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Let's face it: Most science is flawed

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Perspicuo

Veteran Member
Joined
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Basic Beliefs
Empiricist, ergo agnostic
Science is often flawed. It's time we embraced that.
http://www.vox.com/2015/5/13/8591837/how-science-is-broken

But outright fraud is just one potential derailment from truth. And it's actually a relatively rare occurrence.

Recently, the conversation about science's wrongness has gone mainstream. You can read, in publications like Vox, the New York Times or the Economist, about how the research process is far from perfect — from flaws in peer review to the fact that many published results simply can't be replicated. The crisis has gotten so bad that the editor of The Lancet medical journal Richard Horton recently lamented, "Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue."
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In an analysis of 300 clinical research papers about epilepsy — published in 1981, 1991, and 2001 — 71 percent were categorized as having no enduring value. Of those, 55.6 percent were classified as inherently unimportant and 38.8 percent as not new. All told, according to one estimate, about $200 billion — or the equivalent of 85 percent of global spending on research — is routinely wasted on flawed and redundant studies.
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Remember, though, research only gains substantial credibility when it's repeated by other institutions.
 
In the preface of science textbooks there's usually an appeal to readers to report errors or omissions to the editor. There are also revisions and updates in each subsequent edition.

You'll never see this in religious writing.
 
I think that a great percentage of these papers (research?) comes from professors in universities whose primary job is education rather than people whose primary job is research. In academia, there is great pressure to publish, with the stress on publish and little stress on meaningful research. There are some journals that are essentially worthless because they accept papers with little noticeable oversight or review. These journals are not worth the time reading because they will publish papers that had been rejected by quality journals.
 
I wonder how much it hurts the wrist to wield such a broad brush. "Science" covers a lot...
 
Perspicuo said:
Science is often flawed. It's time we embraced that.
http://www.vox.com/2015/5/13/8591837/how-science-is-broken



In an analysis of 300 clinical research papers about epilepsy — published in 1981, 1991, and 2001 — 71 percent were categorized as having no enduring value. Of those, 55.6 percent were classified as inherently unimportant and 38.8 percent as not new. All told, according to one estimate, about $200 billion — or the equivalent of 85 percent of global spending on research — is routinely wasted on flawed and redundant studies.
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I´ve never heard of this publication before, but after a quick glance... looks like a click-farm. All head-lines are sensationalist and overblown. I´ve seen worse. But also better.
 
This articles definition of "science" is flawed.

The very processes by which studies fail replication and published works are shown to be of little of value or wrong is itself what "science" is.

Science is not an isolated study that happened to make it into print. That isn't even the full peer review process which includes critical analysis once published and attempts to replicate, and peer review is just one aspect of science. Isolated studies are "flawed" and always incomplete, but they aren't by themselves "science". The fact that these flaws get exposed over time is due to science.
 
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Science has been shown to be extremely effective. It takes time for things to be accepted and sometimes things that aren't true or are only partly true are accepted as fact for too long.

Science isn't flawed, it is our understanding of our surroundings that is. Science helps us reduce the flaw one micron at a time.
 
Loren Pechtel said:
seyorni said:
In the preface of science textbooks there's usually an appeal to readers to report errors or omissions to the editor. There are also revisions and updates in each subsequent edition.

You'll never see this in religious writing.
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To: Jesus@Christian.religion

<Error: Address unknown>
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It's just unbelievable that Jesus was the first person to move to the Cloud, but he still doesn't have email.

Tried sending him a PM on Facebook?
 
bigfield said:
Loren Pechtel said:
To: Jesus@Christian.religion

<Error: Address unknown>
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It's just unbelievable that Jesus was the first person to move to the Cloud, but he still doesn't have email.

Tried sending him a PM on Facebook?
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Religion hasn't caught up with the times. There's no .religion TLD. (I guess it would cause too many squabbles over control.)

Edit: There is a .church TLD but that doesn't cover all religions.
 
seyorni said:
In the preface of science textbooks there's usually an appeal to readers to report errors or omissions to the editor. There are also revisions and updates in each subsequent edition.

You'll never see this in religious writing.
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Yes, you will. Just crack open any decent theological textbook and you'll see exactly that.

There's plenty to criticise about religion, without making stuff up that you imagine would be the case. We can afford to stick to stuff that's actually true.


As for the article, it seems to have missed the point of how science works. Most publications are supposed to be of no enduring value. That's how science works. You test a whole lot of ideas, and most of them don't pan out.
 
Togo said:
As for the article, it seems to have missed the point of how science works. Most publications are supposed to be of no enduring value. That's how science works. You test a whole lot of ideas, and most of them don't pan out.
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Cherry pick the good ones, because otherwise you'll be eating bark.
 
skepticalbip said:
I think that a great percentage of these papers (research?) comes from professors in universities whose primary job is education rather than people whose primary job is research. In academia, there is great pressure to publish, with the stress on publish and little stress on meaningful research. There are some journals that are essentially worthless because they accept papers with little noticeable oversight or review. These journals are not worth the time reading because they will publish papers that had been rejected by quality journals.
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My interest in becoming a PhD was to attain a position in research and I was a bit old since I didn't go back to school until I served in the military and spent a time as electronics technician in the computer business. Fortunately I'm shit at teaching so I got my wish. I attended universities where many faculty were often famous researchers. It helps the students that desire entering research to work with one who know how to do research well.
Journals come in all stripes as do research disciplines and people. The softer the science the more weaker journals. the more the demand for production the more one finds shit in product. However in most every discipline there are several dozen, perhaps hundreds of really good journals with really good standards and products. If a psychocacoustician were to publish she would probably attempt to get as many articles as possible in Journal ff the Acoustical Society of America, Acoustica, or in one of several IEEE journals. Others have been relevant for a time, Journal of Auditory research comes to mind which was important in the seventies, but, like most journals it succumbed when the few pure acousticians (there were about 800 in the world when I quit doing purly auditory research went to the top journals or to the flypaper journals. Of course hearing is one of the more empirical and physics related scientific of the human behavior and sense related domains in neuroscience.

I've published in my other specialty areas but they are more statistics and correlation driven species of psychology. The data doesn't tend to be closely linked to causality in the sense that whatever one inputs is directly related to some physical parameter which can be directly, causally tied to output. Though these are still more 'scientific' than behavior or personality clans of psychologists they aren't as likely to produce iron clad results given the number of variables that need be accounted.

So from my perspective its not whether the primary university professor job is teaching or not, its whether the activity area in which one does research is tied to first physical principles. Its this distance from foundations that produces weakening of consistent scientific sentences.
 
seyorni said:
In the preface of science textbooks there's usually an appeal to readers to report errors or omissions to the editor. There are also revisions and updates in each subsequent edition.

You'll never see this in religious writing.
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Isn't the New Testament in effect a rewriting of the Old Testament? Isn't the Quran in effect a re-writing of the
Bible? You don't expect God to put a note explicitly saying so do you?

Also, the Bible is subject to reviews and new editions, all guided by the hand of God to be sure.

We don't see what we don't want to see.
A-men.
EB
 
DrZoidberg said:
I´ve never heard of this publication before, but after a quick glance... looks like a click-farm. All head-lines are sensationalist and overblown. I´ve seen worse. But also better.
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Ok, shoot the messenger. Now, what about the message?
EB
 
skepticalbip said:
Silly, why would you expect to find Jesus on a din of inequity like facebook?
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Ah the *intellectualism* of atheists who cannot write simple English, substituting "inequity"
for iniquity. Almost as amusing as Isaac Asimov becoming an atheist because his prayer
to pass a science test was not "answered." Asimov also refused to fly in commercial aircraft,
another mark of his (wink, nudge) *rationality.*

heh heh heh

I am not laughing with atheists. I am laughing AT them.
 
Starman said:
skepticalbip said:
Silly, why would you expect to find Jesus on a din of inequity like facebook?
Click to expand...


Ah the *intellectualism* of atheists who cannot write simple English, substituting "inequity"
for iniquity. Almost as amusing as Isaac Asimov becoming an atheist because his prayer
to pass a science test was not "answered." Asimov also refused to fly in commercial aircraft,
another mark of his (wink, nudge) *rationality.*

heh heh heh

I am not laughing with atheists. I am laughing AT them.
Click to expand...

You're correct that those are failures to perfectly execute rational cognitive processes. But they are honest imperfections, unlike theism which is systematic dishonest irrationality (aka "faith") where the known facts and one's capacity to reason are deliberately attacked and suppressed to protect self-serving beliefs that are as absurd and transparently false as any imagined by the human mind. Such intentional unreason is promoted as a moral virtue, yet all the while the theist tries to delude themselves and others that this faith (the very definition of irrationality) is all somehow still rational.
 
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