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False claims in a widely-cited paper

statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu

141–150 of 181 posts

Re: False claims in a widely-cited paper

#141
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had the privilege last night of attending a lecture given by Prof Sir John Kay (Obliquity, Radical Uncertainty, etc). He was scathing on two points: 1) the way the world changed in the 1970s from management as responsibility to leadership as prize, and 2) the abject failure of business schools to develop a serious body of knowledge. Taken together, business schools have become cash cows for universities while still…

There was tremendous resistance to setting up that school both because of where the money came from but more so because of the possibility that the school would not actually be academic but more 'professional' instead. I can't comment on the former as it seems mostly just xenophobic but maybe there are other angles there. The latter is definitely a concern though.

Not xenophobic. Oxford happily takes money from people from anywhere all the time. It might be things such as his involvement in the Al Yamamah arms deal.

Re: False claims in a widely-cited paper

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in more respected journals, peer review is often done by beleaguered grad students who could be still relatively new to the field. They lack the experience to look at things with a critical eye.

Graduate students! Hah! ML researchers can only hope their papers at ICLR/ICML/NeurIPs are reviewed by graduate students!

You had grad students? Ha, we would'a killed for grad students. Our work was reviewed by two trained pigeons and a dead salmon. And we liked it!

Re: False claims in a widely-cited paper

#143

Peer review is a joke still and exists now to please deans (for hiring and promotion) and enrich publishers. Bad papers get published if it reaffirms the biases of editors, and actually good and original stuff gets rejected. Rather than facilitating the exchange of knowledge, it acts as a barrier, especially when it cannot even be relied on for quality control.

For almost the last two centuries, we have grown accustomed to the fact that theory derive practical and useful results. This made academic system flourish including practices such as peer review, etc. But for the millenniums preceding that, it was the reverse, practice and observation drove theory, and I wonder if we are going back to that and practice and once again dominate how we discover new things as a civiliza…

"For almost the last two centuries, we have grown accustomed to [...]including practices such as peer review"

Nitpick: peer review as we know it is only about fifty years old.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=peer+reviewed&...

Re: False claims in a widely-cited paper

#144
post #105
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider "this" right to be moral in a different way. Now the right all around the world is hijacked by narcissistic greed that punishes any voicing of conservative moral. In the US some republicans are daring to challenge the extreme narcissistic greed and a lot more are thinking about this privately. I also mentioned the other dichotomies and perhaps the "right" could be hopelessness and the the "left" false hope…

You're still making a leftist argument here, even if you end up dismissing the left as "corrupt" without pointing to anything specific. Maybe you have some personal difficulty identifying with the left? You're not wrong in your characterizations, you just seem to be using different labels to me. Maybe this is a US thing? Because there barely is a left wing in US politics. Democrats are right wing, for one.

I'm from Finland and more aligned to the left I guess.

I'm trying to distance myself from though as I'm currently seeing everything as merely corrupt (by power) elite vs. normal people.

But yes, perhaps the thing I'm looking after is something like the real equality side, which to me doesn't seem to exist as even the left here in Finland seems to disregard the laws of physics and nature in terms of the impossible eternal growth.

Re: False claims in a widely-cited paper

#145
post #98
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider "this" right to be moral in a different way. Now the right all around the world is hijacked by narcissistic greed that punishes any voicing of conservative moral. In the US some republicans are daring to challenge the extreme narcissistic greed and a lot more are thinking about this privately. I also mentioned the other dichotomies and perhaps the "right" could be hopelessness and the the "left" false hope…

Are you an American? It would help me frame my response better to know. I assume yes for now, apologies if not. > The Trump humangod class is not the right IMO. Basically the problem with American education is that they started using the wrong words to describe things. American libertarians are right wing and not anarchists, American liberals are right wing, American right wingers are religious ethno-fascists, and Am…

Yup, I'm still thinking that also the right has had some moral foundations and even some classical Christian values before, but just like Mamdani has centraled already the right has been Republican-Jesused from the classical Jesus (not that they ever were 100% that).

But the both show (at least to me) the corruption by power thus compromising. Either consciously or un.

I'm seeing as the natural solution, something that has been a bit field tested here in Finland, that we start the discussion on what is the safe limit for individual power or money before the risk of corruption. After the latest year almost everyone agrees that this is a conversation we must have to stand a chance.

Re: False claims in a widely-cited paper

#146

The correction policy is the tell. If your journal's correction process requires the person who was wrong to initiate it, you haven't built a correction processs you've built a complaint resolution process that defaults to 'no complaint, no problem.' Medicine figured this out the hard way after thalidomide. Somehow management academia looked at that history and decided it didn't apply to them...

> Medicine figured this out the hard way after thalidomide. Medicine never figured this out. The medical community put Semmelweis in a lunatic asylum, because physicians' ego could not accept the fact that their unclean hands were causing harm to patients. Semmelweis' modern peers continue to let millions of patients die preventable deaths due to errors in medical decisionmaking, and ego plus institutional inertia pr…

Semmelweis died approximately 100 years before the thalidomide scandal so not sure what that is supposed to prove…

(other than being a favorite go-to of numerous quacks and charlatans who insist that modern medicine is similarly persecuting them).

Re: False claims in a widely-cited paper

#147
What does it matter that the claims are "false" if claiming them as the truth results in encouraging the society we wish to exist? That paper is a cornerstone of sustainability initiatives, if you retract it, you might as well set the whole Earth on fire. To hell with integrity, I say, it's time to do some good for the world!

Re: False claims in a widely-cited paper

#148
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social studies is a school subject, that's irrelevant. You really think sociology is not a science then? Sociologists do way more rigorous statistics than physicists do. They have to, because physical sciences deal with deterministic objects, while social sciences deal with nondeterministic subjects.

>Sociologists do way more rigorous statistics than physicists do. Whilst I agree that can be a science the amount of contradicting bs, ideologically driven stuff i've seen come out of one such department and their replication crisis kind of undercut their credibility on that front for me.

There's been similar cases in physical sciences. E.g. all the room temperature superconductor stuff a few years back, Avi Loeb claiming that an object hurtling thorugh the solar system was alien technology.

There's also more fraud in medicine or health sciences.

You make some very handwavy claims about ideology, do you mean economy by this? It's the most clearly politicized of the social sciences, qnd the one that has been most funded by political actors. This I can concede. But don't throw sociology under the bus just because economy has a bad rap.

Re: False claims in a widely-cited paper

#149
post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're still making a leftist argument here, even if you end up dismissing the left as "corrupt" without pointing to anything specific. Maybe you have some personal difficulty identifying with the left? You're not wrong in your characterizations, you just seem to be using different labels to me. Maybe this is a US thing? Because there barely is a left wing in US politics. Democrats are right wing, for one.

I'm from Finland and more aligned to the left I guess. I'm trying to distance myself from though as I'm currently seeing everything as merely corrupt (by power) elite vs. normal people. But yes, perhaps the thing I'm looking after is something like the real equality side, which to me doesn't seem to exist as even the left here in Finland seems to disregard the laws of physics and nature in terms of the impossible ete…

What a coincidence, I'm also Finnish.

Vas. definitely has degrowth as a part of their platform, and is often speaking against eternal growth and trying to get climate laws passed. They're only one party, and the last govt's more left-leaning SD was the best partner they could have had here, but Kesk. dragged down their efforts. Of course now, with Antti Lindtman, we have a right-wing SD, I agree that they aren't very clear on policy, and are fine with sitting around waiting to win the election on the current govt's failures.

What I'm trying to say is that I don't recognize your picture of the left within Finland. Which to be clear is something like Vas. + some parts of SD (Mäkynen, Kiuru e.g.).

Re: False claims in a widely-cited paper

#150

cleaned up url: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2026/03/24/false-clai... (if not trying to highlight that particular comment on it)

dang could you change the link

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