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How Much Science Is Fake?

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Re: How Much Science Is Fake?

#51

Post by mewpmewp2 »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #44
mewpmewp2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And that's why the term is confusing, because there's a magical meaning behind that, which who knows what it exactly means. And you use this term to raise children - I absolutely was confused as a child about the meaning behind it. It felt like this magical term that I was unable to comprehend. Almost like circular reasoning - if something is processed it's bad for you. What does processed mean? That it's made bad fo…

Cooked carrot = not processed Oreo = processed Soda = processed Steak = not processed Sugar = processed We can keep on going with all possible ingredients and all possible combinations and most sane people will agree on what is called "processed" or not. This is disingenuous discussion dressed up in smarty pants talk. Shall we continue or actually discuss something substantive? Like the fact that Americans are morbid…

First answer in Google says that cooked carrots and baked potatoes are processed. But I'm supposed to take your definition over what is available elsewhere? In addition frozen broccoli is processed. This is coming from Harvard Health Publishing and UCLA Health. Are they all insane?

Re: How Much Science Is Fake?

#52

Post by ch4s3 »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #15

40-60% of scientific studies are not replicable, therefore fake as far as I'm concerned. That's why "show me the study" is such a midwit line of reasoning. We need to go back to thinking more with first principles, received wisdom, and personal experimentation. There's a place for scientific studies, but it's gone so far that many won't take an obvious point without a study behind it. There are many such examples tha…

Wouldn't you expect that given enough experiments, you'll have some number of well done experiments that just have weird sample groups? It's well known that if you go fishing in large populations you'll find associations that disappear if you do repeated studies with different subjects. There's clearly a bias to publish interesting results, so it seems natural to expect a lot of interesting findings to not be replicable, even if the study is carefully done and there's no ill intent.

Re: How Much Science Is Fake?

#53

Post by abecedarius »

mbreese wrote: post #6

I don’t think the issue is how much of “science” is fake. It’s how you define “science”. There have always been lower quality work and journals that are inherently given lower weight in the scientific community. Many of these lower quality papers just aren’t considered by working scientists. It’s a bit like email… once you start seeing a significant amount of spam, you just get used to ignoring it. This is a feature…

Imagine someone is caught in a fraud, and a commenter responds "There are two real issues - first, public trust in [person]." Wouldn't that priority strike you as strange? Obviously distrust is reasonable and it's much more important for the person to really become more trustworthy and for others to accurately understand the situation. The importance of science does not diminish this.

Re: How Much Science Is Fake?

#54

Post by cynicalpeace »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #51
cynicalpeace wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cooked carrot = not processed Oreo = processed Soda = processed Steak = not processed Sugar = processed We can keep on going with all possible ingredients and all possible combinations and most sane people will agree on what is called "processed" or not. This is disingenuous discussion dressed up in smarty pants talk. Shall we continue or actually discuss something substantive? Like the fact that Americans are morbid…

First answer in Google says that cooked carrots and baked potatoes are processed. But I'm supposed to take your definition over what is available elsewhere? In addition frozen broccoli is processed. This is coming from Harvard Health Publishing and UCLA Health. Are they all insane?

Would you move on if I replace "not processed" with "minimally processed" and "processed" with "ultra processed"?

You're not some harbinger of truth if we do that.

In fact, it's pretty evil (idc if you're Harvard, UCLA, or a commenter on HN) to argue over whether or not you can distinguish between a cooked carrot or an Oreo.

Which brings me back to my original point. That educated spaces need a study or even just a link to an authoritative source to accept even the most basic point. Here's a Harvard link for you: https://nutritionsource.hsph.harvard.edu/processed-foods/

Hope that's satisfactory for you. LMK if you need a UCLA or Stanford link.

Re: How Much Science Is Fake?

#55

Post by lapcat »

1) The paper defines "fake" in this first sentence:

> ‘Fake’ science is either intentionally fabricated-where quantitative elements are invented-or intentionally falsified-where results are dishonestly engineered from real data.

2) The title "How much science is fake?" is clickbaity. The actual assertion of the paper:

> a preliminary approximation is that 1 in 7 published papers have serious errors commensurate with being untrustworthy.

3) The paper is a meta-analysis of 12 other forensic metascience papers. The approximation of 1 in 7 (14%) is an average of estimates derived from those other papers.

4) It's important to note that publishing papers is just one small subset of the massive endeavor that we call science. Moreover, as far as I'm aware, "publish or perish" appears to be a relatively recent historical phenomena of professional academia. We could probably do without many published papers, which exist merely to advance the careers of the authors.

5) In any human endeavor that involves money and/or power—which is almost everything—there will be corruption. It's unavoidable, given human nature. Thus, there's nothing uniquely untrustworthy about science. And science was never intended to be a religion: self-criticism is supposed to be a feature, not a bug, so my personal view is that the open study of fake papers is a sign of health rather than a sign of disease.

6) Is 1 in 7 really that bad? The converse is that 86% of published papers do not have serious errors commensurate with being untrustworthy.

Re: How Much Science Is Fake?

#56

Post by tbrownaw »

cynicalpeace wrote: post #46
zzbzq wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I claim "processed food" isn't even a cogent concept.

I claim "concept" isn't even a cogent concept. In fact I claim "cogent" isn't even a cogent concept How about "claim"? See how these definitional arguments become un-useful and boring?

I know the "processed food" thing is the heap paradox because the amount of processing isn't naturally a binary, but what are your "let's just substitute a different word here" claims based on?

Re: How Much Science Is Fake?

#57

Post by cynicalpeace »

davisoneee wrote: post #40
cynicalpeace wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fake is a good word. "unjustified and sloppy" is fake to me. We have different definitions of fake and shouldn't get hung up on definitions. My last word on it is I should be antagonistic against people who are deciding what goes in my son's school lunch based off of "unjustified and sloppy" studies. First principles + received wisdom are counter balancing, not contradicting. Everything in life is a balance.

Definitions matter when it comes discussion, as what you say influences how people feel on a topic. Broad, non-specific definitions leave a lot of space for bias rather than clarity. If you describe it as 'fake', I consider that to give the impression of 'the answer is NOT' this, and could lead to anti-policy. If the description is 'unjustified and sloppy', that can lead to additional research to properly invalidate…

We have different style. That's OK. Not everyone has to talk like a bureaucrat.

Re: How Much Science Is Fake?

#58

Post by cynicalpeace »

tbrownaw wrote: post #56
cynicalpeace wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I claim "concept" isn't even a cogent concept. In fact I claim "cogent" isn't even a cogent concept How about "claim"? See how these definitional arguments become un-useful and boring?

I know the "processed food" thing is the heap paradox because the amount of processing isn't naturally a binary, but what are your "let's just substitute a different word here" claims based on?

"When do grains of sand become a heap" is a good analogue to it.

"what are your "let's just substitute a different word here" claims based on?"

Being annoyed that even when the comment is "people love to poke holes in obvious truths, especially in well educated spaces like HN." HN commenters begin to poke holes in an obvious truth- that there even is such a thing as processed foods. It'd be like arguing that heaps of sand don't exist because it's not "cogent concept"

Re: How Much Science Is Fake?

#59

Post by User23 »

mewpmewp2 wrote: post #38
cynicalpeace wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a disingenuous question because you obviously know cooked meat is not what we usually mean by processed food.

And that's why the term is confusing, because there's a magical meaning behind that, which who knows what it exactly means. And you use this term to raise children - I absolutely was confused as a child about the meaning behind it. It felt like this magical term that I was unable to comprehend. Almost like circular reasoning - if something is processed it's bad for you. What does processed mean? That it's made bad fo…

It’s certainly got an element of know it when you see it. Nonetheless it’s pretty easy to figure out. One good piece of evidence to consider is whether or not process chemistry is involved in its making.

Re: How Much Science Is Fake?

#60

Post by zehaeva »

Dalewyn wrote: post #20
davisoneee wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing is _ever_ certain or completely specified in science (or elsewhere)... and society is going to move forward, so what level of 'evidence' is sufficient for you? This is going to come across as antagonistic, but...what's the alternative? "The argument that science should be trusted is insane..." ... so are we expected to twiddle our thumbs and do nothing for the rest of time? I'm assuming you trust at some poin…

>so what level of 'evidence' is sufficient for you? Enough evidence such that no evidence to the contrary can stand. We agree that liquid water is wet because we can't find anything (yet) that says liquid water is not wet, it's simple as that and science is ultimately as simple as that. >Have you ever flown? Yup, I'm a frequent flyer actually and fly more or less every month or two for business (and pleasure once the…

>We agree that liquid water is wet because we can't find anything (yet) that says liquid water is not wet, it's simple as that and science is ultimately as simple as that.

I find this a weird example of something that has "Enough evidence such that no evidence to the contrary can stand."

"Water is wet" is a definition, not a scientific finding/description. "Water tends to adhere to, and penetrate, materials." That's sort of a scientific finding. "We call this condition wet" isn't so much.

Science, by Popper's definition, is something that can be falsified but has not yet been so. If no evidence could contradict our current findings then, by definition, our current findings are not falsifiable.

I realize that I'm quibbling about definitions, I guess I just want to point out that your level of evidence is dangerously close to being a self reinforcing tautology. Similar to how any religion justifies itself.

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