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"In a world with limited space for publishing research – which is not our world – this would be a good reason to reject the article." LOL - so essentially: "pr

by roel_v 11y ago

"In a world with limited space for publishing research – which is not our world – this would be a good reason to reject the article." LOL - so essentially: "printing/copying of PDF is cheap, so Y U no publish this 'study' of a regression that a first-year stats student could do with an interpretation of that regression that is devoid of any scientific method?" Yes, if your paper is weak to begin with, you need to jump through more hoops (i.e., sell your research better). Look, getting your papers published sucks sometimes, but if anything, the OP confirms that peer review works. Or maybe what it shows is how it fails in that when people take weak research and just keep submitting to journal after journal until one is tricked into accepting. (the further I read on the page, the more I'm convinced we're subtly being trolled here: "The new knowledge was all created two years before it was published." "new knowledge"? A regression on a publicly available data set with the main dependent being an ambiguous 3-option question on a highly contentious and nuanced topic; and some 'discussion' which the authors admit in the first paragraph is unverifiable and basically an opinion piece?) (edit: typo)

stdbrouw 11y ago
A scientific conclusion does not become intrinsically less interesting just because all it took was a regression a first-year stats student could do. Simple and obvious is often better. The suggestion in the linked article that, "hey, we ran a regression so now we can just come up with whatever interpretation we like" irked me as well, but you really do have to read the comments of the peer reviewers: one is peeved by the fact that they don't talk about his/her pet topic, another that they don't include this or that kind of historical context, another tries to be smart about statistical methodology but in the process shows their incompetence (a beta coefficient is a measure of effect size, you dummy)... when all the authors want to do is to point at the fact that opposition to pornography has declined over time. You can argue that this is not interesting, that this is obvious, but the whole point of science is to not accept things just because they seem obvious. A new journal launched recently, by the way, which is aimed at exactly this sort of finding: https://sciencematters.io https://sciencematters.io The idea is that scientists will be able to publish empirical results without the requirement to craft an entire story around it. Science needs theory but it also needs facts.

by roel_v 11y ago

stdbrouw 11y ago

A scientific conclusion does not become intrinsically less interesting just because all it took was a regression a first-year stats student could do. Simple and obvious is often better. The suggestion in the linked article that, "hey, we ran a regression so now we can just come up with whatever interpretation we like" irked me as well, but you really do have to read the comments of the peer reviewers: one is peeved by the fact that they don't talk about his/her pet topic, another that they don't include this or that kind of historical context, another tries to be smart about statistical methodology but in the process shows their incompetence (a beta coefficient is a measure of effect size, you dummy)... when all the authors want to do is to point at the fact that opposition to pornography has declined over time. You can argue that this is not interesting, that this is obvious, but the whole point of science is to not accept things just because they seem obvious. A new journal launched recently, by the way, which is aimed at exactly this sort of finding: https://sciencematters.io https://sciencematters.io The idea is that scientists will be able to publish empirical results without the requirement to craft an entire story around it. Science needs theory but it also needs facts.