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This is why it’s best to adopt a skeptical attitude about published science at least until after a reasonable time period has passed for general scrutiny and re
by nyokodo 4y ago
This is why it’s best to adopt a skeptical attitude about published science at least until after a reasonable time period has passed for general scrutiny and retraction but maybe always. This is especially important if the subject is exciting, surprising, relates to some political controversy, or anything else that tends to provoke motivated reasoning.
- dbingham 4y agoHonestly, we too often forget that science works in the aggregate. There are far, far too many things that can go wrong in any individual study - from biases, to mistakes, to outright fraud, to just bad luck and weird statistical flukes. It's only after we've had several replications that we can really say we think something might be true, and only after many replications that we can say we "know" something. This aspect of science seems to have been lost both in the public's imagination and - all too often - in the institutions own understanding and approach.