4 ms·

It indeed seems to be bad. If you try reading some papers you can find everything from conclusions obviously based on formal fallacies, confusing statistical si

It indeed seems to be bad. If you try reading some papers you can find everything from conclusions obviously based on formal fallacies, confusing statistical significance with practical significance, experiment designs that couldn't provide any new information no matter how they turn out, to outright bizarre flaws of logic such as dietary intakes calculated so that the body isn't able to excrete more than it absorbs. The medical science has decayed into a strange cargo cult where experiments are made and papers are written, but the essence of science, the pursuit of better understanding, is lacking. It's no wonder there has been no major progress in the last few decades and we have an epidemic of obesity and other metabolic disorders.

mtrn 10y ago
> but the essence of science, the pursuit of better understanding, is lacking When I read articles and books from scholars from the 19th and beginning 20th century, I'm often surprised how broad their horizons were and how cautious in their thinking. It's always a pleasure to read.
thingification 10y ago
Where can I read about medical science having been more focused on understanding in the past? I think the focus on small increments in (relatively) unimportant medical knowledge is perhaps the greatest tragedy of our time. Also, who calculates dietary intake that way? "Confusing statistical significance with practical significance" -- that's a great phrase!
- nonbel 10y ago
  >"Where can I read about medical science having been more focused on understanding in the past?" As far as I know no one has really written this up, it is just something you figure out by reading the literature. You see that despite the technological limitations at the time they tried to include tables of the data in as much detail as was practical and rule out competing explanations, etc. Over the decades this degenerated into testing null hypotheses and reporting p-values and averages. Now there is somewhat a recovery due to the sheer ease of transmitting information, but it is still amazing how little this is taken advantage of in general. I've thought about a book but not sure people would buy it. How much would you pay for something like that?

mtrn 10y ago

> but the essence of science, the pursuit of better understanding, is lacking When I read articles and books from scholars from the 19th and beginning 20th century, I'm often surprised how broad their horizons were and how cautious in their thinking. It's always a pleasure to read.

thingification 10y ago

Where can I read about medical science having been more focused on understanding in the past? I think the focus on small increments in (relatively) unimportant medical knowledge is perhaps the greatest tragedy of our time. Also, who calculates dietary intake that way? "Confusing statistical significance with practical significance" -- that's a great phrase!

nonbel 10y ago
>"Where can I read about medical science having been more focused on understanding in the past?" As far as I know no one has really written this up, it is just something you figure out by reading the literature. You see that despite the technological limitations at the time they tried to include tables of the data in as much detail as was practical and rule out competing explanations, etc. Over the decades this degenerated into testing null hypotheses and reporting p-values and averages. Now there is somewhat a recovery due to the sheer ease of transmitting information, but it is still amazing how little this is taken advantage of in general. I've thought about a book but not sure people would buy it. How much would you pay for something like that?