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Insufficient repetition is a huge problem in medical science. There is no incentive to replicate existing studies, as it doesn't advance your career. A related
by api 12y ago
Insufficient repetition is a huge problem in medical science. There is no incentive to replicate existing studies, as it doesn't advance your career. A related problem is that there is no incentive to publish negative results.
- evv 12y agoExactly. Science isn't broken, but it seems that way because the incentives that drive it are wrong. Especially with medical science.
- api 12y agoPersonally I think medical science and the health care industry are so broken that they should just be rebooted from scratch.
- batbomb 12y agoWhat does that even mean?
- api 12y agoIt means someone could in theory create a vertically integrated alternative to the entire field of medicine rebooted from the ground up with more modern understandings of things like statistics (e.g. Bayesianism) and more efficient bureaucratic constructs, and it'd probably be considerably better than what we have. I say in theory because this would cost a rather large fortune and would probably be illegal in most nations, so it's not likely to actually happen.
- jorjordandan 12y agoWell you gotta pinch your doctors nose while inserting a paper clip in his ear and wait thirty seconds. Factory reboot
- clem 12y agoIt means doctors no longer have to wash their hands prior to a trepanning.
- aetherson 12y agoYou say that like "Science" is a thing. It's not. There is no platonic "science" that exists independently of the human institutions actually doing science. To imagine there is is to make science into a religion.
- flurie 12y agoThat's because you're unfortunately incorrect. There is a thing called capital-s Science, distinct from lowercase-s science. The former is a religion, just like you said, and the latter is merely an updating empirical process. The former is what Scott Adams and most other people discussing the article are talking about, and the latter is, hundreds of years later, so banal that it doesn't merit discussion.
- jimbokun 12y ago"Science isn't broken, but it seems that way because the incentives that drive it are wrong." Which sounds pretty similar to "science is broken", from an outsider's perspective.
- pjkundert 12y agoThe incentive to publish negative results is: "to not be labelled a charlatan". The widespread non-publication of negative studies (and, tragically, their datasets) has, rightly, tarnished the validity of all published scientific results. You can't blame normal people for doubting "scientific" results. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to deduce the worthlessness of published results, when it is disclosed that negative results have been withheld: Just do studies until you get the results you want, then publish that one. This has been de rigeur in medical science for some time. For shame...