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Despite us knowing that correlation does not equal causation for forever, these weak studies keep getting funded and popping up. The only finding you could mak

by rand_r 6y ago

Despite us knowing that correlation does not equal causation for forever, these weak studies keep getting funded and popping up. The only finding you could make with such a study is to disprove something. If the hypothesis was that coffee prevented cancer, and you found no correlation between coffee and cancer, then that would _disprove_ the claim. I understand the common person being sucked into these alluring study titles, but it's disappointing that scientists keep producing this kind of empty work.

notJim 6y ago
I would guess they crop up repeatedly because they are cheap to fund. Fewer funders who want to put a bunch of money and time into a long, expensive study that may produce nothing. Instead fund 10 cheap studies that might produce a headline :(
Frost1x 6y ago
I try not to shun incremental research because I understand there is value in it. Unfortunately, a large portion of it is frankly very uninteresting and these 'may be' sort of weak links are a necessity to continue research and progress by appeasing the purseholders. Often these sort of results are picked up by journalists and overemphasized but there are inherent pressures for researchers, their supervisors, and everything up the finance food chain to do the same sort of marketing as well. You have to make sure the people who pay the bills have some sort of progress report that shows improvement and ROI. The current way of coping with this pressure is showing small promising incremental updates on low risk studies regularly and then doing the interesting research with any slack time you have to hopefully discover the next real breakthrough or leap. Breakthroughs are often non-incremental and are the real allure of research and science, at least to me. Unfortunately, society doesn't like seeing big risks taken, resources spent, and little to show beyond the, still quite valuable, knowledge of "this didn't work." The vast majority of researchers hate small incremental research and much prefer to use their creativity to take larger incremental leaps or even paradigm/perspective shifting leaps. If we want to stay ahead of the world in terms of research we need to be willing to take bigger risks and accept failure on those risks. Scientific progress is largely at the mercy of the business and economic culture it's conducted within.

by rand_r 6y ago

notJim 6y ago

I would guess they crop up repeatedly because they are cheap to fund. Fewer funders who want to put a bunch of money and time into a long, expensive study that may produce nothing. Instead fund 10 cheap studies that might produce a headline :(

Frost1x 6y ago

I try not to shun incremental research because I understand there is value in it. Unfortunately, a large portion of it is frankly very uninteresting and these 'may be' sort of weak links are a necessity to continue research and progress by appeasing the purseholders. Often these sort of results are picked up by journalists and overemphasized but there are inherent pressures for researchers, their supervisors, and everything up the finance food chain to do the same sort of marketing as well. You have to make sure the people who pay the bills have some sort of progress report that shows improvement and ROI. The current way of coping with this pressure is showing small promising incremental updates on low risk studies regularly and then doing the interesting research with any slack time you have to hopefully discover the next real breakthrough or leap. Breakthroughs are often non-incremental and are the real allure of research and science, at least to me. Unfortunately, society doesn't like seeing big risks taken, resources spent, and little to show beyond the, still quite valuable, knowledge of "this didn't work." The vast majority of researchers hate small incremental research and much prefer to use their creativity to take larger incremental leaps or even paradigm/perspective shifting leaps. If we want to stay ahead of the world in terms of research we need to be willing to take bigger risks and accept failure on those risks. Scientific progress is largely at the mercy of the business and economic culture it's conducted within.