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The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

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Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#41

Post by notahacker »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #23
notahacker wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, in some cases that's likely to backfire. Point out that a global warming sceptic accepts huge amounts of money from an oil-company linked foundation and they'll take great pleasure in pointing out which green advocacy groups fund an awful lot of research on the other side of the debate. If the net effect is less trust in any climate science, they win.

There doesn't seem to be any equivalance there. I'm sure that they'd try to pretend there is, and indeed they already do make vague claims about a "climate change lobby" making millions, and it all being a front for "lefties", but that doesn't really alter the fact that it isn't there.

Equivalence doesn't need to exist for FUD to work. (and to be fair, research whose funding appears to be predicated on the study being designed to support the funding foundation's official position on the issue is open to question regardless of whether the foundation has ulterior motives or not)

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#42

Post by studentrob »

Bullshit is a byproduct of a highly incentivized research market. This is what respected journals are supposed to help curate. There are opportunities to create better forms of curation with less bullshit and I would bet people will pay for it.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#44

Post by mrcactu5 »

this is a great time to bring up Bullshit as a topic of study in and of its self. http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html

We routinely say things that aren't quite true -- sometimes with the best intentions or out of necessity. The truth can be a very complicated thing.

What we are calling "bullshit" may go under more serious names (and serious discussions) if we look at specific cases - e.g. finance, medicine, game theory, biology, etc... My back-of-the-envlope definition is that of an "approximation to the truth".

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#45

Post by vlehto »

vog wrote: post #17
trav4225 wrote: post #2

"There is a veritable truckload of bullshit in science." Amen to that. :) I'm a bit tired of seeing critics of various hypotheses being dismissed out of hand simply "Because Science".

> I'm a bit tired of seeing critics of various hypotheses being dismissed out of hand simply "Because Science". While this is certainly an issue, more often than not I see "critics" claiming broad statements without even trying to verify/falsify their claims scientifically. And if I have to choose between two sides, where one tries hard to fulfill scientific requirements while the other doesn't care, I'm certainly on…

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.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#46

Post by tines »

compactmani wrote: post #38
brownbat wrote: post #19

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…

If the work you are doing isn't reproducible, then it won't be cited as the building blocks for future work. The system is cleans itself out as a side effect. Therefore I prefer students to work on cutting edge research.

The point is that nobody knows if it's reproducible, because nobody's attempting to reproduce it.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#47

Post by LeifCarrotson »

themartorana wrote: post #36
brownbat wrote: post #19

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…

A lot of the time those same students are doing the bulk of the legwork for those findings then attributed to a professor, who is under greater pressure to advance (not confirm) science, who may or may not have even participated heavily in the grunt work of that research. The professor then punishes the work under his/her name, with no credit to the work of the students.

Publishes. I assume that was a typo?

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#48

Post by [deleted] »

themartorana wrote: post #36
brownbat wrote: post #19

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…

A lot of the time those same students are doing the bulk of the legwork for those findings then attributed to a professor, who is under greater pressure to advance (not confirm) science, who may or may not have even participated heavily in the grunt work of that research. The professor then punishes the work under his/her name, with no credit to the work of the students.

[deleted]

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#49

Post by arethuza »

hellofunk wrote: post #3
trav4225 wrote: post #2

"There is a veritable truckload of bullshit in science." Amen to that. :) I'm a bit tired of seeing critics of various hypotheses being dismissed out of hand simply "Because Science".

Yes but in fairness there is a fair amount of BS in any area of human endeavor. There are BS movies, BS politicians, BS music, BS programming languages; it's certainly not unique to science.

Isn't that Sturgeon's law: "ninety percent of everything is crap."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon's_law

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