An erroneous paper on religion and generosity is retracted • Hacker News Board

Re: An erroneous paper on religion and generosity is retracted

#161

Post by Grue3 » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 7:03 PM UTC

catawbasam wrote: post #70

Scapeghost wrote: post #49

I am from a third-world religious country and I'd just like to take this chance to say that religion should be classified as a mental disorder. I see the effects of it first hand, severely crippling the potential of individuals and entire cultures. There's nothing it offers that can't be taught by basic morals which don't require you to appease an imaginary entity or repress the human spirit. Even the leaders of reli…

I'd rather not be classified as insane, thanks. If you read the OP article, the research suggests religion has positive effects on children. Your response to the corrected findings?

The negative effects (sexism, homophobia, general bigotry) greatly outweigh any positive effects that might happen. And the things they're generous towards are usually some anti-abortion or anti-LGBT organisations and politicians.

Re: An erroneous paper on religion and generosity is retracted

#162

Post by superhuzza » Sat, Sep 28, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

joelhoffman wrote: post #22

UncleMeat wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've never had a bug in your code that seemed insane after the fact?

This is why we have code review processes. It's long past time for that to be part of formal scientific peer review.

Well theoretically it already is, given you normally have multiple authors and reviewers. It's just done poorly, just as a code review can be done poorly.

Re: An erroneous paper on religion and generosity is retracted

#163

Post by nurettin » Sun, Sep 29, 2019, 12:35 AM UTC

TimTheTinker wrote: post #148

nurettin wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how that relates to my question. Why would an idea exist without someone to give it purpose?

Because it constitutes belief and/or knowledge. Because it is true, or someone believes it to be so. Because it carries explanatory power - something we all strongly desire. You might call those reasons “purposes” - if so, I don’t disagree. But the truth or falsehood of an idea transcends any “purpose” someone may have for speaking it. This is the academic posture: to dispassionately evaluate truth claims without fea…

Yes I understand that the naive position may be used as a default position for understanding ideas, and that is fine.

That doesn't stop us from acknowledging the fact that ideas and worldviews have strong ties and are intermingled enough that they almost always warrant an underlying motivation whether that be a noble search for truth or a way of digging further into denial.

Re: An erroneous paper on religion and generosity is retracted

#164

Post by joelhoffman » Mon, Sep 30, 2019, 8:35 PM UTC

UncleMeat wrote: post #98

joelhoffman wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why we have code review processes. It's long past time for that to be part of formal scientific peer review.

A few cs conferences have artifact evals. Most all research in cs doesn't actually have any sort of code review at all. No field is implementing the thing you are expecting.

I think it will be an uphill battle no doubt, but I think the only alternative would be to share the whole dataset and have reviewers re-implement the analysis to confirm the results. That would also be a huge improvement, but it seems like a much bigger burden on reviewers.

Re: An erroneous paper on religion and generosity is retracted

#165

Post by mr_overalls » Tue, Oct 01, 2019, 5:34 PM UTC

high_5 wrote: post #156

mr_overalls wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Psychology and sociology can be made as rigorous as individuals & institutions care to. Theology, not so much.

Actually most of the (christian) theology (when discussed by theologists) within its confines is very rigorous.

Theology can be rigorous in the sense of its models possessing internal validity (logical consistency, parsimony).

However, because it's basically speculation about unobservable entities, theology completely lacks external validity.

Social sciences can have both.