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All scientific fields are hard though. The way they are advanced is with rigorous methods. I'm not shocked either though. Not because biology is hard, but beca

All scientific fields are hard though. The way they are advanced is with rigorous methods. I'm not shocked either though. Not because biology is hard, but because academia is corrupt.

soco 5y ago
Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Not that academics were stupid, but making mistakes usually obvious in hindsight. And yeah there would be some malice as well, as everywhere, including here, because everybody's a human until those rigorous methods weed humanity out of the processes (way to go).
- native_samples 5y ago
  Many of the studies couldn't be replicated because the original authors didn't provide sufficient details in their papers, and then refused to reply when asked for those details. Whether this is malice or not is kind of irrelevant - they have failed to meet the most basic requirements expected of researchers. They took the money but did not deliver the expected work artifacts.
ansgri 5y ago
Not that it's corrupt, but incentive structure is suboptimal to say the least, especially for government-funded work. There was a recent blog post / HN thread [1] about groups never admitting failure, it's very relevant here. The funding agency has to have a process for vetting applications, and what's more reasonable than the ability to manage their own work, i.e. propose a plan and successfully execute on it? Combine it with slow cadence of funding and you have a list of promised results for next 3+ years which you must achieve somehow or you'll never see a grant from that agency again. And they give out a lot of grants, so reviewing reports in detail to be able to distinguish "this result we promised was not achieved because we are incompetent" from "this result is negative, and we need to change direction based on new research" is just infeasible. In commercial research the situation is much better in my experience, probably because your "funding agency" is more narrowly focused and is typically interested in getting useful results. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29488641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29488641
timr 5y ago
Nah, I don't go to "corrupt"...never assume malice when incompetence will suffice. Lazy? Absolutely. Prone to exaggeration? Definitely. Self-delusion? Always. Corrupt? Maybe sometimes. Science is a human process, and is subject to all of the problems created by any group of humans. But the magic of it is that, in the long term, everyone's personal incentives produce an emergent result of overall correctness. You just have to understand that most papers are wrong, and never take anything at face value.

All scientific fields are hard though. The way they are advanced is with rigorous methods. I'm not shocked either though. Not because biology is hard, but because academia is corrupt.

soco 5y ago

Hanlon's razor: never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Not that academics were stupid, but making mistakes usually obvious in hindsight. And yeah there would be some malice as well, as everywhere, including here, because everybody's a human until those rigorous methods weed humanity out of the processes (way to go).

native_samples 5y ago
Many of the studies couldn't be replicated because the original authors didn't provide sufficient details in their papers, and then refused to reply when asked for those details. Whether this is malice or not is kind of irrelevant - they have failed to meet the most basic requirements expected of researchers. They took the money but did not deliver the expected work artifacts.

ansgri 5y ago

Not that it's corrupt, but incentive structure is suboptimal to say the least, especially for government-funded work. There was a recent blog post / HN thread [1] about groups never admitting failure, it's very relevant here. The funding agency has to have a process for vetting applications, and what's more reasonable than the ability to manage their own work, i.e. propose a plan and successfully execute on it? Combine it with slow cadence of funding and you have a list of promised results for next 3+ years which you must achieve somehow or you'll never see a grant from that agency again. And they give out a lot of grants, so reviewing reports in detail to be able to distinguish "this result we promised was not achieved because we are incompetent" from "this result is negative, and we need to change direction based on new research" is just infeasible. In commercial research the situation is much better in my experience, probably because your "funding agency" is more narrowly focused and is typically interested in getting useful results. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29488641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29488641

timr 5y ago

Nah, I don't go to "corrupt"...never assume malice when incompetence will suffice. Lazy? Absolutely. Prone to exaggeration? Definitely. Self-delusion? Always. Corrupt? Maybe sometimes. Science is a human process, and is subject to all of the problems created by any group of humans. But the magic of it is that, in the long term, everyone's personal incentives produce an emergent result of overall correctness. You just have to understand that most papers are wrong, and never take anything at face value.