4 ms·

If you're doing any kind of science, recording provenance for your inputs should be table stakes. Bad science isn't about hiding or obscuring the origin of the

• nullc 3y ago
  The consumers of scholarship are able to look at and determine if its the sort of thing where access to underlying data is important-- and they're free to discount it when it doesn't provide enough. Journals and grant writers are free to set standards for the work they publish or sponsor-- and they should! But no one needs to legislate that publications such as your conclusion-- that science done without documenting its sources is properly called Hoax, Advertising, Propaganda, or Parallel construction-- itself properly document its sources. We can take it for what it is, an opinion-- one no doubt supported by some data but none of us need to see it, and we can evaluate it without calling it propaganda. If you wanted to make your point stronger, I'm sure you'd give us some supporting data (if you could figure out where those views came from...). Though people sometimes pretend otherwise, a lot of research is dressed up informed opinion, put into a formal setting with standardized argument styles so that it can be compared and assessed against other informed opinions. None the less, such work done honestly and diligently advances the human condition. The ways in which it can be best improved are field specific and can only really be judged by the people attempting to use the scholarship. In some cases the data should be published, in others its provenance documented (sometimes publication of the data would be a violation of the law, too!), in others access to source code should be paramount, in yet others the authors biases may be the primary concern, and in some fields all publications should be directly sent to the incinerator. Applying the wrong standards will just make things worse. People are smart, they tend to figure out what works for them and their field over time.
  • bostik 3y ago
    > Though people sometimes pretend otherwise, a lot of research is dressed up informed opinion, put into a formal setting with standardized argument styles so that it can be compared and assessed against other informed opinions. None the less, such work done honestly and diligently advances the human condition. I ... think we actually agree here. In fact, to prove your point: I have no chance of accounting for the origins of my opinions, because they stem from decades of osmosis and subjective experiences. But I can at least be honest about something I say, do or argue being an opinion. The same way you just did.