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Unreliability Of Published Research Is Bad For Science


delilalaw23

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What disturbs me is that you are essentially spamming this board. Your link goes to an article that you wrote and you offer no discussion in this post. Talk about bad news! :rolleyes: Edited by Turtle
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You know, I rarely post my science articles here, which I write daily. I've only been occasionally posting ones I thought might generate some interest and discussion. Other articles I've posted here have not been so unwelcome.

You know, I'm not particularly easy to please. For a thread in the news section I expect to see more than a one-liner and a link. That only serves to direct folks away from here and that's kinda counter to the idea of a discussion board. At the very least, quote something from the article that you find interesting and then after the quote pose some questions on the item of interest.
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Delila,

 

Here's an example of what we're looking for, courtesy of my friend, Heather "Digby" Parton: Digby's got a fairly well known blog, but she also writes on Salon.com. She want's to cross post those pieces on her own blog, but obviously doesn't have rights to repost the whole thing. But what she does do is not only publish an excerpt, she surrounds it with a paragraph or two expanding on what she said in the article that's an added benefit for the readers who go to her site.

 

You can see an example here: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2015/02/chris-hayes-ftw-refusingtobuythehype.html

 

What would benefit us (and you by the way) is if you'd post a bit more in the way of a question to get some discussion going here. We don't mind you linking if it's relevant, but it'll make everyone happier (and get you more feedback), if you pump up the marketing here by making a real effort to engage folks. That would be mutually beneficial.

 

Thanks!

 

 

The power of real debate is in the language and intellectual honesty of the debaters, alongside the engagement of spectators, :phones:
Buffy
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  • 2 weeks later...

The topic is about the unreliability of published data, which got bogged down in superficialities and was never addressed. This reason so much research is not reproducible is not because of conspiracy, but it is because of the random assumption of reality. If you assume a random universe, then you should not expect anything to be reproducible, since each time you run the same experiment in a random universe, it will be like rolling dice. This is why today coffee is good for you and tomorrow coffee will be bad, just like dice. 

 

This is in violation of the philosophy of science, which requires reproducible experiments to be called real science. That means that areas of science, too dependent on random, are not  real science due to violation of a key element of the scientific method. I believe if the study can't be reproduced, it should be purged from science.  A margin of certainty is not the same as reproducible. That is a scam where second tier science gets called first tier. 

 

The age of enlightenment and the age of reason appeared to get rid of the random universe of the middle ages,  where anything was possible. They changed this age old superstition into the requirements of casual premises This led to the scientific method and the ability to reproduce results. The regression back to middle ages random has led to a watered down version of science that can violate the method. Nobody seemed to notice this, but the study confirms what I have been saying for years. 

Edited by HydrogenBond
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... That means that areas of science, too dependent on random, are not  real science due to violation of a key element of the scientific method. I believe if the study can't be reproduced, it should be purged from science.  A margin of certainty is not the same as reproducible. That is a scam where second tier science gets called first tier. 

 

You're so quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater! The Enlightenment did not just give birth to experimentation backed by reproducibility, it ushered in a host of softer sciences backed by critical thinking and induction. There is no "first" and "second" tier of science, just a continuum of how provable any hypothesis can be, Even "hard" sciences like physics suffer from irreproducible results like the precession of Mercury's orbit under Newtonian mechanics.

 

That is it is EXACTLY irreproducibility that moves science FORWARD.

 

Now no one is arguing here that we shouldn't do something about the problem indicated in the article referenced above, but the solution is not ignoring and dismissing all sciences not "obviously" reproducible (and I dare anyone to somehow define what is "obvious" here), but rather realize that one of the trends that just happens to be correlated with this increase in publishing of irreproducible results is the dramatic decline in funding for the sciences.

 

William Proxmire's "Golden Fleece Award" has been hijacked by the anti-science crowd to ensure that science gets no *ability* to try to reproduce results and ensure that the actual useful science that gets produced is moving in the direction of "truth" (even though it never "gets there").

 

The bottom line here is that the problem isn't to "redefine science" but to pay the science piper and realize that our continued existence as a species requires us to spend a lot more of our resources on ensuring that it's done right.

 

 

It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible, :phones:

Buffy

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I feel that I have said this on many forums in the past year and I will say it again here, though I am certain that I am certainly unqualified to make any statements in this discussion...

 

It does not matter who is right in the end if one person is saying the sky is blue, and the other is saying that the moon isn't. Sure you can say that you are both correct under the correct circumstances but one of you(not pointing any names or naming any fingers here) seems to be arguing something from a different context than the other. One is looking at a thing completely objectively while the other is looking at the world as a whole. Certainly it is true that non-reproducible results are valueless to the scientific community as they cannot be proven or applied to anything. But to to cut out all "experimentation" would be to alienate novice scientist that are yet to make real progress. Allow them to display their results, let them learn on their own, and simply ignore their incompetence. But every now and then an apple will metaphorically fall out of a tree and they might have a breakthrough idea that changes the way we think.

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