Scientific Research That Could Have Been Avoided 413
indian_rediff writes "An article from Friday's Wall Street Journal (reprinted in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) details how some of the research being done by scientists ends up simply stating the obvious. Their observations make for some interesting and hilarious reading." From the article: "Want job satisfaction? A 'careful choice of career is the key,' researchers concluded in a paper this spring in the Journal of Economic Psychology. Choosing a career based on a well-lubricated encounter at a bar, it turns out, may not be the most promising route to career satisfaction. People who choose their jobs carefully are more likely to be satisfied with them than those who take a flying leap into the great unknown."
Not really a bad thing.. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not really a bad thing.. (Score:2)
In other news... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Not really a bad thing.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple (Score:2)
I would guess that all the more exciting topics have been thoroughly covered before. Either that, or companies have paid for these studies to further their cause.
Another thought is that maybe they didn't find a more exciting answer other than the obvious one, so they just went ahead and published the non-earth-shatte
Re:Simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, we can only hope...
Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
(1) Positive ID: you saw the whites of their eyes, and they were wearing their driver's license as a badge.
(2) Corroberating evidence: Someone matching that description was seen running away.
(3) Ruling out suspects: a small woman was seen running away, but the suspect is a big man.
And a study like that could help the jury categorize how to view the evidence.
Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. When I was in college I was paid to participate in a study on how sleep deprivation affects people's ability to analyze information, follow instructions, and work in groups. A big group of us stayed awake for 48 hours. We periodically had to take short written tests, perform fairly complex tasks by following someone else's directions, and work in groups to try to solve problems. We were later told that the study was funded by the military, who wanted information on how people's performance degraded at various tasks as they stayed awake longer and longer.
The people funding the study wanted to get an idea about how long an enlisted infantryman could go without sleep and still be effective relative to an officer, helicopter mechanic, paramedic, etc. Now, obviously if you summed the results of this study up as "Sleep deprivation decreases your capacity to solve problems, follow instructions, and work in groups" it would sound pointlessly obvious.
This just in... (Score:5, Funny)
Scientific research shows that scientific research could have been avoided.
Ugh, now my head hurts. I have to go lie down.
Re:This just in... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:This just in... (Score:2, Funny)
A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Insightful)
* The Earth was flat;
* Objects slowly came to a stop unless a force was exerted on them;
* Matter and energy were always conserved;
* Time was a universal constant;
Question everything, but sometimes the answer is "yes, that's correct."
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Insightful)
And like the parent poster says, you can't just go around saying "Why research that? It's obvious?" We get proved wrong on "obvious" shit all the time.
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:4, Interesting)
They feel their money could be better spent elsewhere (and at times it could). Now, while I do not claim to know where the money for these studies came from I do know that a lot of money which could be better spent does get funneled into "questionable" funding (how about painting some rocks to look like other rocks because after new construction on a highway some rocks did not look weathered...) because the politicians funnel it to their district.
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:4, Informative)
Take the large public research university that I work for with a total annual operating budget of approximately $2.6 billion.
So you can imagine the theoretical impact of a 10% decrease in grant money. That gap ain't going to be filled by the state.
counterpoint cabal (Score:4, Interesting)
You and parent are also wrong.
And like the parent poster says, you can't just go around saying "Why research that? It's obvious?" We get proved wrong on "obvious" shit all the time.
There IS a such thing as stupid research. For example, from TFA:
In what its sponsors called a "landmark study," scientists found that when your fingers are numb and turning that lovely robin's-egg blue, you make more typing effors. Er, errors. "When employees get chilly," the scientists concluded, "they are not working to their full potential."
Can you tell me one logical reason why anyone might think that people with stiff, cold fingers would not make more typing errors than people with normal fingers? That's the point of the whole thing: only an idiot would need to test that hypothesis. That's like testing to decide if people who read non-fiction often like non-fiction.
There are some things that do not need to be tested with methodology to be agreed as true. You don't need a study to find out that shooting yourself in the head will hurt you.
Wait, maybe you should test out that hypothesis...
Re:counterpoint cabal (Score:2, Informative)
I can imagine that there are certain situations where the working environment should be kept (or simply is by nature) very cold. It might be interesting (or vital) for those
Re:counterpoint cabal (Score:5, Insightful)
The WSJ kindly didn't give us a reference, so we don't know what was actualy in that paper. However, having read a few papers in my time I bet you my left arm that it didn't consist of "we made this guy's fingers really cold and his typing sucked". I bet it says precisely how poor the typing was. Do you know exactly how badly cold affects typing? Just how cold is "chilly"? Is it 280K or 290K? How is the error rate correlated with temperature? How is it correlated with age and sex?
If it's so futile to perform the experiment, if the answers are so obvious, you won't mind telling us the temperature at which a healthy 30-year old male experiences a 10% temperature-induced error rate.
I'm sure you wouldn't mind using your guess when deciding when you should shut down air-traffic control if the heating malfunctions, but I'd rather the people making decisions like that have some hard data to work from.
Re:counterpoint cabal (Score:4, Insightful)
From the article: "When the office temperature in a month-long study increased from 68 to 77 degrees Fahrenheit, typing errors fell by 44 percent and typing output jumped 150 percent...raising the temperature to a more comfortable thermal zone saves employers about $2 per worker, per hour"
If I employed only 5 typists, thats $400/wk. More than enough to pay the increased heating and start saving for my end of year bonus for being clever and commissioning the study.
Re:counterpoint cabal (Score:2, Informative)
Well, not all research is truly useful, but the problem here is that the author of the article provides no context. He does not even discuss what the studies were investigating. Surely, it could have been something random and pointless, but I'm rather betting that it was taken out of context (exactly how valuable the research is, is another matter entirely, and depends on whose perspective you answer that question from).
The "conclusion" seems to be a paraphrased one-liner which was likely taken out of con
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:4, Insightful)
Part of the problem is that some people assume they know stuff when they really don't. They believe, but they don't actually know. For example, somebody was saying the other day that he knew all along that Iraq didn't have WMDs. Um, no, he didn't. He hadn't ever even been to Iraq. Heh.
Anyway, the point is that 'obvious' isn't scientific. I can't help but think the dude who wrote this story was inspired by watching Myth Busters. Sometimes they 'bust' myths that seem pretty darn obvious. They had an episode not too long ago that was about whether or not a frozen chicken could do more damage to a plane than a thawed one. I remember thinking "duh" through the whole thing. It seemed pretty obvious to me that yes, of course, a frozen chicken will do more damage. Still, the experiments were surprising. They had a seriously difficult time proving it. In the end, they did, but not before falsely declaring TWICE that freezing the chicken had no change in effect. Since I had never experimented with this, what call do I have shouting 'duh!'? Heck, one of them thought it was 'duh!' that a frozen chicken wouldn't do any more damage than a thawed one.
I'm a big fan of the "there's no such thing as a stupid question" philosophy. Given how much we base our lives on assumptions and 'conventional wisdom', I'm not very eager to shake my pitchfork at conducting an obvious or redundant experiment. Sometimes it's worth it just to refine the testing process. Going back to my Myth Busters example, that's exactly what happened. They cooked up a better test despite thinking they had come to a solid conclusion before.
A subtle distinction indeed. (Score:3, Interesting)
I was reading the Times back in the 90's, and it discussed Iraq's inflatable fake weapons, used to fool long-distance information gathering by being indistinguishable in a satellite picture from an actual missile, plane or tank.
Sometimes it's worth it just to refine the testing process.
Verily.
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:3, Insightful)
There's no such thing as "common sense", only "shared assumptions".
Re:Bad example. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, no, you really don't. It seems very unlikely that there are any apple trees on Mars, given what we do know, but you don't know. You (and I) merely assume so based on the evidence so far. Normally, that's fine and I wouldn't complain about the term "know", but in the context of a discussion regarding whether it is a waste to test things we already "know", it's good to remind ourselves that what we think we know are really just as
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Insightful)
Odly enough, it had been scientifically demonstrated that the earth was round at a time when Alexandria was a place with a really cool library, and that got obscured by this religious sect that had a holy book that implied otherwise.
Fortunatly, these days we don't suffer from crazy religious groups getting political power and subverting scien... well, ok, we DO, but at least we don't get burned alive as part of it no more... that's a kind of progress.
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, experts knew this as well in medieval Europe. The reason why Columbus had a hard time getting an expedition is because advisors to the Spanish court correctly estimated the distance from Spain to India and said that the distance was too large to feasibly make the journey using a western route.
Columbus screwed up his calculations by using incorrect conversions for units of distance and thought that the trip was feasible. If he hadn't run into the Americas, his expedition would have ended with his crew dying of starvation and/or dehydration in the middle of the ocean.
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:2)
I mean, you re going on a seafaring expedition, cant you fish some extra food along the way?
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:2)
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Informative)
The whole article is a troll by WSJ; they're in cahoots with the crazy religious "right" and like to bash scientists, because this administration has angered the scientific community, so the GOP is in attack mode now on science and everything related; I saw a similar article the other day.
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:3, Informative)
Close. Eratosthenes lived from 276-194 BC, [1911encyclopedia.org] which is 2000 years before the invention of the kilometer, so he definitely didn't measure it to be 40,000 km. Instead he used a unit called the stadion, whose length is no longer known precisely.
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:2)
Um, where in the Bible does it say that the earth is flat? Or are you just blaming this on religion because it's an easy target?
Re:Congratulation! (Score:2)
The Relativity of Wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
Isaac Asimov once wrote an excellent essay on scientific progress named "The Relativity of Wrong". He wrote on the ever evolving precision on the shape of the Earth.
It went something like: There was a time when people thought the Earth was flat. In those times the error in measuring the true curvature of the Earth was "x". Then people thought that the Earth was spherical. The error in measuring the true curvature of the Earth was "y". Then people realized that the Earth was an oblate spheroid. The error in measuring the true curvature of the Earth was "z". After launching satellites in space and measuring the perturbations in their orbit caused by the Earth's shape, scientists have been refining the model for tha shape of the Earth more and more.
But the error in measuring the true curvature of the Earth has been ever decreasing, from flat to sphere to oblate spheroid to tri-axial ellipsoid to arbitrary shape. The difference from an oblate spheroid to the true shape of the Earth is several orders of magnitude smaller than the difference from a sphere to an oblate spheroid.
That's where science makes a difference. Sicence is cumulative. The knowledge that you learn through sicence may be improved, but not disproved.
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:4, Interesting)
Most of the pain research isn't very good to begin with, but this type of stuff only sucks up the limited grant money that could be used for meaningful work.
I would love to see pain research that focused on what could be done to prevent acute pain from becomming chronic. Every once in awhile in the surgical setting you see a good study, like one that found you could reduce allodynia, hyperalgesia, and RSD/CRPS by 90%+ by pretreating patients with an NMDA antagonist, long acting opioid, COX2 inhibitor, and after surgery maintaining the LA-opioid, a decent breakthrough medicine, and some tylenol for 2 weeks. A 90% reduction in those complications and better outcomes is big news. I wish someone would apply the same basic principle to when patients first present with pain. Maybe we could stop 90% of them after modifying doctors standand practices from going on to develop chronic pain, but no one is doing the research, so we will never know.
Instead we get treated to the 127th confirmatory study that NSAIDS are effective on mild to moderate arthritis pain.
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Informative)
Even if the combination is safe there's no guarantee that the result will be the "obvious" one. Perhaps the drugs combine in some way to cancel each other out. Perhaps they use the same receptors and interfere with each other. Or perhaps some interaction multiples the total effect (but not strongly enough to back into killing the patient territory again.)
You can argue about the relative merrit of these kinds of studies vs other more original kinds of research, but i don't think you can reasonably argue that it's useless.
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:A subtle distinction... (Score:2)
For exampe on the opioid study, that two different drugs (I imagine the specific types were specified) together have an additive effect on pain is actuall
Human Common Sense is flawed (Score:2)
One of the clear conclusions of 20th century physics and psychology is that commonsense is very limited when dealing with the physical world. Just because something seems obvious that doesn't mean it is true.
A glaring example of this was a series of experiments done with freshman physics students to test their physical intuition. One of the questions involved something like the following: a bomber (plane) is coming over a target at such and such a speed show on the diagram where it should release the bomb
Flying leap? (Score:5, Funny)
Unless you want a job as a professional skydiver, that is...
Re:Flying leap? (Score:2)
I know that was modded funny but.....
Just about finished school and not certain what career to take and after a quick google [google.ca] it looks interesting.
Re:Flying leap? (Score:2)
After even more googling I find the equipment costs more then my freakin' car!
Re:Flying leap? (Score:2)
Well, I think it's still worth it to carefully consider getting a parachute first, but if you just want to jump out of the plane, I'm willing to admit I'm overly cautious
Here are some 'great' research ideas: (Score:2)
--
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noone really cares
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life is short
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all of the above are depressing research topics but they are funny because they are true.
--
I should stop.
From "Duh!" magazine (Score:2)
"According to Phillip Laplante, associate professor of software engineering at Penn State Great Valley, the answer as to why spam is omnipresent is two-fold: it's easy to create and distribute, and it's economically advantageous for those who send it."
Re:From "Duh!" magazine (Score:2)
Job Satisfaction (Score:4, Funny)
Most fortunate of all, the employee has all the power as they do not have any necessary expenses and there is always an employer willing to pay more than the current offer. Employers care about your satisfaction, too. The last thing they would ever want to do is upset your job satisfaction by outsourcing your entire team, division or city to an offsore center for cheaper wages and expenses.
Yes, my friends, glory in the simplicity of overwhelming demand for technical expetise and the underwhelming presence of employables.
Bigger Fish (Score:3, Informative)
Let's not forget the billions and billions poured into bogus Star Wars missile defense technology R&D over the last 20 years. It doesn't work. It never did work. It never will work. Ande even if it DID work it's easily defeated. Not to mention that it could never be tested in any realistic scenario. Most of this absolutely wasted money was spent as part of classified budgets so nobody really knows exactly how much of a boondoggle it really is. When all you hear about are the much publicized tests - virtually all of which end in failure - you know there's a lot more that never sees the light of day.
Re:Bigger Fish (Score:2)
Re:Bigger Fish (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Bigger Fish (Score:3, Interesting)
So it's your contention that one projectile colliding with another projectile on a consistent basis is impossible? All the current missile defense programs have shown us is that it's harder than initially anticipated, but to think it's theoretically impossible shows a complete failure to grasp classical mechanics. There's absolutely nothing going on with two missiles that makes colliding them impossible. Criticize the right wing propagandists all you want, just realize the left spews b
Only stupid on the surface. (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, "common sense" can be used to explain all sorts of conflicting ideas. If the study had come out the other way, everyone would be saying that it's obvious that people are happier if they jump in and try out all sorts of things before settling on what you really want to do - "life is a journey", "you need time to find yourself". Psychology is the study of scientifically testing what common sense ideas about ourselves actually are true, to what extent, and in what situations. Of course some psychologists are better than others, but just because you could have guessed the answer doesn't mean it's not worth finding out for sure.
There is also a problem with papers written for the sole purpose of getting published, and I don't like that. I wish that more universities would wise up to the fact that knowledge is becoming more and more in-depth and specialized, and therefore it will take longer till someone is far enough along in thier specialty that they can begin doing research that is new and meaningfull. If you force people to write thesis earlier, 90% of them will be rediscovering somthing that has already been discovered.
But I stand by my statement that stupid jounalism is more of the problem than stupid research, and that knowing something is better than thinking it.
Re:Only stupid on the surface. (Score:5, Insightful)
I couldn't agree more. A prof of mine told us a story about the dangers of "common sense" once. As a structural engineer, he had been contracted to design a cover for a terrasse for a cafe somewhere. The owner wanted open space, and so he designed it as a cantilever, only supported on the building side, with no column at the other end. In such a configuration the beams of the cantilever will be in tension on the top part, and compression in the bottom part. Concrete doesn't do very well in tension so you put more reinforcement in the top part. Case closed.
The contractor who was doing the job, had no experience with cantilevers. He managed to convince the owner that it would be safer with columns at the other end. And the owner agreed. Who could argue that a roof would be stronger with columns at both ends of the span? It's common sense, right?
What they failed to take into account, is that now the stress patterns were the opposite of the design stresses, with tension on the bottom of the beam, and compression at the top since the beam was now supported at both ends. They never consulted with the engineer who had made the original design, so of course after construction the beams shortly started cracking in the underside and the roof slowly sagged. It was forturnate that some steel reinforcement had been included for the compression part, or it might have failed without warning and there might have been victims.
The point of the story was that "common sense" was very often based on our limited experience. Unless you know what mechanisms make "common sense" true, you might be dead wrong. It never hurts to be sure; to have proof.
And of course, as ou pointed out, the details of the study, the mechanism of what is happening is often what the research is all about, but also what the journalists like to skip.
Re:Only stupid on the surface. (Score:2)
It was "common sense" that the sun went around the earth, it was "common sense" that a heavier object would fall faster than a lighter object (all things being equal), and that an object that was moving would do so only as a result of a continuing force, and on and on.
Re:Only stupid on the surface. (Score:2)
Of course, two of things are, in their own way, true.
In air or water, heavier objects do fall faster. People's experience just didn't cover vacuumes, nor did it accuratly account for the effect that weight and wind resistance had on the spe
Classic example (Score:2)
Of course the aim of the work was actually to measure the mechanisms of learning, generalisation and action in respo
I would like to point out one thing... (Score:3, Insightful)
Researchers get funding by the number of papers they write and by the number of times they get cited, not by whether they do anything new. For this reason, scientists who do things that are new are rarely
Reminded of a Quote (Score:5, Insightful)
"Ordinary people marvel at extraordinary things. Extraordinary people marvel at ordinary things." -Confucius
Why in cog. sci? Let's think about seeing the color black for a minute. Pretty ordinary. If I told you that I did my Ph.D. on our ability to see the color black, what would you think? "For this you got a Ph.D.?" If I stopped there, you could probably write a short, shallow article about how scientists wasted time and money doing research on things that's mundane. But let's think about it for a minute. How do we see? Light entering our eyes. What color is a projector screen? White. So how is it that we are able to see black on a movie screen during a movie? If we see because of lights entering our eyes, where is the black coming from? The projector shines light, the white screen reflects it back, the portions that we see as black has no light, how do we end up seeing black on a white screen? Maybe not everything we see comes from the outside world. In fact, black is something our brain creates, which then really makes you wonder about shadows. Don't believe me? Check this out.
So we've gone from something that seems really ordinary to a startling discovery. In fact, it's usually the deeper truth behind ordinary things that surprise us and make us go "wow" and inspires us. Stars from the ground are nothing more than specks of light. I guess we can call astronomy look at specks of light through glass and mirrors. Sounds pretty boring too.
Re:Reminded of a Quote (Score:2)
I guess we can call astronomy look at specks of light through glass and mirrors. Sounds pretty boring too.
Astronomy is looking up!
Re:Reminded of a Quote (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Reminded of a Quote (Score:2)
(/err this has so absolutely nothing to do with race and the very fact I have this statement is a sign of my utter disappointment with the human race and an indication that I would not mind its destruction.)
Not to knock your research (Score:2)
One of the simplest tricks I like to do is with monitor white points. You change it from whatever it is and it looks wrong, either too red or too blue. Wait a
Re:Not to knock your research (Score:2)
Re:Reminded of a Quote (Score:3, Interesting)
Hehe. I'm one of those people. I'm a digital artist. I make pretty colored pixels for a living. As such, I've been exposed to a LOT of information about visual perception, including 'seeing black'. If you caught me at a different point in my life, there's a real chance I would have said "duh" and I would have told you (what I thought was...) the answer.
But you know what? That
I Prefer the Big Leap (Score:2)
Finally, I'm taking leaps into the Unknown by concentrating more on working with
this is not scientific research (Score:5, Insightful)
this is an editorial piece, nothing scientific about it. there are no references to the supposed studies they quote, there are not even second opinions from authors or other scientific researchers. pure speculation.
and many those research problems cited are *not* obvious, but the author belittles the studies they quote to make the research questions sound more obvious than they really are.
* on a finding that men over 55 are a high risk group for digit loss due to power tools... this requires good statistics to know, its *not* obvious.
* that workers are less efficient in a cold environment... again, not obvious, and many workplaces (imho) keep the thermostat too low.
* that asthma and smoking aggregate worse than either, again not obvious... many people falsely believe this is not true.
* that doctor-patient communication is critical for reducing harmful effects of mixing drugs, also not obvious -- now we know that communication skills are an important part of medical training.
granted, many of the studies conclude with obvious recommendations, e.g., "be careful with power tools", and the author makes great fun of these "obvious conclusions" when in fact, they are not the substantiative conclusion (i.e., factual finding) of the research, just a recommendation for how to interpret the finding.
Responsible writing (Score:2)
Where's the Science ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Explaining how these facts can, or can not, be integrated into our existing body of knowledge in a systematic, consistent and coherent fashion is science. It's about understanding and not just knowledge. That's the difference.
The pro
Old saying about research (Score:3, Funny)
not ALL funny (Score:2, Insightful)
Is this really amusing and obvious? And, as opposed to the "choose your career wisely" conclusion, this has some pretty serious consequences. People engaging in potentially abusive behavior who are under-reporting it to themselves are much less likely to ever think there might be a problem brewing.
Dupe research (Score:2, Interesting)
"A few months in the lab can save you a few hours in the library."
I took a flying leap into my career. (Score:2)
Not to flame... but... (Score:2)
Those "scientists" are actually sociologists... basically people who go around and sum up the obvious. All they do is study correlations between human interactions and other events... the obvious
My sociology professor even admitted it, and he has a PhD in the damn field.
Re:Not to flame... but... (Score:2)
Very simple example. Say you're contracted by a government to help them develop a health system for their poor rural population. How do you arrange the system to minimize cost and maximize utilization? Sociology can tell you a lot about how peoples' behavior will affect the way they use available services. Whi
The thing is... (Score:2)
It has seemed obvious that lowering the legal BAC limit would decrease alcohol related automobile accidents. Except that it doesn't. It seems obvious that protein synthesis is catalyzed by proteins,
Is reading Slashdot (Score:2, Funny)
Universities Share the Blame (Score:3, Interesting)
I am not attempting to claim that some areas of study are worse than others because they aren't always on the breaking edge of new research. I'm also not attempting to claim that postgrads shouldn't be pushed to perform new research. I am only stating that in some fields, students just don't have much to choose from. So, they end up doing what we would call worthless research. In reality, it isn't worthless. It is specifically designed to get them a degree so they can (hopefully) make a lot more money.
The secret of success in the stock market is.... (Score:2)
My first problem with this... (Score:2)
Publish or Perish... (Score:2, Insightful)
Then again, "90% of everything is crud." That being the case, it follows that 90% of research will be utter BS by definition.
Or to put it more scientifically, research, along with many other things both in nature and man-made will follow the 1/f power scaling law. So it is rather ironic -- and gratifing -- to note that research itself
Stupid article. (Score:3, Insightful)
Incomplete article (Score:2)
Many respectable universities require (mandate) their profesors to submit (bi-)yearly research papers for collegiate journals. As a consequence, every discipline is littered with useless studies, surveys, theses, and research papers, which state the obvious and expend ink for no other reason but justification of private/public grants or retention of one's job.
In this respect, two of the most abused fields are Philosophy an
Idiot-Solvent (Score:2, Funny)
Choosing a career based on a well-lubricated encounter at a bar, it turns out, may not be the most promising route to career satisfaction.
No, but it's a great way to have fun while getting paid for doing research! ("Just water for me tonight, I'm the designated-control.")Less Value in the Summary (Score:2)
Much more valuable than the sound bite at the end of the day is the data just underneath the tawdry summary. "Typing with cold fingers makes you less productive," isn't something you'd scream "Eureka!" about, but finding out that saving $40,000 on your heating bill is causing approximately $740,000 in lost productivity is.
The papers themselves contain a lot more of the assumptions and statistics - and those maintain their validity over time. Trace "sodium is bad for you" back to the studies, and you may
And this if from a *good* science writer ... (Score:3, Interesting)
To be fair, maybe she does understand all of this but had a deadline to meet for the next issue. In any case, this is very poor science reporting even for a mainstream publication like the WSJ...
Re:Why not me? (Score:2)
Re:Why not me? (Score:2)
Have you come up with a reasonable hypothesis that has the potential to disprove conventional wisdom?
Re:Teen Pledges Barely Cut STD Rates, Study Says (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Teen Pledges Barely Cut STD Rates, Study Says (Score:2)
If you have to drive, take your first training lessons with someone older than you. Don't carpool. Always use an airbag. Remember, red means "stop." Don't go too fast. Use y
Re:Teen Pledges Barely Cut STD Rates, Study Says (Score:2)
Re:Satisfaction? hah! (Score:2)
For some reason, I can't get no satisfaction from that. Maybe I need professional help.
Re:Psychology isn't even science. (Score:2)
Re:Psychology isn't even science. (Score:2)
Won a blue ribbon at the science fair for your "growing mold" experiement, did you?
Re:Oh, yeah? (Score:2)
Re:XXX Joke, forgive me, but at least it is on top (Score:3, Interesting)