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The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

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Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#71

Post by basseq »

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…

Academia has always forced grad students to attempt innovative research. The core requirement of a PhD dissertation is "novel findings"—e.g., something completely new.

Apprentices work on papers and research for their professors. No one is incentivized to do replication work: either you replicate it successfully (great) or you find flaws. In the latter case, you'll probably be a nit-picker anyway—also not really additive. On the off-chance that you refute a high-profile study (e.g., some of the outright instances of fraud), you might get some recognition, but now your name is associated with something negative (e.g., fraud: "X is not true") vs. positive ("X is true").

Finally, this is some of the role of review panels in journals: too pass the burden of proof.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#72

Post by spacehome »

coldtea wrote: post #26
spacehome wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What conflict of interest does a Young Earth Creationist have? Not money. If you say religious belief, you'd be right, but it's not a terribly effective criticism because the majority of U.S. scientists are religious, too.

> What conflict of interest does a Young Earth Creationist have? Not money. Why not money? Most of them built a career that is celebrated, while being lousy scientists, by playing the Creationist card and appealing to particular political/religious publics. And working for similarly minded organizations and "research" institutes. > If you say religious belief, you'd be right, but it's not a terribly effective critici…

> Why not money? Most of them built a career that is celebrated, while being lousy scientists, by playing the Creationist card and appealing to particular political/religious publics. And working for similarly minded organizations and "research" institutes.

Maybe, but I think they're true believers.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#73

Post by JackFr »

bcook wrote: post #4
hellofunk wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But isn't science supposed to be, by definition, the anti-bullshit?

Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#74

Post by Practicality »

arca_vorago wrote: post #58
vlehto wrote: post #45

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.

So few understand that most "real life" things involve inductive logic (IE, probability) because real life is simply too complex and variable to give absolute deductive proofs of most things. You can still come to solid conclusions, but those conclusions are still "most probably true" rather than "absolutely true."

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#75

Post by Chris2048 »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #55

' Instead, “It’s about a methodology for investigation, which includes, at its core, a relentless drive towards questioning that which came before.” You can both “love science,” he concludes, “and question it.” ' I've noticed that questioning some scientific finding often makes people think I am either anti-science, anti-intellectual, conservative, religious, or any combination thereof (I am none of these). To state…

If the science has "social" before it, it always needs to be questioned - too much political interference. The entire field is low in actual results, high in political tooling..

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#76

Post by apo »

>... 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 frequently in areas for which few controlled studies are available to light the way. Human nutrition and toxicology come to mind. Oddly enough, these are the areas that are most likely to be of interest to non-scientists, setting up a vicious cycle of guru-ism complete with economic incentive to continue spouting nonsense.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#78

Post by breischl »

apo wrote: post #76

>... 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…

>>the undue weight that non-scientists place on expert opinion

Speaking as a non-scientist, I can recognize an appeal to authority probably just as well as a scientist. But having recognized one, what do I do? I lack the training, knowledge, and time necessary to evaluate the research directly. I can choose to only trust studies that are peer reviewed, or in major journals, or backed by whatever relevant government body there might be, or that my friend who knows about this thinks are right. And maybe that's a good idea, but it's still just appealing to different kinds of authority.

Most of the time laypeople have no realistic alternative to expert opinion.

Re: The Unbearable Asymmetry of Bullshit

#80

Post by otoburb »

ska wrote: post #64
privong wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. It's important to note that though this seem…

I think it does vary a lot by discipline. In my area of mathematics I don't recall ever hearing of it. For whatever it is worth I even published papers without my supervisor being on them at all, if he hadn't been involved in that work.

How does attribution and second/third authorship work if you "just" bounced ideas off your supervisor or fellow students in verbal discussions? I'm trying to gauge how strict attribution rules are in what I would consider a gray area.
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