6 ms·

Someone has to do the research and "Big" whatever seems to be the ones with the money to do so. So, what should we expect from them? They are going to look for

by BFatts 9y ago

Someone has to do the research and "Big" whatever seems to be the ones with the money to do so. So, what should we expect from them? They are going to look for research that is compelling to their business model, but as long as it's not wholly misleading, why is it bad? All research should be taken with a grain of salt. I also have another question: Everyone in media is always looking for that story to break about "Big Business" doing something. Big Pharma, Big Chocolate, Big Auto... but what's the alternative? I doubt that mom and pop have the cash to do research. And I sure as hell won't trust any mom and pop research about pharmacology.

ianai 9y ago
The only alternative is public funding.
trendia 9y ago
Suppose that cocoa does not have direct effects on health. Recruit 60 people, give 30 of them cocoa and 30 of them placebo. Due to random chance, you'll sometimes get positive results, and sometimes get negative results. If all of those studies are published, then there isn't a huge problem -- a metastudy would show that on average cocoa doesn't affect health. But instead, support that only the positive studies are published. A third party reviewing the relevant literature will assume that all studies conducted showed a positive result, when in fact they were only the studies that were published. This is the problem with having sponsored research: the research itself can be done properly, but a bias in publishing can give an inaccurate view of the true science at hand.
- carbocation 9y ago
  Yours is a good description of publication bias. I think it's worth mentioning that funnel plots can give you a visual sense of whether there is publication bias, and tools such as Egger regression can help to try to tease out a less biased estimate in the face of publication bias.
drak0n1c 9y ago
Just like how "big business" has a motivation to fund certain types of research, people in media have ideological and business motivations for only investigating certain types of organizations and people.
emodendroket 9y ago
If only there were some sort of organization that was not driven by profit and had the ability to allocate the entire society's resources toward the common good. And incidentally I'd say a big part of the problem is that the research is totally misleading.
- njarboe 9y ago
  Any organization that has come close to "the ability to allocate the entire society's resources toward the common good" have created societies of great suffering and desperation so far. Maybe some super-intelligent computer system could do better?
  - emodendroket 9y ago
    That's just a more efficient way to propagate the preferences of whoever gets to control the computer system.
    - njarboe 9y ago
      The computer would just be set to maximize the "common good", of course.
      - emodendroket 9y ago
        As defined by whom?
        njarboe 9y ago
        That is the hard part, isn't it? The previous statements were a bit tongue-in-cheek, but also serious.
rhizome 9y ago
Someone has to do the research and "Big" whatever seems to be the ones with the money to do so. Ask yourself why this is so. Could it have to do with a reduction in public investment in original research, or, alternatively, an overall reduction in investment in unencumbered research? Point being: this work used to get done by non-corporate scientists, too.
fenwick67 9y ago
> "All research should be taken with a grain of salt" It's hard for any one person to read tens or hundreds of papers on a subject and critically examine them for fallacies, look for fake data, etc. It's just not plausible. At this rate, if us commonfolk are just expected to take a default position of not believing a scientific study or consensus until we personally vet them, what are we to actually believe? Do I need to go out and personally vet that evolution is real by personally reproducing some fruit fly studies? We're heading down a scary road if we cannot trust our scientific institutions to be unbiased.
- arcbyte 9y ago
  It's a scary road if everyone is just blanket assuming their sources of information are correct. We're living it. There are NO institutions WHATSOEVER that we should trust.
- Retric 9y ago
  My suggestion is to ignore anything that's not a meta study. Material science puts out thousands of papers a year, and ignoring them is easy because I lack context to understand them. IMO, the same is true of any field without a lot of study and literature review.
denzil_correa 9y ago
> All research should be taken with a grain of salt. The very fact of science is that you can take the same experiment and under the said assumptions; you can repeat the same experiment yourself and come to similar conclusions as the one done by the original scientists. > I doubt that mom and pop have the cash to do research. And I sure as hell won't trust any mom and pop research about pharmacology. AD Hominem fallacy - the status of someone has no relation to the outcome of a scientific experiment.
- bllguo 9y ago
  It has a relation to the ability of someone to actually conduct an experiment... Larger groups have more resources, from knowledge to experience to money. It is not an ad hominem fallacy. I don't know how you twisted his meaning to come to that conclusion.
  - athenot 9y ago
    Louis Pasteur and Pierre & Marie Curie fit the description of "mom and pop research", as compared to today's labs, yet their findings are still valid.
    - Sharlin 9y ago
      That was then, now is now. There are few low-hanging fruits left these days. Especially in a field where showing any effect practically requires a sample size of dozens to hundreds and an observation period of years to decades.
    - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
      That level is still somewhat prohibitive for a lot of folks. Schooling alone can cost quite a bit, and without this a lot of places won't take you seriously regardless of your self-study. This aspect alone makes the person unable to reach Pasteur or Curie's "mom and pop research" level. Not to mention supplies. I worked as a lab assistant for a dude studying the effects of zebra mussels in closed freshwater lake systems in Indiana (dams and whatnot, where the mussel would need to have been introduced to the lake). Microscopes capable of counting the young, ventilation hoods (for preservation chemicals), scales, and methods of disposing of biowaste from the traps for adults? Yeah, that's even more - and this dude had a pretty low budget. What he did have was the time to put into the research which is yet another thing that alludes folks. Some fields of study really needs better equipment than we were using - plus it has been 20 years since then. It isn't that the low-budget stuff or the "mom and pop research" is less valid or not good enough. It is that even that level is cost-prohibitive.
asdfasfhretwt 9y ago
Government funding, universities and charitable foundations are the traditional model for research.
Mz 9y ago
but what's the alternative? I doubt that mom and pop have the cash to do research. And I sure as hell won't trust any mom and pop research about pharmacology. You basically just answered your own question. You hate it when Big (Whatever) does the research, but you are actually more distrusting of a small operation. I have spent a lot of years getting myself healthier. I have gone through something like 5 iterations of a health blog to try to talk about that and share information completely for free with people who desperately need a better answer than society is giving them currently. I kept redoing the blog in part because it was such a total and complete shit show. I got all kinds of open hatred from people for trying to say "X, y and z were helpful for me. I think thus and such is why. Here is supporting research I found that fits with my experience." and making that information available absolutely for free. I don't know an answer for you. But maybe think about how you are part of the problem here. Ask yourself: What would it take for you to trust a small operation? You are simply dismissing them out of hand. What if a small operation could be useful? What would they need to do to be useful and get taken seriously?

by BFatts 9y ago

ianai 9y ago

The only alternative is public funding.

trendia 9y ago

Suppose that cocoa does not have direct effects on health. Recruit 60 people, give 30 of them cocoa and 30 of them placebo. Due to random chance, you'll sometimes get positive results, and sometimes get negative results. If all of those studies are published, then there isn't a huge problem -- a metastudy would show that on average cocoa doesn't affect health. But instead, support that only the positive studies are published. A third party reviewing the relevant literature will assume that all studies conducted showed a positive result, when in fact they were only the studies that were published. This is the problem with having sponsored research: the research itself can be done properly, but a bias in publishing can give an inaccurate view of the true science at hand.

carbocation 9y ago
Yours is a good description of publication bias. I think it's worth mentioning that funnel plots can give you a visual sense of whether there is publication bias, and tools such as Egger regression can help to try to tease out a less biased estimate in the face of publication bias.

drak0n1c 9y ago

Just like how "big business" has a motivation to fund certain types of research, people in media have ideological and business motivations for only investigating certain types of organizations and people.

emodendroket 9y ago

If only there were some sort of organization that was not driven by profit and had the ability to allocate the entire society's resources toward the common good. And incidentally I'd say a big part of the problem is that the research is totally misleading.

njarboe 9y ago
Any organization that has come close to "the ability to allocate the entire society's resources toward the common good" have created societies of great suffering and desperation so far. Maybe some super-intelligent computer system could do better?
- emodendroket 9y ago
  That's just a more efficient way to propagate the preferences of whoever gets to control the computer system.
  - njarboe 9y ago
    The computer would just be set to maximize the "common good", of course.
    - emodendroket 9y ago
      As defined by whom?
      - njarboe 9y ago
        That is the hard part, isn't it? The previous statements were a bit tongue-in-cheek, but also serious.

rhizome 9y ago

Someone has to do the research and "Big" whatever seems to be the ones with the money to do so. Ask yourself why this is so. Could it have to do with a reduction in public investment in original research, or, alternatively, an overall reduction in investment in unencumbered research? Point being: this work used to get done by non-corporate scientists, too.

fenwick67 9y ago

> "All research should be taken with a grain of salt" It's hard for any one person to read tens or hundreds of papers on a subject and critically examine them for fallacies, look for fake data, etc. It's just not plausible. At this rate, if us commonfolk are just expected to take a default position of not believing a scientific study or consensus until we personally vet them, what are we to actually believe? Do I need to go out and personally vet that evolution is real by personally reproducing some fruit fly studies? We're heading down a scary road if we cannot trust our scientific institutions to be unbiased.

arcbyte 9y ago
It's a scary road if everyone is just blanket assuming their sources of information are correct. We're living it. There are NO institutions WHATSOEVER that we should trust.
Retric 9y ago
My suggestion is to ignore anything that's not a meta study. Material science puts out thousands of papers a year, and ignoring them is easy because I lack context to understand them. IMO, the same is true of any field without a lot of study and literature review.

denzil_correa 9y ago

> All research should be taken with a grain of salt. The very fact of science is that you can take the same experiment and under the said assumptions; you can repeat the same experiment yourself and come to similar conclusions as the one done by the original scientists. > I doubt that mom and pop have the cash to do research. And I sure as hell won't trust any mom and pop research about pharmacology. AD Hominem fallacy - the status of someone has no relation to the outcome of a scientific experiment.

bllguo 9y ago
It has a relation to the ability of someone to actually conduct an experiment... Larger groups have more resources, from knowledge to experience to money. It is not an ad hominem fallacy. I don't know how you twisted his meaning to come to that conclusion.
- athenot 9y ago
  Louis Pasteur and Pierre & Marie Curie fit the description of "mom and pop research", as compared to today's labs, yet their findings are still valid.
  - Sharlin 9y ago
    That was then, now is now. There are few low-hanging fruits left these days. Especially in a field where showing any effect practically requires a sample size of dozens to hundreds and an observation period of years to decades.
  - Broken_Hippo 9y ago
    That level is still somewhat prohibitive for a lot of folks. Schooling alone can cost quite a bit, and without this a lot of places won't take you seriously regardless of your self-study. This aspect alone makes the person unable to reach Pasteur or Curie's "mom and pop research" level. Not to mention supplies. I worked as a lab assistant for a dude studying the effects of zebra mussels in closed freshwater lake systems in Indiana (dams and whatnot, where the mussel would need to have been introduced to the lake). Microscopes capable of counting the young, ventilation hoods (for preservation chemicals), scales, and methods of disposing of biowaste from the traps for adults? Yeah, that's even more - and this dude had a pretty low budget. What he did have was the time to put into the research which is yet another thing that alludes folks. Some fields of study really needs better equipment than we were using - plus it has been 20 years since then. It isn't that the low-budget stuff or the "mom and pop research" is less valid or not good enough. It is that even that level is cost-prohibitive.

asdfasfhretwt 9y ago

Government funding, universities and charitable foundations are the traditional model for research.

Mz 9y ago

but what's the alternative? I doubt that mom and pop have the cash to do research. And I sure as hell won't trust any mom and pop research about pharmacology. You basically just answered your own question. You hate it when Big (Whatever) does the research, but you are actually more distrusting of a small operation. I have spent a lot of years getting myself healthier. I have gone through something like 5 iterations of a health blog to try to talk about that and share information completely for free with people who desperately need a better answer than society is giving them currently. I kept redoing the blog in part because it was such a total and complete shit show. I got all kinds of open hatred from people for trying to say "X, y and z were helpful for me. I think thus and such is why. Here is supporting research I found that fits with my experience." and making that information available absolutely for free. I don't know an answer for you. But maybe think about how you are part of the problem here. Ask yourself: What would it take for you to trust a small operation? You are simply dismissing them out of hand. What if a small operation could be useful? What would they need to do to be useful and get taken seriously?