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It's hard to have respect for scientists these days. Things like the psychology replication crisis have really undermined my confidence in academia as an instit

It's hard to have respect for scientists these days. Things like the psychology replication crisis have really undermined my confidence in academia as an institution. I remember getting into a debate with a (facebook) acquaintance of mine, ultimately it boiled down to me asking them for an example of what they'd consider a good sociology paper. The paper was trying to test whether sexual harassment training actually worked. After reading through it, it was almost laughable how bad it was. Their system for measuring if the training worked was waiting two weeks and testing if people retained the knowledge. It was also done using a small group of college students. Of course that's just one paper, but the event stuck in my mind. He was a relatively well-respected grad student in my peer group, and that was what he considered to be good science? There are a lot of examples of really dubious stuff coming out of the academic community. Things like the sokal affair, or the infamous "feminist glaciology" incident. Like it or not those are getting lumped in with legitimate scientists in the public conscious, and if academia want to get taken more seriously it needs to get these ridiculous excesses under control or at least de-emphasize/disavow them as much as possible. I think there's a lot to be done to gain back that trust, but most of it has to do with cutting out the garbage. Publish or perish seems like one of the bigger problems that need addressing, but the lack of open-access journals certainly doesn't help. The academic writing style probably needs an overhaul as well. I don't know, it's sad but for me at least there needs to be some big changes before I start regaining respect of academia as a institution.

whiteopinions 7y ago
>Things like the psychology replication crisis Have you actually read up on this, or are you just repeating something you read online to make it sound like you're academically in the know and are well versed in academic research processes? Allow me to give you some reading to help give you a more reasonable view about this: https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/replication-controversy-in-psychology-bullying-file-drawer-effect-blog-posts-repligate.html https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/replication-controversy... >Things like the sokal affair, or the infamous "feminist glaciology" incident. This is only a sticking point for crazy conservative people because they purposefully or accidentally completely misunderstood what the paper was about. Conservative people already don't trust science as a whole since they have an extreme ideological motivation to not do so, so let's not pretend like it's really some defining moment for science as a whole. And again, then narrative around this is just generally very dishonest, so it's pretty funny to see you make reference to it while waxing on about academic integrity: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/qa-author-feminist-glaciology-study-reflects-sudden-appearance-culture-wars https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/qa-author-feminist-g...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
peteradio 7y ago
Yikes, talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. I've been through the grinder and have my grudges with academia but what does that have to do with scientists in general?
- traverseda 7y ago
  Well it means that I can't presume that any given research paper I read is reasonable, or that the abstract has anything to do with the actual results they found. Which is a problem, because while I've found it relatively easy to tell if a paper is complete bullshit the academic writing style makes it really hard to skim a paper for those warning signs. On the whole this means I need to use heuristics in order to try and understand research on the whole, and while I believe those heuristics are better than just taking the research as gospel, they're definitely worse than a properly functioning scientific community that does good research in the first place.
  - peteradio 7y ago
    You must only be interested in Sociology I take it?
    - traverseda 7y ago
      I'm not denying climate science. The material science papers I've read seem pretty unambiguous. Some seem intentionally hard to replicate, but when they have a video of the material exhibiting the behavior they're describing it's pretty hard to debate :p Sociology does seem like a pretty big problem, and I do think these issues are bringing down the reputation of science as a whole. But I haven't found nearly as many issues in STEM fields, although I'm seeing some very worrying trends in AI research and reproducibility.
hos234 7y ago
Man as a scientist with secure funding for life, who works with sociologists and psychologists, I frankly don't give a shit what gen pop thinks. The results will come when they come. Learning and progress takes time, due to which a large part of the population is always going to misunderstand the process.
- traverseda 7y ago
  Want to recommend me a good sociology paper?
  - hos234 7y ago
    My point is simple - things take time. I am not a fan of Sunday afternoon paper readers. They are not the people who contribute to Science. If people want to study a subject deeply and contribute to progress, it's going to take decades of work. Those type of people go look for answers. They don't wait for someone else to inspire them or to prove things to them. If that's too complex for people to get, it doesn't matter really. Shrinking the gap in knowledge between those who do the work and those who don't does not matter. It's like worrying about what people understood about Light or Electricity before Maxwell and Faraday. Even after them, it took about 40 years to start seeing applications. Science takes its own sweet time to make progress and most people have no sense of how long things take. The world took 1800 years between Archimedes and Newton to realize the value of Calculus? They both basically were doing the same thing. Thousands of people had as good an education as Newton did, access to "papers", books, and the same problems, whether in Europe, China or Persia or India but it still took 1800 years.

whiteopinions 7y ago

>Things like the psychology replication crisis Have you actually read up on this, or are you just repeating something you read online to make it sound like you're academically in the know and are well versed in academic research processes? Allow me to give you some reading to help give you a more reasonable view about this: https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/replication-controversy-in-psychology-bullying-file-drawer-effect-blog-posts-repligate.html https://slate.com/technology/2014/07/replication-controversy... >Things like the sokal affair, or the infamous "feminist glaciology" incident. This is only a sticking point for crazy conservative people because they purposefully or accidentally completely misunderstood what the paper was about. Conservative people already don't trust science as a whole since they have an extreme ideological motivation to not do so, so let's not pretend like it's really some defining moment for science as a whole. And again, then narrative around this is just generally very dishonest, so it's pretty funny to see you make reference to it while waxing on about academic integrity: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/qa-author-feminist-glaciology-study-reflects-sudden-appearance-culture-wars https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/qa-author-feminist-g...

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

peteradio 7y ago

Yikes, talk about throwing the baby out with the bath water. I've been through the grinder and have my grudges with academia but what does that have to do with scientists in general?

traverseda 7y ago
Well it means that I can't presume that any given research paper I read is reasonable, or that the abstract has anything to do with the actual results they found. Which is a problem, because while I've found it relatively easy to tell if a paper is complete bullshit the academic writing style makes it really hard to skim a paper for those warning signs. On the whole this means I need to use heuristics in order to try and understand research on the whole, and while I believe those heuristics are better than just taking the research as gospel, they're definitely worse than a properly functioning scientific community that does good research in the first place.
- peteradio 7y ago
  You must only be interested in Sociology I take it?
  - traverseda 7y ago
    I'm not denying climate science. The material science papers I've read seem pretty unambiguous. Some seem intentionally hard to replicate, but when they have a video of the material exhibiting the behavior they're describing it's pretty hard to debate :p Sociology does seem like a pretty big problem, and I do think these issues are bringing down the reputation of science as a whole. But I haven't found nearly as many issues in STEM fields, although I'm seeing some very worrying trends in AI research and reproducibility.

hos234 7y ago

Man as a scientist with secure funding for life, who works with sociologists and psychologists, I frankly don't give a shit what gen pop thinks. The results will come when they come. Learning and progress takes time, due to which a large part of the population is always going to misunderstand the process.

traverseda 7y ago
Want to recommend me a good sociology paper?
- hos234 7y ago
  My point is simple - things take time. I am not a fan of Sunday afternoon paper readers. They are not the people who contribute to Science. If people want to study a subject deeply and contribute to progress, it's going to take decades of work. Those type of people go look for answers. They don't wait for someone else to inspire them or to prove things to them. If that's too complex for people to get, it doesn't matter really. Shrinking the gap in knowledge between those who do the work and those who don't does not matter. It's like worrying about what people understood about Light or Electricity before Maxwell and Faraday. Even after them, it took about 40 years to start seeing applications. Science takes its own sweet time to make progress and most people have no sense of how long things take. The world took 1800 years between Archimedes and Newton to realize the value of Calculus? They both basically were doing the same thing. Thousands of people had as good an education as Newton did, access to "papers", books, and the same problems, whether in Europe, China or Persia or India but it still took 1800 years.