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#88

Post by Alex3917 »

tokenadult wrote: post #14

This is an excellent overview article on an important topic. It mentions many of the most influential authors on the topic of accuracy of scientific publications. Hacker News readers may enjoy "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"[1] by Peter Norvig, a LISP hacker who is now director of research at Google, on how to interpret scientific research. Norvig's essay is my all-time favorite link to shar…

> Warning Sign I5: Taking p too Seriously

What does it say about X when you have 10 studies saying X is true with p Also, while I do like norvig's essay, all the errors he goes through are fairly pedestrian. If you read the modern scientific literature on research, the rabbit hole goes vastly deeper. (Assuming researchers researching researchers are more trustworthy than researchers.)

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#89

Post by dnautics »

hsitz wrote: post #39
frogpelt wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did this article mention climate change? If you agree with every fact in the article, why would you look for a hidden agenda? Your comment makes you seem a bit paranoid.

I also think the linked article was somewhat strange. Or maybe just linkbaity. The title can be paraphrased as "To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting." However, the article actually describes the way science is supposed to work, which is self-correcting. The main criticism in the article seems to be that, in much of current scientific practice, the self-correction doesn't happen immediately. Well, it…

"The main criticism in the article seems to be that, in much of current scientific practice, the self-correction doesn't happen immediately."

Wrong. This is not the main criticism of the article. It is not a problem if self-correction doesn't happen immediately. It is, however, a problem if the rate of self-correction is not fast enough to compensate for the ratio of 'horrifyingly wrong' to 'generally correct' papers.

Re: To an alarming degree, science is not self-correcting

#90

Post by Strilanc »

Their starting example of priming reminds me of the post/video "Fixing Toxic Online Behavior in League of Legends" [1], where the makers of LoL discuss (among other things) testing how well priming was reducing toxic behavior.

They had absurd results like changing the color of intro text giving (IIRC) ~30% reductions, and were (IMO) obviously accidentally cherry picking.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5616541

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