<story><title>Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?</title><url>https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/07/05/time-to-assume-that-health-research-is-fraudulent-until-proved-otherwise/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sjwalter</author><text>What I want to know is how does this issue impact the notion that we all seem to buy into that we should &amp;quot;follow the science&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Scientists themselves have a hard time &amp;quot;following the science&amp;quot;. Add to it the observation that when an issue is getting lots of attention outside of academia, then there are usually some really strong incentives (profit, prestige) associated with doing the science and applying it (e.g., epidemiological science during a global pandemic).&lt;p&gt;The question seems not to be about how can normal people &amp;quot;follow the science&amp;quot; but rather, why should normal people trust at all that any touted science is anything more than bullshit spouted by highly-motivated sophists?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>read_if_gay_</author><text>&amp;gt; why should normal people trust at all that any touted science is anything more than bullshit spouted by highly-motivated sophists?&lt;p&gt;In the current climate, frankly I think it&amp;#x27;s absurd that we&amp;#x27;re putting so much trust in science, or rather what it has become.&lt;p&gt;The fundamental problem is that science as in the method is absolutely worth putting your trust in, but a lot of what&amp;#x27;s sold as Science^TM has diverged from it far enough to be worthless. However, it still bears the same name and borrows its credibility. There are countless examples even from the places one would think to be the most trustworthy.&lt;p&gt;What science as in the method hinges on as opposed to Science^TM is &lt;i&gt;verifiability&lt;/i&gt;. Disciplines that aren&amp;#x27;t easily verified suffer from the replication crisis to the point where it&amp;#x27;s basically synonymous. I would go as far as arguing that unless something has been verified several times it should be nothing more than a hypothesis. Note how popular science media are basically living off doing the opposite (though I don&amp;#x27;t think much better can be expected from the media honestly.)&lt;p&gt;Math and social sciences form the two ends of the verifiability (and reproducibility) scale. CS is close enough to math that it&amp;#x27;s not a dumpster fire like psychology but I would say we&amp;#x27;re still suffering a lot of BS research. To fix this we need actual rigor, more openness about the methods, and frankly, motivation to reproduce results.</text></comment>
<story><title>Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?</title><url>https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/07/05/time-to-assume-that-health-research-is-fraudulent-until-proved-otherwise/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>sjwalter</author><text>What I want to know is how does this issue impact the notion that we all seem to buy into that we should &amp;quot;follow the science&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Scientists themselves have a hard time &amp;quot;following the science&amp;quot;. Add to it the observation that when an issue is getting lots of attention outside of academia, then there are usually some really strong incentives (profit, prestige) associated with doing the science and applying it (e.g., epidemiological science during a global pandemic).&lt;p&gt;The question seems not to be about how can normal people &amp;quot;follow the science&amp;quot; but rather, why should normal people trust at all that any touted science is anything more than bullshit spouted by highly-motivated sophists?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aabaker99</author><text>I think this is a very important question. This is something that I struggle with.&lt;p&gt;I have read a lot of papers. I generally think science can be a force for good. I understand analytic methods developed by or used in papers from my field of interest. I generally believe that those methods are capable of answering important and interesting questions.&lt;p&gt;In my view, the problem is that you can&amp;#x27;t know if an article is good or bullshit until you sit with it for, say, at least 2 or 3 hours (some papers even more). And that is for someone with my background. I tried to do this same thing when I had an undergraduate level of education and it (a) took me a lot longer (at least 10x), and (b) I missed a lot of the mistakes&amp;#x2F;scams&amp;#x2F;lies that I would not miss now. (I&amp;#x27;m sure I am not able to detect some bullshit even still.)&lt;p&gt;We should follow the good science. We should not follow the bullshit science. This sounds hard because science, being more technical, is harder to vet. But upon further reflection, it seems that society hasn&amp;#x27;t figured out how to deal with much simpler lies, either.</text></comment>