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We can trust the process of science but we need to be mindful of how to critically examine a body of literature. When I see most lay people examine literature a
by alan-hn 2y ago
We can trust the process of science but we need to be mindful of how to critically examine a body of literature. When I see most lay people examine literature all they do is cherry pick what they like and discard the rest and ignore any analysis or methodological concerns
- tracker1 2y agoThis generally seems to be true. It doesn't help that poor reporting methods exacerbate the issue.
- alan-hn 2y agoOh absolutely, science journalism is absolutely terrible for the most part. That's why I always try to find the original paper they're reporting on to see what's actually going on Most journalists don't understand research either and I've even seen some PhD science writers get things wrong too but usually less often. Science journalism is filled with incredible sweeping claims and jumps in logic that boggle the mind and are nothing like what's in the research being reported on, it truly makes me disappointed
- tracker1 2y agoI've seen a lot of research around nutrition, where the abstract/summary for the paper itself makes claims not reasonably backed in the paper itself. Then again, I think pharma, food and agriculture in particular have bent to financial forces over everything else.
- BobaFloutist 2y agoIt's incredibly hard to do anything else, since it's pretty easy to cherry pick methodological concerns for any given conclusion you don't care for, since it's incredibly rare for a given body of work to be free of methodological flaws.
- alan-hn 2y agoSomething I have noticed is that non scientists don't understand the methods so when they do try and critique the methods those critiques don't make sense because they lack the understanding of the underlying principles There is a lot of basic science that is quite solid and is replicable yet people tend to throw it out with nonsense complaints