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After journal bias, conflicts of interests, and corruption, I now hold little remaining faith in the justice of “science”. It seems the “scientific method” I le
by otp124 9y ago
After journal bias, conflicts of interests, and corruption, I now hold little remaining faith in the justice of “science”. It seems the “scientific method” I learned decades ago is inconvenient to publishers and consumers alike. (Also, I’ve had personal doctors push drugs on me when it was clear they were getting a kickback).
It’s frustrating when people read headlines and claim ”science” in a conversation, when the root of the research is fraudulent and the observer has never attempted to verify. When I challenge their assumptions, they are incredulous that I would question “science”.
- maroonblazer 9y agoLet's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There's still plenty of excellent science being done every day; it's just not being written about in outlets like vox.com. The solution to the problems you cite is more and better science.
- joe_the_user 9y agoEven more, it's only now that we're seeing some people apply a rigorous scientific and statical lens to medicine as a whole, A good portion of that fifty or whatever percent of procedures that don't any backing evidence exist through being grandfathered-in from the medical tradition. Beyond the germ theory of disease, medicine circa 1900 was appalling in multiple ways. Medicine continually advances, at least in parts. Hopefully that advance can continue against the grain of multitude of problems we see.
- gingerbreadfias 9y agoI was going to post a comment that may or may not be along the same lines as what you're getting at. My impression, after working in the biomedical field, in clinical settings as well as in research settings, is that a lot of what happens is arrogant hubris, in part related to identification with the physical sciences in a biomedical context. I'm not saying those in the physical sciences are arrogant, what I mean is that there is a certain arrogance that people afforded to themselves by virtue of their privilege and monopoly, and it justifies itself along the lines of "I'm an expert in the physical sciences, which means that whatever reasoning I employ to justify something is sound, because it is based in what I perceive to be sound biological, chemical, physical theory." I guess what I mean is that, although I agree with you that most of what is published is nonsense, to put it politely, the problems start much earlier, in conflating "science" with "physical objects of study." Often they don't even get to the stage of systematically collecting data, because they don't see reason to question the truth of their hypotheses. It sounds reasonable, because they are smart, therefore it must be correct. When you get to the stage of shoddy data supporting these biases, it makes things even worse. It's survivorship bias at its worst. People assume that because they get into medical school, or in some cases, grad school in the biomedical sciences, that they got there because they're geniuses (rather than because of who they know, luck, etc.), and that means they're somehow above the need to empirically verify their hypotheses. People just don't understand that there are lots of good ideas that are just wrong.
- gaius 9y agoAfter journal bias, conflicts of interests, and corruption, I now hold little remaining faith in the justice of “science”. It seems the “scientific method” I learned decades ago is inconvenient to publishers and consumers alike Fully two-thirds of scientific claims cannot be reproduced. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39054778 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39054778 Science at this point is just making stuff up, a scientist who published something fake should be struck off but it never happens. It’s just a racket to get more funding.