Current Events > Report about reproducibility crisis in science laden with political bias

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://undark.org/article/national-association-of-scholars-reproducibility/

Here's a particularly telling passage from the report's preface:

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There's something about railing against "advocacy-driven science" in your paper that happens to find that the science you most disagree with on a political level is "not reproducible".
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Terrence Mckenna has been calling this out for decades
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Anteaterking posted...

There's something about railing against "advocacy-driven science" in your paper that happens to find that the science you most disagree with on a political level is "not reproducible".

Lol.

And the awful thing is, out of all the recent literature on this movement, this is the piece that is making it to lawmakers.
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Anteaterking posted...

There's something about railing against "advocacy-driven science" in your paper that happens to find that the science you most disagree with on a political level is "not reproducible".

Indeed
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Anteaterking posted...

There's something about railing against "advocacy-driven science" in your paper that happens to find that the science you most disagree with on a political level is "not reproducible".

It's a sticky subject because the common threads of discussion take it too far in the other direction (i.e., some irreproducible science is left-leaning agenda masquerading as science, therefore the entire institution of science is suspect and conveniently can be disregarded, especially with regards to my own beliefs). It's very in line with Descartes' philosophy and is partly the reason some scientific disciplines like psychology are so primitive and so far behind the hard sciences like chemistry and physics. Mind-body dualism led them to think, "Not worth studying" and it was ignored for centuries.

Both political sides latch onto the coat-tails of science in a manner of which would make Immanuel Kant roll over in his grave. Being liberal leaning myself, nothing irks me more than when the left misrepresents science to push something that, based off of my review, I do not think is sound science. Doesn't mean I'm correct either, but far too often I think we let things slide when they are on "our side" of the political spectrum and that's just horseshit.

Really all it says is that science is a tool, and only as good insofar you use the right tool in the right manner for the right indication.
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This isn't even touching the subject of laypeople discussing studies, which I think is a futile effort. One thing I've come to learn by studying medicine these past few years is most of the shit we think we know is wrong and there is a reason everyone picks some profession or career that they become an expert in in society.

I know dick about law and I sure as shit know I will never try and represent myself. But the amount of people who think they have any right to an opinion about some contentious topic in medicine without the prerequisite years of pouring over the basics first drives me nuts. If the top minds of a field can't come to an obvious conclusion, what makes joe fucking shmoe think his two cents is worth anything?

When I extrapolate that to almost any other discipline outside of my own, I recognize it's futile to try and have an informed opinion. We defer to the experts, but sometimes experts can be wrong, and throw in politics in the mix and it's one huge fucking mess. It's easy to dismiss social science or climate change when it doesn't correspond to our belief systems and when we can't even begin to comprehend what is going on in the literature. Far too often, it's a bunch of clueless people arguing about some facet that the real minds in the field resolved a long time ago and laypeople have no pulse on what the actual issue is.

When lawmakers with no background in a field have to make decisions, you have two options. Defer to the scientists. Or not. Both options are their own can of worms.
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Soviet_Poland posted...

disciplines like psychology are so primitive and so far behind the hard sciences

I know it's not the point of your post, but it's interesting to think about psychology's role in this. The brunt of the criticism regarding reproducibility has been taken to the face of psychology, despite the fact that reproducibility rates in other typically 'harder' fields have been shown to be similar or worse, and that psychology is the discipline heading the primary work in addressing reproducibility.

Think about that for a second, the moment a field starts to try to address this issue that is an intersection of the culture of science with abuse of statistics, it gets branded as fake!
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COVxy posted...

I know it's not the point of your post, but it's interesting to think about psychology's role in this. The brunt of the criticism regarding reproducibility has been taken to the face of psychology, despite the fact that reproducibility rates in other typically 'harder' fields have been shown to be similar or worse, and that psychology is the discipline heading the primary work in addressing reproducibility.

Think about that for a second, the moment a field starts to try to address this issue that is an intersection of the culture of science with abuse of statistics, it gets branded as fake!

I always found that fascinating. I got so much more of an in-depth understanding of the philosophy of science and a more rigorous background in scientific methods doing an undergraduate in psychology than in any of my medicine prerequisites.

It's almost like science got "taken for granted" in the fields we have more faith in and we lost sight of how human systems when it comes to economics and politics can lead to bad science. I find it hilarious how people take medical science as hard fact a lot of the times, when it has just as many limitations as psychological research. It's not like we're doing nazi-style experimentation on people. We rely on retrospective study and outcomes-based research and people assume it's as solid as colliding particles.

*shrug*
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Soviet_Poland posted...

I know dick about law and I sure as shit know I will never try and represent myself. But the amount of people who think they have any right to an opinion about some contentious topic in medicine without the prerequisite years of pouring over the basics first drives me nuts. If the top minds of a field can't come to an obvious conclusion, what makes joe fucking shmoe think his two cents is worth anything?

this kinda reminds me of when some stupid happens or gets a news article or whatever and it's something really "obvious". like here's a somewhat recent example: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-43711627

and then most of the people who comment on it or talk about it are all "scientists are dumb I could have told you this in 1 minute for $5 what a waste of time and money"
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kirbymuncher posted...

Soviet_Poland posted...

I know dick about law and I sure as shit know I will never try and represent myself. But the amount of people who think they have any right to an opinion about some contentious topic in medicine without the prerequisite years of pouring over the basics first drives me nuts. If the top minds of a field can't come to an obvious conclusion, what makes joe fucking shmoe think his two cents is worth anything?

this kinda reminds me of when some stupid happens or gets a news article or whatever and it's something really "obvious". like here's a somewhat recent example: http://www.bbc.com/news/health-43711627

and then most of the people who comment on it or talk about it are all "scientists are dumb I could have told you this in 1 minute for $5 what a waste of time and money"

The hindsight bias is strong. Many people who think they could predict these results often wouldn't have made those predictions prior to seeing the conclusion.

But, even still, even if it is blindingly obvious, it's still important to provide evidence for it.
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COVxy posted...

The hindsight bias is strong. Many people who think they could predict these results often wouldn't have made those predictions prior to seeing the conclusion.

But, even still, even if it is blindingly obvious, it's still important to provide evidence for it.

It's not even necessarily the first part (that they wouldn't have made those predictions), but it seems like they could be very easily swayed to the opposite side.

Head injuries cause dementia: "Obvious"

Head injuries don't cause dementia: "I heard the other day that head injuries actually DON'T cause dementia. Isn't that interesting?"
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Anteaterking posted...

It's not even necessarily the first part (that they wouldn't have made those predictions), but it seems like they could be very easily swayed to the opposite side.

Idk, even with this result, TBI is a newer thing. You would have never had people saying yes to "do you think playing HS football is a risk factor for dementias?" 10 years ago. And I still think many people would say no.

Either way, the point is that these types of comments after the fact are stupid =P
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