And the same kind of things go wrong in ordinary thinking. So that means that our theories about life can be made up of a lot of false trails based on shoddy research but we can still muddle through without falling off the end of the world (most of the time.)
I once got into an argument with a guy who claimed that he was a libertarian. After I kept coming up with what I thought were pretty good reasons for government involvement in society and the fact that it would be pretty difficult to live without any kinds of laws, he burst out, "There should be a law against people like you!" I thought that he was just being sarcastic at first, but then as I continued to argue with him I realized that he was serious. He was a steadfast advocate of a libertarianism which would end government intrusion in our lives - except (of course) for people who disagreed with him about those foundational principles! Our theories can be full of holes and cracked up but as long as the foundational theories are tightly associated with familiar contexts they can be made to work. Sometimes it is only when the fabric of that context is stretched in unwanted ways that the weakness of the theories can become apparent. The simple fact that that the so-called libertarian was not a thoughtful speaker or writer and the fact that he was not involved in making or enforcing laws meant that his private wish to jail people who disagreed with him too vocally was not a real problem that he had to confront. His private wish usually only exhibited itself in his own mind. Jim Bromer On Sat, Oct 19, 2013 at 5:40 PM, tintner michael <[email protected]> wrote: > How science goes wrong > Scientific research has changed the world. Now it needs to change itself > Oct 19th 2013 |From the print edition > > 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. > What a load of rubbish > 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. > One reason is the competitiveness of science. In the 1950s, when modern > academic research took shape after its successes in the second world war, it > was still a rarefied pastime. The entire club of scientists numbered a few > hundred thousand. As their ranks have swelled, to 6m-7m active researchers > on the latest reckoning, scientists have lost their taste for self-policing > and quality control. The obligation to “publish or perish” has come to rule > over academic life. Competition for jobs is cut-throat. Full professors in > America earned on average $135,000 in 2012—more than judges did. Every year > six freshly minted PhDs vie for every academic post. Nowadays verification > (the replication of other people’s results) does little to advance a > researcher’s career. And without verification, dubious findings live on to > mislead. > Careerism also encourages exaggeration and the cherry-picking of results. In > order to safeguard their exclusivity, the leading journals impose high > rejection rates: in excess of 90% of submitted manuscripts. The most > striking findings have the greatest chance of making it onto the page. > Little wonder that one in three researchers knows of a colleague who has > pepped up a paper by, say, excluding inconvenient data from results “based > on a gut feeling”. And as more research teams around the world work on a > problem, the odds shorten that at least one will fall prey to an honest > confusion between the sweet signal of a genuine discovery and a freak of the > statistical noise. Such spurious correlations are often recorded in journals > eager for startling papers. If they touch on drinking wine, going senile or > letting children play video games, they may well command the front pages of > newspapers, too. > Conversely, failures to prove a hypothesis are rarely even offered for > publication, let alone accepted. “Negative results” now account for only 14% > of published papers, down from 30% in 1990. Yet knowing what is false is as > important to science as knowing what is true. The failure to report failures > means that researchers waste money and effort exploring blind alleys already > investigated by other scientists. > The hallowed process of peer review is not all it is cracked up to be, > either. When a prominent medical journal ran research past other experts in > the field, it found that most of the reviewers failed to spot mistakes it > had deliberately inserted into papers, even after being told they were being > tested. > If it’s broke, fix it > > All this makes a shaky foundation for an enterprise dedicated to discovering > the truth about the world. What might be done to shore it up? One priority > should be for all disciplines to follow the example of those that have done > most to tighten standards. A start would be getting to grips with > statistics, especially in the growing number of fields that sift through > untold oodles of data looking for patterns. Geneticists have done this, and > turned an early torrent of specious results from genome sequencing into a > trickle of truly significant ones. > Ideally, research protocols should be registered in advance and monitored in > virtual notebooks. This would curb the temptation to fiddle with the > experiment’s design midstream so as to make the results look more > substantial than they are. (It is already meant to happen in clinical trials > of drugs, but compliance is patchy.) Where possible, trial data also should > be open for other researchers to inspect and test. > The most enlightened journals are already becoming less averse to humdrum > papers. Some government funding agencies, including America’s National > Institutes of Health, which dish out $30 billion on research each year, are > working out how best to encourage replication. And growing numbers of > scientists, especially young ones, understand statistics. But these trends > need to go much > further. Journals should allocate space for “uninteresting” work, and > grant-givers should set aside money to pay for it. Peer review should be > tightened—or perhaps dispensed with altogether, in favour of > post-publication evaluation in the form of appended comments. That system > has worked well in recent years in physics and mathematics. Lastly, > policymakers should ensure that institutions using public money also respect > the rules. > Science still commands enormous—if sometimes bemused—respect. But its > privileged status is founded on the capacity to be right most of the time > and to correct its mistakes when it gets things wrong. And it is not as if > the universe is short of genuine mysteries to keep generations of scientists > hard at work. The false trails laid down by shoddy research are an > unforgivable barrier to understanding. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > AGI | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
