151–160 of 163 posts
For the mass, it could be okay. For the people that pretends to be respected for their authority at discerning (the experts) it is quite a proof the expert model is not working.
The job market right now in the US forces grad students to attempt innovative research with remarkable conclusions. As a consequence, everyone's trying to prove more outlandish things while few are bothering with replications. If the field were sane, you would train all the apprentices on replication studies. Once they demonstrated dispassionate expertise with the tools, only then would they be allowed to try to use…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Arguing against the speaker instead of the argument itself is bullshit too. Having a vested interest doesn't automatically discredit the things one says for their cause.
It is, but where do you draw the line? In an ideal world where everyone was a rational, disinterested superhuman who devoted themselves to a scientific pursuit of truth, only ever focusing on arguments would be the perfect approach. Unfortunately there do exist people who deliberately and knowingly bullshit other people in order to get what they want. Such people absolutely win from a policy of "attack the argument,…
>... He Who Shall Not Be Named predictably rejects all of the studies that do not support his position as being “fatally flawed,” or as having been “refuted by experts”—namely, by himself and his close collaborators ... This speaks to part of the problem - the undue weight that non-scientists place on expert opinion. Trained scientists see appeal to authority arguments for what they are: bullshit. I see this most fre…
And yet otherwise reasonable people embrace the concept of "scientific consensus" most notably in the man made global warming discussion. This is nothing but an appeal to authority . While it is true that commonly good ideas are accepted by a majority of researchers in the relevant field, it is not 100% guaranteed. It is such a shame that we reach for the "scientific consensus" argument when there is no need due to t…
https://mises.org/library/skeptics-case
Note; not "climate change" in general, or even just "global warming" but the specific hypothesis that it's all down to co2 emissions by humans, invariably followed up with a proposed solution to the problem consisting of an increase in state power and interference into the markets in order to avert certain catastrophe, that has the neat side effect of allowing the political authorities of the world to impose yet another tax on almost all economic activity on the planet.
And all of the above gets neatly rolled up into a label like "climate change" instead of the greatly expanded problem / solution combination the harder the expanded problem / solution combination is critically evaluated.
Nothing to see here, move along.
The job market right now in the US forces grad students to attempt innovative research with remarkable conclusions. As a consequence, everyone's trying to prove more outlandish things while few are bothering with replications. If the field were sane, you would train all the apprentices on replication studies. Once they demonstrated dispassionate expertise with the tools, only then would they be allowed to try to use…
That is a bold claim and conclusion, what data are you basing that on?
http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jour...
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://...
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/01/15/463237871/episo...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In mathematics, multiple authors are always listed alphabetically by family name; ie there is no "first" or "second" author. In the situation you describe, the paper would probably be singly authored, and the author would write something like "Thanks to my advisor _____ and to my colleagues ____ for many helpful discussions" in an acknowledgments section. If the contributions were more serious, then possibly the auth…
>In mathematics, multiple authors are always listed alphabetically by family name; ie there is no "first" or "second" author. Is there any research showing this standard to be fair? People pay more attention to the first item of a list than to the middle ones, making me think that one's position on such a list could have a small benefit. Less important if there are overall less multiple name papers, which it seems fr…
I don't know of any.
Less important if there are overall less multiple name papers, which it seems from the rest of your comment,
Actually, I think multiple authors is far more common than single authors, though I don't know the numbers to back it up. I was responding to a very specific "what-if" scenario of bouncing ideas off someone else, and describing what would happen in that case.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem is that nobody's doing replication work in undergrad, either, nor does it happen in Master's programs. I do think it makes sense to stick with the PhD meaning you're a world class expert in some area, but if so then we need to adjust our expectations for what Master's level work means in the sciences. Right now it seems to just represent a hurdle you need to whiz past on your way to the PhD.
A good Bachelors degree will prepare a good student for replicating science, and a good Masters degree will definitely leave a motivated and skilled student with a good advisor a master of his or her specific field. The problem is that grade inflation means the majority of students will fall short of these goalposts. I agree with your assessment that undergrad degrees represent hurdles, regardless of whether a studen…
I'm having trouble believing this.
In UK, most Masters degrees last 1 year, and there are several degrees considered good such as Imperial's MSc in Machine Learning, Cambridge's MPhil in Machine Learning, Speech and Language Technology, Edinburgh's MSc in Cognitive Science, and others. Is it really possible to become a "master" of machine learning in one year?
Also, at least in Computer Science, most of the Bachelors degrees considered good in UK do not seem to focus at all on replicating science. In fact, for my final year undergraduate project, I was encouraged to find something novel, and at no point my supervisor hinted towards focusing on replicability.
Is it perhaps more common in US?
The job market right now in the US forces grad students to attempt innovative research with remarkable conclusions. As a consequence, everyone's trying to prove more outlandish things while few are bothering with replications. If the field were sane, you would train all the apprentices on replication studies. Once they demonstrated dispassionate expertise with the tools, only then would they be allowed to try to use…
That is nearly the opposite of what the PhD was designed to do. Modern academic training comes out of the church and the old guilds of middle Europe and is still in use today in many fields (chefs and plumbers to name a few). The Bachelor's degree is loosely similar to an apprentice's role. The young boy (they were almost exclusively male) worked in a shop or with a priest for some time. He learned the trade, the too…
We used to think placebo controls and double blinds were a waste of time. One great thing about the history of science your version excludes is that the way we do science is subject to review too, and we continually throw out what doesn't work in favor of methods that do.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd like to point out that there are three possible stances on a phenomena. True, false and we don't know. People are bad at maintaining the "I don't know" stance. But it's sometimes the only objective.
I would like to point out that you are missing one of the most important stances: one of probability. Sometimes you dont know, but factors indicate a percentage probability, that should be updated as the data changes.
In politics "probable" is fuzzier concept and often just a cop out. You can justify anything with that idea, but you have no responsibility afterwards (damn, we went to the 5% range after all, sorry!). And you don't need any kind of real sources, just authority or lack of imagination suits just fine.
When we wander into personal world views or some casual conversations, assigning probabilities become really good idea. But then it's often about who's authority you trust most, than what data you can actually consider.
And end of the day most people still gravitate towards either "extremely likely" or "incredibly unlikely" most of the time. You just use likelihood as a way to show that you actually considered that your statement might be false, but you don't actually consider it to be.
This psychological tendency for people to make up their minds, and then not change their minds is actually at the heart of the problem. These "critics" could not have mass following to their bullshit ideas without it. But currently lots of people fail to understand that just providing half decent criticism against an idea does not prove the opposing idea true. Because human beings are naturally bad at not making their minds.
Another tactic I've seen from the Lord Voldemorts I know is to cite loads of references that aren't readily available online. Such a citation can be used to prop up _any_ argument, whether or not the citation actually supports the argument, or even has any bearing on it at all. It's the same trap, though. To disupte the citation, you have to wait months for an inter-library loan, read the cited work in detail, and th…
Why can't we name these people? Libel? Pastebin? Fuck these frauds.
The tactics I and the original article were describing allow Lord Voldemort to clothe any assertion he likes in the robes of science. The root of this problem is a broken incentive system for publication. We're required to publish a lot to show productivity, and we're trained to put in lots of citations to back up our work. This creates an unmanageable avalanche of worthless papers and makes it easy to build a false trail of scammy citations.
Compare this to the situation 50 years ago, before publication inflation had set in. John Nash wrote a 30 page dissertation, and cited two works at the end of it. Simon's classic "Behavioral Model of Rational Choice" cited 5 works. The entire Cowles commission report on Activity Analysis devoted only 4.5 of its 418 pages to citations, and that included a detailed lit review in its introduction. Nothing makes it to press these days without five to ten times as many citations.