How Science Goes Wrong 316
dryriver sends this article from the Economist:
"A simple idea underpins science: 'trust, but verify'. Results should always be subject to challenge from experiment. That simple but powerful idea has generated a vast body of knowledge. Since its birth in the 17th century, modern science has changed the world beyond recognition, and overwhelmingly for the better. But success can breed complacency. Modern scientists are doing too much trusting and not enough verifying — to the detriment of the whole of science, and of humanity. Too many of the findings that fill the academic ether are the result of shoddy experiments or poor analysis (see article). A rule of thumb among biotechnology venture-capitalists is that half of published research cannot be replicated. Even that may be optimistic. Last year researchers at one biotech firm, Amgen, found they could reproduce just six of 53 'landmark' studies in cancer research. Earlier, a group at Bayer, a drug company, managed to repeat just a quarter of 67 similarly important papers. A leading computer scientist frets that three-quarters of papers in his subfield are bunk. In 2000-10 roughly 80,000 patients took part in clinical trials based on research that was later retracted because of mistakes or improprieties. Even when flawed research does not put people's lives at risk — and much of it is too far from the market to do so — it squanders money and the efforts of some of the world's best minds. The opportunity costs of stymied progress are hard to quantify, but they are likely to be vast. And they could be rising."
Can someone verify the numbers? (Score:5, Funny)
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Are the numbers from this article just pulled out of a hat?
But it was the very best kind of hat ...
(apologies to a certain British mathematician)
replication (Score:2)
No results that has not been replicated should be trusted. The problem is not that errors are made but rather that results are trusted before they are replicated.
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Exactly. As a long term Computer Scientist, everyone in my field (Computational Linguistics) knows that published results are only good if they sound plausible and can be reproduced. This boils down to citations. Bad papers (on average) tend to have low citation counts.
There more being wasted (Score:2)
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Then they should publish in an open journal.
Open Journal have problems, but at least someone might find it.
"trust but verify" (Score:2)
"trust but verify" is a good idea in many areas -- relationships, law, security -- not just science. But it's especially important in areas where published results establish precedent and serves as the basis of new results. Else we end up with baggage that hampers future efforts. It's not just a matter of saying "oops, those results are invalid", we also have to ask "ok, what other research has those results affected, and how does invalidation change things?"
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So how far back do you verify?
If I am working on gravity theory, do I need to verify everything since newton?
Trust?! (Score:2)
That's faith man.
How about actual proof?
Seriously, how do these studies get published? I mean this "trust" thing goes both ways and is probably why some really cool results don't get published - like the famous http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belousov%E2%80%93Zhabotinsky_reaction [wikipedia.org]
From the wikipedia: "Belousov made two attempts to publish his finding, but was rejected on the grounds that he could not explain his results to the satisfaction of the editors of the journals to which he submitted his results."
Wh
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His point is many experiments are too time consuming and expensive for a journal to reproduced. Some studies take many years.
This is a real problem and conflict of interest (Score:5, Insightful)
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But you gain recognition and get published if you prove someone else wrong. And your academic progress is hampered if someone shows your results to be flawed. I think you are ignoring the competitive element.
That said, there is a problem with the current trend of grants being based strongly on the number of published papers, as it waters down the content of each paper and gets in the way of basic, long term research where there is no guarantee for "quarterly research results".
Re:This is a real problem and conflict of interest (Score:5, Insightful)
But you get no funding from it and potentially make an enemy who now DOES have reason to scrutinize and point out your every mistake. If you aren't accomplished enough yourself your failure to replicate something isn't likely to even be published. And it isn't to the same degree. This is Dr. So-and-So, the man who did that brilliant work and discovered x,y,z impressive sounding thing vs This is Dr. So-and-So, he's never actually accomplished anything but he did a great job of failing to replicate his peer's results.
You'd be better off in the long run pretending to replicate or even expand on the results of your peers. It isn't like they are ever going to call you out on it, you've made an ally AND made it much more difficult for either of your reputations to be harmed by a third party regardless of their claims.
"And your academic progress is hampered if someone shows your results to be flawed."
Yeah, but apparently it's not likely and you can select areas of study to minimize the probability. Even if someone fails to replicate your results it isn't proof that you faked them.
"I think you are ignoring the competitive element."
I don't think so. Most people are probably working from the assumption that work accepted and that has passed peer review is most likely legitimate. Why spend all that time and effort in hopes someone else in wrong? And in a way you can prove? Even if you suspect they faked something, that just means you are likely to be able to get away with it too and as stated above there is more glory down that path.
It's no different than essays and other academic papers. You are required to provide references to support your assertions and credit sources but everyone knows the professor doesn't actually have time to read them. So people find credible and uncontroversial sources on topics that could well be saying something that could support their assertions. On the slim chance you were caught in it, you'd just find something you accidentally misinterpreted and be a little cautious for the next couple. And that's if you had to say anything, the professor is far more likely to assume (s)he has better comprehension of the topic than the student and add a note to educate the poor fledgling, they might not even reduce the grade over it depending on the topic.
Money (Score:5, Insightful)
Assuming TFA's numbers are correct, I'd bet that much of the problem is that no agency, be it government or commercial (and particularly commercial) wants to spend it's money seeing if published results are reproducible. Additionally, no one ever won a Noble Prize for excellence in reproducing others' results. Verification of results is key to science, but this is one of several aspects of doing science right that the funding agencies either don't want to, or can't (as in Congress looking over the shoulders of managers at the NSF), pay for. Everyone wants "everything, all the time" without paying for it, and this is the sort of thing that happens when decisions are driven by the money people (who may be scientists, to be fair) and not the people who know what the hell is going on.
Re:Money (Score:5, Interesting)
This is spot on.
It may be true that we spend too much time doing the initial work and not replicating results. That's not what the article shows, though.
It conflates the reproducibility rate of publications with some idea of "trust" versus "verification". There's no evidence (presented) that this means that scientists believe what is published. The author seems to think that papers should be verified before they're published, but that's not the point of scientific publication. The publication reports what the authors did and what their results are. It is nothing stronger: it does not represent (despite authors' bombastic claims) that what they found is actually hard scientific fact. That's only accepted (in theory) when those results are reproduced. Papers about reproducing the experiments are (in theory) also published, so that a critical scientist can evaluate the body of literature about how a hypothetical scientific fact has been tested. For this reason, the first publication of some new potential fact is naturally before anyone has verified it.
Without some evidence that paper results are being widely accepted into the "scientific canon" without verification, this is just an author being confused about science. That's a bit fair, though, because the press tends to focus on first publications (they're more interesting) and reports them as if they are fact. A scientist knows better, but the public at large generally does not. It's very disingenuous of the press -- but it sells.
In fact, the only evidence presented sounds like the process works just fine. A first publication of a new thing in biotech is a potential huge advancement and gold mine. Investors, scientists, and engineers all seem to know that the rate of the first publication actually being something as opposed to spurious is low, so the first thing they do apparently is try to verify it and make sure it's really a thing. That's pretty much what you want to happen.
This is because ..... (Score:2)
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More to the point, negative results have a very hard time getting published, even though they are nearly as valuable as positive results.
Also, replication of a result doesn't usually bring much in the way of kudos, even though it's an essential part of the scientific method. I won't say that a replicated result has a hard time getting published, but I will say it has a hard time of getting many inches of print.
Blame the patent system (Score:2)
If you can patent any kind of harebrained crap someone came up with in a pipe dream without having to provide a working model, that's what you get.
As soon as someone dreams up something that might kinda-sorta work in some sorta way, he will rush to the patent office. Should someone else finally come up with a working model, he'll rip the real inventor off with it.
slowth (Score:2)
Yeah, but it does depend on the area of science (Score:5, Interesting)
A big part of the problem is null results. Getting and reporting a null result is SUPPOSED to be good science. And in a lot of areas of science, its OK - you'd obviously prefer to find something cool, but you don't kill your career by not finding something. But in some fields, if you do a study that doesn't find something, you can literally set your career back a decade or. Guess what this leads to?
I was talking to somebody was getting her PhD in Biochem. She was in the midst of a 5 year study on the effects of some drug. A condition to get her PhD was that she must publish a "substantial" peer review result. And her department had gone out of their way to define null results as not substantial. This meant that if her study found that the drug wasn't effective, she didn't get her PhD - she would have literally had to start over and had wasted 5 years of her life.
This is common in some areas of science, but not others.
So the first thing to do is get rid of garbage policies like this. My understanding is that its much more common in biology related fields, but that might just be my bias (I'm from a physics background, so I have an admitted bias here).
Until you fix this policies like this, you will always have people getting "creative" with their statistics or just outright making up data. For some reason, a lot of these biology related fields don't seem to care about policies like this, which I just don't understand. I mean, we know that these policies lead to bad behavior, but nothing is done to fix it. Maybe somebody in these areas can explain the rational to me.
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Lord Forgive me, but (Score:5, Interesting)
Really everyone should. Because while some of the points are good, The Economist misses the biggest one of all
In the University environment of today, the scientists and researchers are hamstrung by Non-Disclosure agreements. How does one share experimental information when to do so will cause you and your University great problems? One of the biggest offenders is the Biotech industry. Talk to someone, lose your funding and probably your job.
This is just the culmination of the past several decades shift from Government sponsored research to industry dominated research. It's a completely understandable position - industry wants return on it's investment, and research that doesn't generate profit might be good research, might be groundbreaking, but to the industry sponsoring the research it is a failure if they don't profit from it.
I'm pretty certain that industry would consider completely flawed and incorrect research as successful if it generated money for the company sponsoring the research.
So they draw the conclusion that scientists are lazy. I draw the conclusion that this is what happens when making money is the most important factor, and the scientists are bound by their contracts.
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Scientists and researchers are not hamstrung by NDAs. If anything things are going the other direction: university libraries are setting up self-publishing, open-access projects to disseminate the work being conducted by the researchers.
I've only seen NDAs and similar come up in one situation: when a researcher employed by the university is a guest or collaborator with a private company. Then the company might try to introduce such things, but the university legal is very hostile to that. I can't think o
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Einstein was a theoretical physicist. That's kind of a small group. For the vast, vast majority of science, you need equipment, supplies, reagents, etc. That can cost from many thousands to millions.
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According to Microsoft/Apple/etc. software developement costs large amounts of money and equipment, yet Linux and the open source community exist and flourish. How many scientists would risk their own money in their own experiments? If not, what does that say about the experiments?
At this point in history, it is a bit difficult to advance science in the garage. Not impossible, but quite difficult.
The comparisons between OSX/Windows and Linux is quite valid for the subset of science that deals with theory. Smart people who can do the work using their minds as the main tool can do that sort of work. Not so much for the science that requires expensive machinery and processes.
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At this point in history, it is a bit difficult to advance science in the garage. Not impossible, but quite difficult.
(a) That's only true if you have a very narrow definition of science. A few thousand dollars buys an eyetracker which will give a cognitive science hours of trying to understand all these basic things we fundamentally don't know about how people think. And considering that almost everything we do involves how people think, this is a massive advance—most people, most scientists outside
A simple idea underpins science? (Score:4, Insightful)
We must be talking about different sorts of science, because from what i know, the simple idea rather is
"be objective, and be sure to keep it falsifiable
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You are talking about different parts of the process. The person performing the experiment needs to be objective and keep it falsifiable. The person reading a report of the experiment should "trust but verify". (I'm not real sure about that "trust" word in there. It sort of depends on how unreasonable the finding is, and what the source is that claims it.. And those that trust least will be most inclined to verify.) Remember, though, that we are talking about a population of scientists (i.e., all thos
Journals don't encourage followup articles (Score:2)
One of the key problems is that doing the replicative experiments and publishing that data, as well as any divergence from the initial data of the first study by another author, is hard to get published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, as are replicative studies where the results do not concur with the original study.
It's also hard to get funding for this.
Fix that and you fix the observed problems, which mostly crop up in certain scientific cultures that tend not to encourage juniors from challenging s
This would suggest ... (Score:2)
That there is a name to be made in debunking landmark studies in the biosciences because they cannot be reproduced. That should be part of the scientific process.
Feynman said something similar (Score:5, Informative)
When I was at Cornell, I often talked to the people in the psychology department. One of the students told me she wanted to do an experiment that went something like this--it had been found by others that under certain circumstances, X, rats did something, A. She was curious as to whether, if she changed the circumstances to Y, they would still do A. So her proposal was to do the experiment under circumstances Y and see if they still did A.
I explained to her that it was necessary first to repeat in her laboratory the experiment of the other person--to do it under condition X to see if she could also get result A, and then change to Y and see if A changed. Then she would know the the real difference was the thing she thought she had under control.
She was very delighted with this new idea, and went to her professor. And his reply was, no, you cannot do that, because the experiment has already been done and you would be wasting time. This was in about 1947 or so, and it seems to have been the general policy then to not try to repeat psychological experiments, but only to change the conditions and see what happened.
Nowadays, there's a certain danger of the same thing happening, even in the famous field of physics.
Funding bodies and presure for progress (Score:2)
The other issue with much of modern science (Score:3)
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Re:The other issue with much of modern science (Score:4, Insightful)
It's resource intensive, but also just plain difficult. For example, publications are never a full description of an experiment, just the highlights. It takes a skilled researcher to fill in the gaps and then a second level of skill to accurately carry it out.
Looking at it from another perspective, ignoring scientific developments which are the result of inspired genius (which I would argue are rare), every new publication is the more novel and difficult work that has been conducted to date. If it weren't, it would have been done already.
So how can you expect someone else (who wasn't able or interested to carry out the work themselves) to immediately duplicate cutting-edge work based on an incomplete description?. It's a bit amazing that up to 50% of publications could be replicated at all.
This undermines all "science" (Score:2)
Scientists go wrong... (Score:2)
Scientists go wrong...not science.
Sheesh!
Correction of the title.... (Score:2)
How Big Pharma 'Science' Goes Wrong
FTFY.
Trust but Verify is the problem. (Score:3)
You NEVER trust science.
You always verify trust has nothing to do with it.
That is the problem with our doctrine based science programs and institutions.
It is all crappy trust science, and it is rarely verified.
So if you want to do great science, don't believe anything and trust nobody.
Find out for yourself.
But I think that is just common sense.
-Hack
Re:Greed (Score:5, Funny)
Peer review stretched to its limit by money (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html [caltech.edu]
"The crises that face science are not limited to jobs and research funds. Those are bad enough, but they are just the beginning. Under stress from those problems, other parts of the scientific enterprise have started showing signs of distress. One of the most essential is the matter of honesty and ethical behavior among scientists.
The public and the scientific community have both been shocked in recent years by an increasing number of cases of fraud committed by scientists. There is little doubt that the perpetrators in these cases felt themselves under intense pressure to compete for scarce resources, even by cheating if necessary. As the pressure increases, this kind of dishonesty is almost sure to become more common.
Other kinds of dishonesty will also become more common. For example, peer review, one of the crucial pillars of the whole edifice, is in critical danger. Peer review is used by scientific journals to decide what papers to publish, and by granting agencies such as the National Science Foundation to decide what research to support. Journals in most cases, and agencies in some cases operate by sending manuscripts or research proposals to referees who are recognized experts on the scientific issues in question, and whose identity will not be revealed to the authors of the papers or proposals. Obviously, good decisions on what research should be supported and what results should be published are crucial to the proper functioning of science.
Peer review is usually quite a good way to identify valid science. Of course, a referee will occasionally fail to appreciate a truly visionary or revolutionary idea, but by and large, peer review works pretty well so long as scientific validity is the only issue at stake. However, it is not at all suited to arbitrate an intense competition for research funds or for editorial space in prestigious journals. There are many reasons for this, not the least being the fact that the referees have an obvious conflict of interest, since they are themselves competitors for the same resources. This point seems to be another one of those relativistic anomalies, obvious to any outside observer, but invisible to those of us who are falling into the black hole. It would take impossibly high ethical standards for referees to avoid taking advantage of their privileged anonymity to advance their own interests, but as time goes on, more and more referees have their ethical standards eroded as a consequence of having themselves been victimized by unfair reviews when they were authors. Peer review is thus one among many examples of practices that were well suited to the time of exponential expansion, but will become increasingly dysfunctional in the difficult future we face."
I've collected some other quotes on social problems in science here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science [pdfernhout.net]
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So the question is what to do about that? It's easy to point out the faults but much more difficult to come up with constructive suggestions. In most cases the only people qualified to judge the work are others in the field. I just don't see how you get away from peer review despite its warts.
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Making people aware of the problem is a good first step.
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Most of this 'research' has significant consequence
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Shut up, you have no idea what you are talking about. I just can't tell if you don't know what science is, or are just a pig headed ass.
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Re:Peer review stretched to its limit by money (Score:4, Insightful)
So... you think science used to be better? Really?
Newton spent much of his energy in later years in a brutal smear campaign to smear mathematicians and scientists who in fact invented much of he took credit for, such as portions of Calculus. Edison is known to have mounted an equally brutal attack on his arguably more inventive peer, Tesla. Have you ever read Penis envy? Really? That guy was a world class crack-pot, IMO.
I've read many technical and scientific papers every year since about 1982, and I see zero degradation in professionalism. The truth is there was never much anyway. For ever paper that made me believe something I useful, there were a half dozen total crap papers that weren't even close to the mark. Science is just fine... just the same crap as always, but overall very effective crap. It's the freaking "news" networks that have turned into crap.
Don't forget Galileo (Score:3)
Re:Greed (Score:4, Interesting)
That and you don't often get PHD's, published papers, and prestige for trying to duplicating and test a published findings.
Re:Greed (Score:5, Insightful)
evolution: cold, hard fact. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you're a tech type (and I assume you are at least somewhat, or else wtf are you doing here), you can *easily* write software that uses, and proves, evolution.
Generate two lists of sets of random characteristics. Breed pairs of list items by selecting randomly between the characteristics contained in the items for a full set: AB, BA, AB, BA, etc. Now you have a new item with a new combination of characteristics. Assign each characteristic a weight: ability to find food, resistance to disease, etc. Create an environment that requires certain weights for survival. Test items against environment. Some will survive: return them to the list. They get to "breed" again. The others die. Each pass through the lists will vary the population in both count and characteristics.
A pass is a generation. After each generation, graph the characteristics. Guess what? That graph will rise until the fitness of all the items reaches a peak.
What you've done is created a situation where fitness is tested against stress, and higher fitness results in more survival. Subsequent generations will be more and more fit until they're all fit enough to survive.
Now add some randomness. Kill a few off just at random. These are "accidents." Make a few of the weaker ones survive anyway. These are cripples taken care of by the community, or otherwise lucky. Run the thing again. Guess what? Fitness of the population will rise again.
This is evolution in a fishbowl, and it's a very useful programming mechanism for anything where you can assign a "gene" to an approach to a problem, and "fitness" to the result of applying that approach. That's the practical side. On the fun side, you can (and I have done) write a great game where you have critters that breed, live and die using this mechanism.
Create a 2d grid. The genes are instructions, things like: "turn left if nextcell contains rock" "move forward" "turn left", "eat (fitness up)", "turn towards food" "turn away from food" "turn away from other critter" "breed" "if critter in next cell skip next gene" "if rock in next cell skip next gene" "knock heads (one critter dies)", etc. Each critter gets a list of these, randomized. Every move costs them fitness; eating gains it back. Seed the environment randomly with food and rocks and critters. Then run them by executing their genes in order. They will initially perform very poorly -- randomly. But as you breed them and the generations pass and the genes update from the highest fitness critters, you'll end up with critters that seek out food and then go breed, never running into a rock or another critter. Add animations to taste, be sure to graph fitness for the whole population, it's fascinating.
You can add complexity by adding recessive genes, more types of actions, more stuff in the environment, etc. There's really no end to what you can do. As a fun exercise, try to create a high performing critter manually, then throw it into the mix. Then at the end, when the fitness has maxed out, take a look at the highest fitness critter and see not only how little it resembles your well thought out choices, but what bizarre strategies it's implemented to be better than what you worked out. It can be mind blowing.
evolution: not only a fact, one well within your reach to test, verify without a shade of doubt, and use to your own benefit.
Once you've seen this work in practice, assuming you've got a decent head on your shoulders, you will immediately be able to generalize the process to nature and generations of real critters, from moths to humans to whatever. Strategies and capabilities against stressors, survival of the fittest, it's just the way it works, and there is ZERO doubt about it among those who actually understand it. Anyone who denies evolution is either ignorant of the facts or deliberately snowing you for some reason. 100% guaranteed. There are no other possibilitie
Re:evolution: cold, hard fact. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:evolution: cold, hard fact. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm glad you used a question rather than a statement, because if you had stated what you're trying to imply, you'd be making a directly untestable and unscientific claim.
I'd prefer to keep the discussion on science, and proposing causal exclusivity to "evolutionary" processes is not science, it's a hopeful non-sequitur and inappropriate generalization. "Evolution occurs", is science. "Only evolution occurs", is not. The fact you only care about the second form, for personal reasons, has nothing to do with science or a scientific usage of "evolution" or "genetic".
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Nor can the results be verified in an independent lab environment.
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The whole point of science is using a process that will lead to more reliable results. If we stay quiet about weaknesses of the process or how it's executed, what is left will be science in name but not actually valuable.
Re:Anti-science? See, now you have proof! (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead, if you really want to talk to a young earth creationist (I don't know why you would), you need to show them the evidence. Really dig deep. If they want to discuss carbon dating, then dig in and show the evidence we have of why carbon dating works. Eventually, if they are willing to go along with you (and it will take a lot of work so they might not), they will turn into an old-earth creationist.
And you will absolutely learn something along the way. Never turn the discussion into an argument about "the guys I trust" vs "the guys you trust" because that argument is never won, by either side.
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if you really want to talk to a young earth creationist (I don't know why you would)
To teach, of course. And I echo everything you said.
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Re:Anti-science? See, now you have proof! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, laudable in concept. But I'd like to point out that you can't fix stupid, and trying invites heartbreak and consists of a massive waste of time. Also, you can't fix faith -- it strikingly resembles stupid in form, effect, and depth of infestation. And it's worse in one way: Being stupid is not politically correct. Exhibiting faith is. Woe is us.
Re:Anti-science? See, now you have proof! (Score:4, Insightful)
*Ignorance* is temporary. Stupid is forever.
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"Even previous IPCC members have claimed the latest IPCC report is a joke yet I'll be called names for point that out."
Well, there's little question about which "side" of the debate Lindzen is on, and has been on. But thanks for the article. I have often found his comments to be intelligent and educational.
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Well, there's little question about which "side" of the debate Lindzen is on, and has been on.
I would hope that Lindzen is on the 'side' of data, and that when/if data shows that his hypothesis is wrong, he will change it. That's what a good scientist would do, anyway.
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"I would hope that Lindzen is on the 'side' of data, and that when/if data shows that his hypothesis is wrong, he will change it. That's what a good scientist would do, anyway."
I hope so, too. But my researches have generally shown that he already IS on the side of the actual data.
Everybody should be. So let's be clear: the same can be said of the IPCC and the climate scientists. Let's hope they steer clear of the political motives and stick to the actual science and data.
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Aaaand this is exactly the kind of thing that young-earth creationists and climate change deniers will jump on to show that science (and scientists) can't be trusted.
So we should just ignore the problem because a few loons will use it to justify their crazy beliefs? Brilliant.
I weep for humanity.
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Science is a method, not a religion. Trust has nothing to do with it. As a believer in a particular religion, I trust that where modern science seems to disagree with my beliefs, it will eventually be demonstrated to be incorrect, but if that happens we wouldn't say that my trust had anything to do with it. It'd simply be the scientific method working as it should, and has nothing to do with whether or not I or anyone else trusted in it.
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That was insightful. If your understanding of science conflicts with your understanding of your religion, you either misunderstand the science or the religion, because they are not in conflict.
argh (Score:4, Insightful)
Wishful thinking. When Galileo's presentation was found to be at odds with religion by the ultimate arbiter of such things (the then-Pope), they certainly were in conflict. The "apology" took centuries to come around, far too late to help Galileo. It wasn't a misunderstanding. It was stubborn clinging to myth and nonsense with the added salt of the power to enforce the myth over the facts.
When religion gives us social rules, there may be, often is in fact, value to be had. When religion tries to tell us how the world came to be and why we are here, it falls flat on its face, each and every time. It's the purest form of conflict: The intentional and irresponsible promulgation of fictions in the face of repeatable, consensual facts to the contrary. The more we understand, the more visible this is.
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" it will eventually be demonstrated to be incorrect"
and if it doesn't do you change your beliefs?
And yes, there is a level of trust.
Only God can be trusted... (Score:2)
Only God can be trusted...science must pay cash.
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Aaaand this is exactly the kind of thing that young-earth creationists and climate change deniers will jump on to show that science (and scientists) can't be trusted.
People who've made up their minds about something often jump on things they think support their position. If you'd read the article, you'd know that's one of the human tendencies that often leads leading to bad science. Science is a process and set of tools for avoiding such human mistakes but since it's humans implementing it, it's a constant struggle.
Re: Anti-science? See, now you have proof! (Score:2)
I would think it is their nightmare instead. I've never seen a homeopathy result verified.
Re:Anti-science? See, now you have proof! (Score:4, Insightful)
No. Actually it isn't. Because homeopathy can't even replicate their own results in controlled environments.
It SHOULD, however, be a wakeup call to scientists all over that their chosen fields are more caught up in the "publish or perish" mentality than they should be.
Between this, and others willing to take these unreplicated (and possibly unreproducible) studies as "Holy Writ", what people think of as science IS becoming as sloppy as religion.
Which makes it harder for the people who actually DO the grunt work and the follow-up to receive their just due.
Re:Anti-science? See, now you have proof! (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure what 'publish or perish' has to do with it.
I do research. I can get funding from NIH from a well designed, well reasoned approach to learn something new. What I can't get is funding to replicate some other researcher's finding.
I'd be happy to do replication work in addition to novel research, but it's a simple fact that no one will pay for salary of lab techs, lab equipment, or reagents in order to replicate something, even if I'm willing to donate my own time.
Re:Anti-science? See, now you have proof! (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a clue: when was the last time you delayed publication (of eminently publishable results) to run some extra tests, or perform alternative forms of verification? I've never had a supervisor allow such things in my entire career. It's always a case of publishing as soon as possible (i.e. as soon as a study has the remotest chance of getting past reviewers).
I tend to be very cautious in my approach to things, and I've often wanted to do additional verification work. Not to target a better journal or a second publication, but just for the sake of more solid conclusions. I'm never allowed to do this, and I even recognise that it's not part of my job to cause any problems over it, for the very economic reasons that you mention. This bothers me deeply, but it doesn't seem to bother the kind of people who care more about their careers than about the veracity of their results. I've even been told on a few occasions that my reticence to publish some of my own simulation work that "should already be out there" is bad for my career.
In my perception, those who are more career-driven have an advantage in gaming the system. They are rewarded for publishing multiple papers of shallow scope and relatively minor significance; spreading what should be presented once as thin as possible across multiple publications. We all know it's a game to be played; that those evaluating our early-career performance really have no clue whether a publication is important or not. By the time they find out, those who've gamed the system well will already have tenure.
Re: (Score:2)
There are numerous clinical trials showing benefit for homeopathic treatments.
And yet you've failed to even link to the results of even a single one out of the supposed "numerous" clinical trials that have supposedly shown what you claim.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Sorry, being lazy. Here is a nice recent overview:
Plausibility and evidence: the case of homeopathy.
Homeopathy is controversial and hotly debated. The conclusions of systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials of homeopathy vary from 'comparable to conventional medicine' to 'no evidence of effects beyond placebo'. It is claimed that homeopathy conflicts with scientific laws and that homoeopaths reject the naturalistic outlook, but no evidence has been cited. We are homeopathic physicians and researchers who do not reject the scientific outlook; we believe that examination of the prior beliefs underlying this enduring stand-off can advance the debate. We show that interpretations of the same set of evidence--for homeopathy and for conventional medicine--can diverge. Prior disbelief in homeopathy is rooted in the perceived implausibility of any conceivable mechanism of action. Using the 'crossword analogy', we demonstrate that plausibility bias impedes assessment of the clinical evidence. Sweeping statements about the scientific impossibility of homeopathy are themselves unscientific: scientific statements must be precise and testable. There is growing evidence that homeopathic preparations can exert biological effects; due consideration of such research would reduce the influence of prior beliefs on the assessment of systematic review evidence.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22539134
And here is one of the meta analyses:
Clinical trials of homoeopathy.
OBJECTIVE:
To establish whether there is evidence of the efficacy of homoeopathy from controlled trials in humans.
DESIGN:
Criteria based meta-analysis. Assessment of the methodological quality of 107 controlled trials in 96 published reports found after an extensive search. Trials were scored using a list of predefined criteria of good methodology, and the outcome of the trials was interpreted in relation to their quality.
SETTING:
Controlled trials published world wide.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES:
Results of the trials with the best methodological quality. Trials of classical homoeopathy and several modern varieties were considered separately.
RESULTS:
In 14 trials some form of classical homoeopathy was tested and in 58 trials the same single homoeopathic treatment was given to patients with comparable conventional diagnosis. Combinations of several homoeopathic treatments were tested in 26 trials; isopathy was tested in nine trials. Most trials seemed to be of very low quality, but there were many exceptions. The results showed a positive trend regardless of the quality of the trial or the variety of homeopathy used. Overall, of the 105 trials with interpretable results, 81 trials indicated positive results whereas in 24 trials no positive effects of homoeopathy were found. The results of the review may be complicated by publication bias, especially in such a controversial subject as homoeopathy.
CONCLUSIONS:
At the moment the evidence of clinical trials is positive but not sufficient to draw definitive conclusions because most trials are of low methodological quality and because of the unknown role of publication bias. This indicates that there is a legitimate case for further evaluation of homoeopathy, but only by means of well performed trials.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1825800
To be clear, I doubt the usefulness of clinical trials and the effectiveness of homeopathy. If all clinical trials were viewed with such a critical eye as those supporting homeopathic treatment many fewer drugs would be approved.
Re:Anti-science? See, now you have proof! (Score:5, Informative)
The defensiveness now built into some fields (and here I'm thinking climate science), because of unrelenting, personal attacks does put important discussions like this into a defensive context.
And this is another bitter fruit produced by the anti-science industry, because these discussions are important to have. There are a lot of mistakes in science, but (seeming to me increasingly) there is also data falsification and fraud. [Retraction watch](http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/) is a great website, but it makes sickening reading, and I suspect that it only scratches the surface.
I mean, sometimes, no fucks whatsoever are given [chembark.com]. How that got past peer review blows the mind. And any of these [rupress.org].
Remember this [nature.com] letter to Nature (FFS!) pointing out that 70% of the papers in one of their issues didn't say what the error bar represented. How that got past the reviewers is mind boggling. Imagining how it got past the authors requires mental gymnastics. (Since the letter, Nature articles are much better, but Peer Review is not what is catching the errors).
So, lets talk about errors in scientific research, and lets talk about scientific fraud. It's important because its rampant, and despite that there are nutjobs seeing it in their peculiar light [creationrevolution.com] lets not be put off. This conversation needs to be had more often, because the problem is dug in at the highest levels of academic prestige. [wordpress.com]
Props to the Economist for bringing this up. I'd like to see this discussed in Cell, Nature and Science. And I'd like to see credible career protection for whistle-blowers.
Re: Anti-science? See, now you have proof! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you would be so kind as to replicate the catastrophic prediction results -- oh, wait, those can't be tested?
We're in the process of testing them right now. We should have results in 50 or 100 years although chances are we don't have to run the full experiment to see where it's heading.
What makes you think the results on CO2 sensitivity are "out-of-you-ass guesses" rather than just an expression of the uncertainty of the results? Where have you seen a scientist that links every bit of bad weather to AGW? There are some non-scientists who may do that but that's not science.
Re: Anti-science? See, now you have proof! (Score:2, Funny)
It was autumn, and the Indians on the remote reservation asked their new Chief if the winter was going to be cold or mild. Since he was an Indian Chief in a modern society, he had never been taught the old secrets, and when he looked at the sky, he couldn't tell what the weather was going to be.
Nevertheless, to be on the safe side, he replied to his tribe that
the winter was indeed going to be cold and that the members of the
village should collect wood to be prepared.
But also being a practical leader, after
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, I've seen the 'escalator' animation and have read the relevant articles at skepticalscience. The real question isn't whether there's warming, it's what the slope of the red line actually is, when we add CO2 the way we have been.
I'm not saying that "unprecedented human activity cannot cause unprecedented environmental responses". I'm also not stating that "unprecedented human activity MUST cause unprecedented environmental responses", which you are. Look, from the IPCC AR5 report:
---
The equilibrium cl
Re: (Score:3)
" Add to that the fact that the observed temperature trends have been way at the bottom of what most of the models "
It's not.
"though, and the initial ones weren't very good."
the vast majority of the initial prediction underestimated the results.
To be clear, I am talking about actual scientist were saying not what the media was reporting. The media wants worse case, and sells worse case.
Also, the difference between 1.5c and 4.5c is time.
Re: (Score:3)
"Part of the problem is you're treating as a defensible status-quo position: "unprecedented human activity cannot cause unprecedented environmental responses", especially when we have evidence that other unprecedented human activities have caused more local environmental catastrophes."
Absolute nonsense.
All he's saying -- and it's a statement of truth -- is that SO FAR, climate models have not been verified. On the contrary, they have been consistently way off at predicting the future. Quite bad at prediction, actually.
It doesn't matter whether you believe the science is good or not. That the models have not been verified -- have actually, and invariably, been way off -- is a FACT.
So it is actually YOU who are accepting unverified statements from scientists. Not him.
You are tr
Re: And nobody is concerned with theoretical scien (Score:3)
Many of those papers do lead to predictions which can be tested. Witness the Higgs particle prediction and later verification.
It's dangerous to make a broad statement, but in general I would say that if you don't have a verifiable/falsifiable theory, you're dealing with philosophy and not science. Both are valid endeavors, but we shouldn't mix them up.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Sounds Like Work... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not about being lazy. Feynman famously addressed this [youtube.com] in his "Cargo Cult Science" rant in his Caltech commencement address given in 1974. (There's no recording AFAIK, that link is to someone reading the transcript).
He makes very good points: funding is for new results. Attempting to repeat another scientists published work is not a new result (unless you can't), and many places won't even allow you to try, unless it's something very sexy like observing the Higgs boson or something. It's an important structural problem, and it was worth calling attention to forty years ago.
There's no doubt that some unscrupulous researchers have noticed this and are gaming the system. The incentives to do so are particularly high in biochem.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Sounds Like Work... (Score:5, Insightful)
He makes very good points: funding is for new results. Attempting to repeat another scientists published work is not a new result (unless you can't), and many places won't even allow you to try...
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants"
Even though funding is for new results, to get new results, these days you will almost always need to build on what has gone before. So while scientists generally don't attempt to replicate published results, if the work is important, someone will eventually think of a way to extend the work, and rely on it to build something else. At that point it will become obvious if the original research is flawed.
So good science does eventually win, it just can take a longer time than people would like to spot frauds. Science works, the last century is a testament to that.
Re: (Score:2)
You know, if you don't have enough scientific knowledge to even begin to understand what the scientists are talking about how can you do anything other than take it on faith that they know their stuff?
Re: (Score:3)
. Now, do the same experiment right under the smoke stack of a coal fired power plant. What you will notice is that there is a significant temperature change related to the amount of cloud covert and NO temperature change related to the CO2 emission.
Your experiment test a model that may not be representative of how the whole atmosphere works. Are you sure the CO2 distribution is the same as the visible smoke? If it is, since smoke does not surround the whole system, are you sure there is not a way for heat to escape the smoke? And are you sure the way it works near the ground is the same as in higher atmosphere, where temperature and pressure are different?
Re: (Score:3)
No, the AC set up a straw man in his "experiment". It ignores the higher thermal capacity and lower heat conductivity of humid air compared to dry air, for starters. He may have a PhD in physics (so do I), but that doesn't excuse him from the fact that CO2 has been shown to be a greenhouse gas.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Except those from Climate scientist... All of those conclusions should be taken on faith!!!
When I read this comment, I was laughing until I realized that it was modded down to -1. Clearly, you struck a nerve here at Slashdot.
Let it be know: On Slashdot, YOU SHALL NOT QUESTION THE FAITH OF CLIMATE CHANGE!!! So it is written so shall it be!!!
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The scientists are the ones who brought politics into it.
Re:An even worse mix: science and politics (Score:4, Informative)
All my mod points for the ability to edit. Of course what I meant was:
The scientists are not the ones who brought politics into it.
Re:Oxymoron (Score:4, Informative)
"Trust but verify." I hate that phrase. It's used all over the place, but it is meaningless.
Interestingly enough it's a Russian proverb [wikipedia.org] made famous in the United States by Ronald Reagan.
In any situation where verification is appropriate, trust is not.
In the specific context in which Reagan used it, it indicated that both countries would trust the other enough to begin dismantling warheads, but would verify each other's progress towards the agreed upon targets. It took trust to start the process, and verification would keep it going.
I guess people just don't know what "trust" means any more.
That's entirely possible. However, in this case I think it means you should generally trust that the experiment was done in good faith, however, if you need to actually use the results, you should verify them first.
Re: (Score:3)
But as a scientist you do need to trust. You can't do everything from scratch and need to make use of previous results. If you are doing an experiment with X-rays, you may need to trust someone else's instrument on the spectrum of the X-rays that are hitting your sample. You may not have prepared the sample yourself but need to trust whoever did to have done so correctly. You may rely on someone else's detectors to see the results of the experiment.
To some extent you can cross check the most difficult / ris
Re: (Score:3)
That means that they want to avoid doing anything politically controversial or that steps on anyone's toes.
Hmm... I guess climate scientists didn't get the memo.
Re: (Score:3)
I would say the effort has been put into making it "scientifically incorrect" to deny that human caused changes in the level of greenhouse gases play a role in climate change. Scientists are drawn into the political arena kicking and screaming for the most part.
Re: (Score:3)
slick7, are you claiming that Pons and Fleischman actually did produce cold-fusion but were smeared because no has been able to reproduce their results?
My college physics teacher was the third member of that team. He was my teacher shortly (a year or so) after Pons and Fleischman published. He asked to have his name removed before they published because they, themselves, were unable to reproduce their results so he was certain that something had contaminated the environment and did not want to publish knowi