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My first serious contact with scientific publishing was when I worked on master's thesis in bioinformatics on some very specific problem. I discovered that pape

My first serious contact with scientific publishing was when I worked on master's thesis in bioinformatics on some very specific problem. I discovered that papers had systemic errors in input data, often statistics was not applied correctly, the full source code mostly not available, yet the papers built on top of each other, presenting results. The scientists I worked with seemed to know about the situation, but personally, I lost the very strong belief in natural science results. Turns out, there was no rigorous fact and results checking culture, as in mathematics. It seems to me, it is mostly the lay people who treat published scientific results as some proven ground truth, the scientists themselves are more relaxed about it. Science may be in some ways about telling interesting stories in a convincing way.

realjhol 4y ago
"Trust the science"
fastaguy88 4y ago
>The scientists I worked with seemed to know about the situation, but personally, I lost the very strong belief in natural science results. Turns out, there was no rigorous fact and results checking culture, as in mathematics. This may reflect the feeling that for experimental sciences, the most reliable results checking may be to re-do the experiment, or perform a related experiment that is expected to produce similar results. In math (as I understand it), a proof is a proof -- the result is complete. In experimental science, an experimental result is often reproducible, but does not in fact guarantee that the hypothesis is correct. While reproducibility and correct results are obviously important; most experimental scientists look for supporting experiments and a mechanistic framework before changing their beliefs.
dekhn 4y ago
Bioinformatics is a terrible mess and the rest of my career (15 years) will most likely just be cleaning up the shit built over the last 20 years. Bioinformatics, especially genomics, is particularly prone to medical hype- the implication that these discoveries will rapidly lead to health improvements. Scientists are incentivized to claim the largest gains with the least amount of supporting data.
low_tech_love 4y ago
I’ve experienced in recent years that many of my friends who never cared a single bit about science started to link to scientific papers in order to back up their arguments (usually some form of right vs left discussion). This became much stronger during the pandemic. I’m not 100% sure if they believe that this is factual truth or if it’s just another one of the myriad of argumentative tools they use. But you’re absolutely right that they see it in a completely different way than scientists do. I’ve tried to explain to them that picking one article out of a thousand is just confirmation bias, that anyone can find one article (published somewhere) that confirms anything, and that scientific conclusions need to be replicated, but it’s useless and frustrating.
- realjhol 4y ago
  This just a consequence of midwits - the "Adam Ruins Eveything" mindset. These people have been taught that all observations must be signed off by a scientific study. No matter how banal the observation may be or how inapplicable the scientific method is to it, "the scientific community" must be shown to accept the observation because scientists are a priestly class who play the role of truth tellers in our society. Hence the meme "I think castrating children is wrong" "hurr durr- hAvE yOu GoT a SoUrCe FoR ThAt?"

realjhol 4y ago

"Trust the science"

fastaguy88 4y ago

>The scientists I worked with seemed to know about the situation, but personally, I lost the very strong belief in natural science results. Turns out, there was no rigorous fact and results checking culture, as in mathematics. This may reflect the feeling that for experimental sciences, the most reliable results checking may be to re-do the experiment, or perform a related experiment that is expected to produce similar results. In math (as I understand it), a proof is a proof -- the result is complete. In experimental science, an experimental result is often reproducible, but does not in fact guarantee that the hypothesis is correct. While reproducibility and correct results are obviously important; most experimental scientists look for supporting experiments and a mechanistic framework before changing their beliefs.

dekhn 4y ago

Bioinformatics is a terrible mess and the rest of my career (15 years) will most likely just be cleaning up the shit built over the last 20 years. Bioinformatics, especially genomics, is particularly prone to medical hype- the implication that these discoveries will rapidly lead to health improvements. Scientists are incentivized to claim the largest gains with the least amount of supporting data.

low_tech_love 4y ago

I’ve experienced in recent years that many of my friends who never cared a single bit about science started to link to scientific papers in order to back up their arguments (usually some form of right vs left discussion). This became much stronger during the pandemic. I’m not 100% sure if they believe that this is factual truth or if it’s just another one of the myriad of argumentative tools they use. But you’re absolutely right that they see it in a completely different way than scientists do. I’ve tried to explain to them that picking one article out of a thousand is just confirmation bias, that anyone can find one article (published somewhere) that confirms anything, and that scientific conclusions need to be replicated, but it’s useless and frustrating.

realjhol 4y ago
This just a consequence of midwits - the "Adam Ruins Eveything" mindset. These people have been taught that all observations must be signed off by a scientific study. No matter how banal the observation may be or how inapplicable the scientific method is to it, "the scientific community" must be shown to accept the observation because scientists are a priestly class who play the role of truth tellers in our society. Hence the meme "I think castrating children is wrong" "hurr durr- hAvE yOu GoT a SoUrCe FoR ThAt?"