6 ms·

"Scientists often learn more from studies that fail. But failed studies can mean career death. So instead, they’re incentivized to generate positive results the

by drauh 10y ago

"Scientists often learn more from studies that fail. But failed studies can mean career death. So instead, they’re incentivized to generate positive results they can publish." Not in the "hard" sciences: my background is physics, and there are lots of papers on "failed studies", which serve to constrain the domain of applicability of some theory or other. Or, better yet, indicate new science to be found. The authors note the bias in the survey: "Our survey was not a scientific poll. For one, the respondents disproportionately hailed from the biomedical and social sciences and English-speaking communities."

delazeur 10y ago
To be fair, the science that the average person pays attention to generally falls within the biomedical and social sciences (e.g. studies about nutrition or how your job is making you depressed). Those are also the areas of science that have the biggest methodology problems, so from the perspective of a Vox writer it makes sense to talk about this as a "science" issue rather than a "biomedical and social science" issue.
tagrun 10y ago
As a physicist, I'm not happy with the trend of new research fields calling themselves science (mainly for benefiting from the hard-earned respect physics [or natural philosophy, as it was called] has gained throughout centuries, which is the real problem [rather than etymology]), and recently introduced concepts to gain some legitimacy, for justification, such as "hard science", "natural science", etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_science#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_science#Criticis... Now the word "science" somehow means "legitimate and respectable research". What's worse, it's not the reality of these fields but a distortion of reality through verbal association, and the word "science" is slowly being dragged into mud due to non-reproducible or downright wrong published results thanks to many such fields of "science". I should also add that mere "data fitting and data extrapolation" with no basic theory of fundamental understanding isn't science either. If you're curious about the details, Feynman has defined the issue very well at some point http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf
- James001 10y ago
  I disagree. I'm glad that science is becoming less associated with the "hard" sciences and is being used more broadly. After all, science is much more than simply the sciences that strictly use the scientific method. The "soft" sciences like psychology are sciences even though their methods are sometimes not easily reproducible. But we shouldn't be resigning outreslves simply because the "soft" science methods are more difficult than the "hard" sciences.
  - LoSboccacc 10y ago
    That's the definition for science and doing resesrch. This line of reasoning brought us Theranos and http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-reproducibility-test-1.18248 http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-f... So no science as a field should remain well defined in scope and meaning, in the same way crafting shouldn't be blurred with engineering.
    - douche 10y ago
      Science without the scientific method takes us back to alchemy, or astrology, or numerology. Those precursors eventually refined their methods and developed into sciences, but were not sciences. Most of the "soft" sciences appear to be closer to those protosciences, particularly when so much of the crackpot, discredited theories still circulate in the zeitgeist the way they do, as in, say psychology.
    - James001 10y ago
      Right, so long as we can agree that science is not limited to the scientific method. Science should be well defined, but not limited to arbitrary confines.
      - tagrun 10y ago
        Science is well defined. Oh, so when science is defined in the way Popper defines it, it is "arbitrary confines", but when it is defined in a way to legitimize cargo cult science, it is "well defined".
praccu 10y ago
Failure data can be useful in a more fine grained way, too: http://www.nature.com/news/computer-gleans-chemical-insight-from-lab-notebook-failures-1.19866 http://www.nature.com/news/computer-gleans-chemical-insight-...

by drauh 10y ago

delazeur 10y ago

To be fair, the science that the average person pays attention to generally falls within the biomedical and social sciences (e.g. studies about nutrition or how your job is making you depressed). Those are also the areas of science that have the biggest methodology problems, so from the perspective of a Vox writer it makes sense to talk about this as a "science" issue rather than a "biomedical and social science" issue.

tagrun 10y ago

As a physicist, I'm not happy with the trend of new research fields calling themselves science (mainly for benefiting from the hard-earned respect physics [or natural philosophy, as it was called] has gained throughout centuries, which is the real problem [rather than etymology]), and recently introduced concepts to gain some legitimacy, for justification, such as "hard science", "natural science", etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_science#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_and_soft_science#Criticis... Now the word "science" somehow means "legitimate and respectable research". What's worse, it's not the reality of these fields but a distortion of reality through verbal association, and the word "science" is slowly being dragged into mud due to non-reproducible or downright wrong published results thanks to many such fields of "science". I should also add that mere "data fitting and data extrapolation" with no basic theory of fundamental understanding isn't science either. If you're curious about the details, Feynman has defined the issue very well at some point http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.pdf

James001 10y ago
I disagree. I'm glad that science is becoming less associated with the "hard" sciences and is being used more broadly. After all, science is much more than simply the sciences that strictly use the scientific method. The "soft" sciences like psychology are sciences even though their methods are sometimes not easily reproducible. But we shouldn't be resigning outreslves simply because the "soft" science methods are more difficult than the "hard" sciences.
- LoSboccacc 10y ago
  That's the definition for science and doing resesrch. This line of reasoning brought us Theranos and http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-fail-reproducibility-test-1.18248 http://www.nature.com/news/over-half-of-psychology-studies-f... So no science as a field should remain well defined in scope and meaning, in the same way crafting shouldn't be blurred with engineering.
  - douche 10y ago
    Science without the scientific method takes us back to alchemy, or astrology, or numerology. Those precursors eventually refined their methods and developed into sciences, but were not sciences. Most of the "soft" sciences appear to be closer to those protosciences, particularly when so much of the crackpot, discredited theories still circulate in the zeitgeist the way they do, as in, say psychology.
  - James001 10y ago
    Right, so long as we can agree that science is not limited to the scientific method. Science should be well defined, but not limited to arbitrary confines.
    - tagrun 10y ago
      Science is well defined. Oh, so when science is defined in the way Popper defines it, it is "arbitrary confines", but when it is defined in a way to legitimize cargo cult science, it is "well defined".

praccu 10y ago

Failure data can be useful in a more fine grained way, too: http://www.nature.com/news/computer-gleans-chemical-insight-from-lab-notebook-failures-1.19866 http://www.nature.com/news/computer-gleans-chemical-insight-...