AS USUAL, I must violently disagree with Chew--on the contrary, everyone
should TAKE HOURS to study this article AND the responses it spawned, as
well as the key link
http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 .
I nominate Chew's post as the most important of the year.
WT
PS: I wonder how many heads will end up on pikes as a result of daring to
comment on this?
This is (in my view) a key comment from the website:
2012-05-10 11:24 AM
Report this comment | #42493
David Tyler said:"How can we explain such pervasive bias? Like a magnetic
field that pulls iron filings into alignment, a powerful cultural belief is
aligning multiple sources of scientific bias in the same direction."
Surely the analysis of Thomas Kuhn, helpfully articulated in a recent
review by David Kaiser
(Nature, 12 April 2012,
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7393/full/484164a.html) is
relevant here. Most researchers are practicing "normal science" and are
building on a consensual paradigm. They have a model of incremental progress
and they think deductively that all "positives" must advance the paradigm.
They are not thinking about false positives. This is the real "cultural
belief" that steers the way research is done.
Somehow, we need to avoid appeals to scientific "consensus" that closes
down or confines discourse. Science thrives when the appeal is not to
consensus but to evidence. Why can't the "multiple working hypotheses"
approach be more widely adopted?
From
----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Chew" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, May 15, 2012 8:30 AM
Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Sarewitz on Systematic Error
Everyone should take a minute to read this Nature 'world view' piece.
http://www.nature.com/news/beware-the-creeping-cracks-of-bias-1.10600?WT.ec_id=NEWS-20120515
Matthew K Chew
Assistant Research Professor
Arizona State University School of Life Sciences
ASU Center for Biology & Society
PO Box 873301
Tempe, AZ 85287-3301 USA
Tel 480.965.8422
Fax 480.965.8330
[email protected] or [email protected]
http://cbs.asu.edu/people/profiles/chew.php
http://asu.academia.edu/MattChew
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