5 ms·

I think this is an important article for the HN crowd. Educated STEM people usually have a strong devotion to science, but science very often fails at revealing

by rm999 14y ago

I think this is an important article for the HN crowd. Educated STEM people usually have a strong devotion to science, but science very often fails at revealing the truth (dangerously, in a misleading manner). The article points out the problem isn't malice or incompetence, it's bad expectations. To me, a critical analysis of research is often more valuable than the research itself.

jkubicek 14y ago
> To me, a critical analysis of research is often more valuable than the research itself. Critical analysis of research is science. I'm perpetually frustrated with articles like this that seem to portray science as a failure by citing faulty studies, ignoring the fact that everything is working as it should.
- jkubicek 14y ago
  It bothers me to no end when people discuss "science" as if it were just one of many options available. Science is the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of truth is science. There are no alternatives.
  - pnathan 14y ago
    Is logic science?
  - tedunangst 14y ago
    Science is a means of pursuing the truth. People who read tea leaves also believe they're pursuing the truth, but nobody would say that's science.
- onewland 14y ago
  This is the Columbia Journalism Review. It's not saying science is stupid, it's saying that reporters are too quick to publish study results, when not enough research has been done on the subject topic.
  - jkubicek 14y ago
    JohnsonB's comment[0] draws the same conclusion I did. The article seems to suggest that studies aren't working and we need to start listening to anecdotal evidence. I could have misinterpreted that passage, though. [0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5080094 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5080094
    - rm999 14y ago
      The idea that scientific research is infallible is exactly what the article is arguing against - in fact, it claims this attitude is a bigger problem than the scientists or the media. Human-performed studies with limited budgets and unrealistic controls should not supersede expert opinion per se. When there is a disconnect between the two it is irresponsible not to question the scientific studies (in addition to the experts, of course).
- rm999 14y ago
  > Critical analysis of research is science You missed the point in the name of semantics, but I'll bite. Finding flaws in a scientific paper my be taking part in the scientific process, but it is by no means a science in itself - e.g. as a stats person, I can point out when a p value is misapplied, but I would never claim I just 'used science'. >I'm perpetually frustrated with articles like this that seem to portray science as a failure by citing faulty studies It's worth separating the philosophy of science from its application. This article is purely about the application and what has gone wrong. This is why I think this article is important for the STEM crowd: we are taught that science is an infallible philosophy (which I agree with), but it's easy to forget the garbage-in garbage-out nature of experimentation.
dkarl 14y ago
> Educated STEM people usually have a strong devotion to science, but science very often fails at revealing the truth The article criticizes journalism for not properly reflecting science and scientific opinion, so it implicitly accepts science as the gold standard. I think the lesson is that there's more demand for scientific novelty and certainty than science itself can satisfy, so science journalism focuses on the conjecture, controversy, preliminary results, and premature conclusions that arise in the practice of science instead of focusing on the emergence of consensus among scientists. The job of a science journalist like Tara Parker-Pope or a pop science author/advocate like Gary Taubes is akin to the job of a prosecuting attorney: to tell a single story as compellingly as possible. The article is about cases where journalists succeed in telling a simple, intuitive, compelling story while science itself is telling a collection of messy, incomplete, counter-intuitive, and/or contradictory stories. I know many "educated STEM people," but I don't know anybody who does any significant reading of scientific literature outside their field. I've read a lot of abstracts (and a few articles, when they're available) while trying to look one layer deeper than the news, but I don't have the background to understand a lot of what I read, and I've never gone to the library and reviewed dozens of related papers to get context for the paper I'm reading, like a real scientist would. Virtually every vote and consumer choice influenced by science is influenced through news media, science journalism, or classroom education, not by direct exposure to the work of practicing scientists.
- svachalek 14y ago
  I think you missed the second half of the article.
  - dkarl 14y ago
    The article is about "How personal-health journalism ignores the fundamental pitfalls baked into all scientific research." The second half of the article is about biases that influence individual scientists and journals. Scientists acknowledge such factors and do their best, within the limits of their own bias, to take all limiting factors into account when evaluating research. Where the influence of the scientific community coincides, you can expect to see bias shared by all scientists, and where powerful institutions can unduly sway community opinion, bias will bubble up into the community consensus, but scientific consensus is still much more reliable than the results of individual papers or the opinions of individual scientists, because the interests of individual scientists vary and often compete. The article makes the point that journalism should take skepticism within the scientific community about specific claims more seriously and could serve as an outside critical perspective on science, but in fact reads the scientific literature more naively than scientists themselves do.

by rm999 14y ago

jkubicek 14y ago

> To me, a critical analysis of research is often more valuable than the research itself. Critical analysis of research is science. I'm perpetually frustrated with articles like this that seem to portray science as a failure by citing faulty studies, ignoring the fact that everything is working as it should.

jkubicek 14y ago
It bothers me to no end when people discuss "science" as if it were just one of many options available. Science is the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of truth is science. There are no alternatives.
- pnathan 14y ago
  Is logic science?
- tedunangst 14y ago
  Science is a means of pursuing the truth. People who read tea leaves also believe they're pursuing the truth, but nobody would say that's science.
onewland 14y ago
This is the Columbia Journalism Review. It's not saying science is stupid, it's saying that reporters are too quick to publish study results, when not enough research has been done on the subject topic.
- jkubicek 14y ago
  JohnsonB's comment[0] draws the same conclusion I did. The article seems to suggest that studies aren't working and we need to start listening to anecdotal evidence. I could have misinterpreted that passage, though. [0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5080094 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5080094
  - rm999 14y ago
    The idea that scientific research is infallible is exactly what the article is arguing against - in fact, it claims this attitude is a bigger problem than the scientists or the media. Human-performed studies with limited budgets and unrealistic controls should not supersede expert opinion per se. When there is a disconnect between the two it is irresponsible not to question the scientific studies (in addition to the experts, of course).
rm999 14y ago
> Critical analysis of research is science You missed the point in the name of semantics, but I'll bite. Finding flaws in a scientific paper my be taking part in the scientific process, but it is by no means a science in itself - e.g. as a stats person, I can point out when a p value is misapplied, but I would never claim I just 'used science'. >I'm perpetually frustrated with articles like this that seem to portray science as a failure by citing faulty studies It's worth separating the philosophy of science from its application. This article is purely about the application and what has gone wrong. This is why I think this article is important for the STEM crowd: we are taught that science is an infallible philosophy (which I agree with), but it's easy to forget the garbage-in garbage-out nature of experimentation.

dkarl 14y ago

> Educated STEM people usually have a strong devotion to science, but science very often fails at revealing the truth The article criticizes journalism for not properly reflecting science and scientific opinion, so it implicitly accepts science as the gold standard. I think the lesson is that there's more demand for scientific novelty and certainty than science itself can satisfy, so science journalism focuses on the conjecture, controversy, preliminary results, and premature conclusions that arise in the practice of science instead of focusing on the emergence of consensus among scientists. The job of a science journalist like Tara Parker-Pope or a pop science author/advocate like Gary Taubes is akin to the job of a prosecuting attorney: to tell a single story as compellingly as possible. The article is about cases where journalists succeed in telling a simple, intuitive, compelling story while science itself is telling a collection of messy, incomplete, counter-intuitive, and/or contradictory stories. I know many "educated STEM people," but I don't know anybody who does any significant reading of scientific literature outside their field. I've read a lot of abstracts (and a few articles, when they're available) while trying to look one layer deeper than the news, but I don't have the background to understand a lot of what I read, and I've never gone to the library and reviewed dozens of related papers to get context for the paper I'm reading, like a real scientist would. Virtually every vote and consumer choice influenced by science is influenced through news media, science journalism, or classroom education, not by direct exposure to the work of practicing scientists.

svachalek 14y ago
I think you missed the second half of the article.
- dkarl 14y ago
  The article is about "How personal-health journalism ignores the fundamental pitfalls baked into all scientific research." The second half of the article is about biases that influence individual scientists and journals. Scientists acknowledge such factors and do their best, within the limits of their own bias, to take all limiting factors into account when evaluating research. Where the influence of the scientific community coincides, you can expect to see bias shared by all scientists, and where powerful institutions can unduly sway community opinion, bias will bubble up into the community consensus, but scientific consensus is still much more reliable than the results of individual papers or the opinions of individual scientists, because the interests of individual scientists vary and often compete. The article makes the point that journalism should take skepticism within the scientific community about specific claims more seriously and could serve as an outside critical perspective on science, but in fact reads the scientific literature more naively than scientists themselves do.