4 ms·

Part of the problem is actually in the process of being solved: the social role that Holy Immaculate Science had been acquiring. I know this sounds a bit react

Part of the problem is actually in the process of being solved: the social role that Holy Immaculate Science had been acquiring. I know this sounds a bit reactionary in times of antivaxers and even flat-earthers, but we cannot afford to trust "Science" in the way we had been doing up to the mid 2010s. How much social policy was being enacted in the name of p-hacked psychology and social science? How much of our baseline ideologies? Even the first announcement of results from the LHC was botched. Now, you may say "great, this is science, it's supposed to be conjectures and refutations". But then we can't trust it as guarantee of ground truth. Scientific papers can't be used in service of internet debates, etc.

umvi 7y ago
> How much social policy was being enacted in the name of p-hacked psychology and social science? How much of our baseline ideologies? I'm interested in how often some interest group pays for p-hacked results so that they can use it to strengthen their position in some way? In my opinion, it's very hard to have good science whenever there is external money in the picture. The temptation/pressure to slightly tweak the variables or scope of the study to achieve a desired outcome for the benefactor is just too high. The worst part is that this allows people to strengthen their biases by cherry picking "scientific studies" that seem to agree with their position even if intuitively something doesn't seem right. And science is the highest authority you can appeal to, so there is no way to refute it short of funding your own, better study that arrives at the opposite conclusion.
Vinnl 7y ago
In what way is more scepticism towards science solving the lack of publication of negative results?
bumby 7y ago
Your "p-hacked" comment reminded me of this: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/p-hacking/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/p-hacking/ It does a pretty good job of illustrating why investigating the rigor of the methodology is as important as the statistical results.

umvi 7y ago

> How much social policy was being enacted in the name of p-hacked psychology and social science? How much of our baseline ideologies? I'm interested in how often some interest group pays for p-hacked results so that they can use it to strengthen their position in some way? In my opinion, it's very hard to have good science whenever there is external money in the picture. The temptation/pressure to slightly tweak the variables or scope of the study to achieve a desired outcome for the benefactor is just too high. The worst part is that this allows people to strengthen their biases by cherry picking "scientific studies" that seem to agree with their position even if intuitively something doesn't seem right. And science is the highest authority you can appeal to, so there is no way to refute it short of funding your own, better study that arrives at the opposite conclusion.

Vinnl 7y ago

In what way is more scepticism towards science solving the lack of publication of negative results?

bumby 7y ago

Your "p-hacked" comment reminded me of this: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/p-hacking/ https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/p-hacking/ It does a pretty good job of illustrating why investigating the rigor of the methodology is as important as the statistical results.