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> Going to the supermarket hungry makes you buy more calories. > All wrong. >misleading conclusions not warranted by the research itself; fabricated data; dat

> Going to the supermarket hungry makes you buy more calories. > All wrong. >misleading conclusions not warranted by the research itself; fabricated data; data manhandled to pass significance tests; incompetent experimental designs; or experiments that wouldn’t replicate when tried by other scientists. Not wrong. But often experts proving what they think is true by the wrong means. The ear wagging the donkey. I suspect this is how science in the past worked and worked well. I think the explosion of scientists and the lower standards means this is now broken. But I don't think we can look to the scientific method to fix it, I'm not sure it ever worked as we think it did.

ngenstyle 6y ago
It's never the method's fault, it's always the implementation details.
necovek 6y ago
Not quite. In the last 20 years, science work has been turned into scoreboarding: scientists accumulate points by publishing papers in scientific journals and getting cited, journals get points for being cited, institutions for keeping high-score scientists etc. While the goal was clear (to establish a fairer promotion mechanism and remove personal bias), it has ultimately led to more people focusing on the score rather than the output. IOW, "gaming" the system. Even when it's done in good will, it might be optimising for the score instead of actual promotion of knowledge and science.
- noneeeed 6y ago
  The way scientists are measured reminds me of how teachers get measured by their students test scores. In both cases we reward or penalise them based on some measure that is often only partially in their control, then people get angry when they try to maximise that measure. The working scientists I know are as frustrated by the syst as it's external critics, but they still have to work in it if they want to pay their rent.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    Reminds me of the saying, "as soon as a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a useful measure".
ncmncm 6y ago
> Not wrong. But often experts proving what they think is true by the wrong means. Exactly, there is a big different between "this paper claims to show something that is actually not true", and "this paper claims to show something that it fails to show." They are both bad papers, but not the same kind of bad.

ngenstyle 6y ago

It's never the method's fault, it's always the implementation details.

necovek 6y ago

Not quite. In the last 20 years, science work has been turned into scoreboarding: scientists accumulate points by publishing papers in scientific journals and getting cited, journals get points for being cited, institutions for keeping high-score scientists etc. While the goal was clear (to establish a fairer promotion mechanism and remove personal bias), it has ultimately led to more people focusing on the score rather than the output. IOW, "gaming" the system. Even when it's done in good will, it might be optimising for the score instead of actual promotion of knowledge and science.

noneeeed 6y ago
The way scientists are measured reminds me of how teachers get measured by their students test scores. In both cases we reward or penalise them based on some measure that is often only partially in their control, then people get angry when they try to maximise that measure. The working scientists I know are as frustrated by the syst as it's external critics, but they still have to work in it if they want to pay their rent.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Reminds me of the saying, "as soon as a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a useful measure".

ncmncm 6y ago

> Not wrong. But often experts proving what they think is true by the wrong means. Exactly, there is a big different between "this paper claims to show something that is actually not true", and "this paper claims to show something that it fails to show." They are both bad papers, but not the same kind of bad.