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Scientific studies aren't gospel. They can be affected by the sensibilities of grant agencies, funding from industry, flawed experiment design, and p-hacking,

Scientific studies aren't gospel. They can be affected by the sensibilities of grant agencies, funding from industry, flawed experiment design, and p-hacking, among others. Peter Norvig's essay on experiment design comes to mind: http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

rriepe 6y ago
> Scientific studies aren't gospel. I've found this depends on the person.
- dennis_jeeves 6y ago
  >> Scientific studies aren't gospel. >I've found this depends on the person. Good point. It is indeed gospel for some people :) Infact in the new era of Covid, we now have common people parrot the opinion of medical 'experts' verbatim as though it were gospel
thelean12 6y ago
Of course. So what? The current alternative to scientific studies (with their varying degrees of bias and flaws) are Facebook-esque anecdotes about rednecks eating bacon that apparently are so compelling that they get upvoted to the top of HN.
- JPKab 6y ago
  The "facebook-esque anecdote" was intended to point out the failings of acting as if scientific institutions are practicing science in a pure, non-biased way and blindly trusting the humans in these institutions to not be subject to corrupting influences. My stepmother's god-like idolatry of the scientific method was conflated with the very flawed humans who were supposed to be using the scientific method. Your original point is a fair one, but you probably aren't aware of the fact that, on this specific topic, the leading scientists in the human nutrition field were extremely aggressive in crushing all dissenting voices, including destroying the career of a researcher at Harvard who was relegated to obscurity despite later being proven correct. Dissent against Keys' lipid hypothesis of any form was career suicide in the human nutrition community. The viciousness of the attacks against dissenters was particularly remarkable, due to the fervent belief that undermining the "fat is bad" narrative would kill people. They were wrong, and your point of view assumes that it's self-correcting over the long-term, so don't argue. In the case of the lipid hypothesis, it wasn't self-correcting at all. It's been a decades long fight to try to get a bunch of smug asshole academics to admit they fucked over the public for decades with their hubris.
  - thelean12 6y ago
    > the leading scientists in the human nutrition field were extremely aggressive in crushing all dissenting voices The problem is now you're too aggressive in the other direction. You seem to have to dissent, regardless of the study design or funding.

rriepe 6y ago

> Scientific studies aren't gospel. I've found this depends on the person.

dennis_jeeves 6y ago
>> Scientific studies aren't gospel. >I've found this depends on the person. Good point. It is indeed gospel for some people :) Infact in the new era of Covid, we now have common people parrot the opinion of medical 'experts' verbatim as though it were gospel

thelean12 6y ago

Of course. So what? The current alternative to scientific studies (with their varying degrees of bias and flaws) are Facebook-esque anecdotes about rednecks eating bacon that apparently are so compelling that they get upvoted to the top of HN.

JPKab 6y ago
The "facebook-esque anecdote" was intended to point out the failings of acting as if scientific institutions are practicing science in a pure, non-biased way and blindly trusting the humans in these institutions to not be subject to corrupting influences. My stepmother's god-like idolatry of the scientific method was conflated with the very flawed humans who were supposed to be using the scientific method. Your original point is a fair one, but you probably aren't aware of the fact that, on this specific topic, the leading scientists in the human nutrition field were extremely aggressive in crushing all dissenting voices, including destroying the career of a researcher at Harvard who was relegated to obscurity despite later being proven correct. Dissent against Keys' lipid hypothesis of any form was career suicide in the human nutrition community. The viciousness of the attacks against dissenters was particularly remarkable, due to the fervent belief that undermining the "fat is bad" narrative would kill people. They were wrong, and your point of view assumes that it's self-correcting over the long-term, so don't argue. In the case of the lipid hypothesis, it wasn't self-correcting at all. It's been a decades long fight to try to get a bunch of smug asshole academics to admit they fucked over the public for decades with their hubris.
- thelean12 6y ago
  > the leading scientists in the human nutrition field were extremely aggressive in crushing all dissenting voices The problem is now you're too aggressive in the other direction. You seem to have to dissent, regardless of the study design or funding.