El_Gringo_Grande

Did anybody read the paper the opinion piece was based on?

It was an essay to begin with. The articles the essay relied on to make this 50% claim where based on studies of medical papers. Medicine is just one small part of science.

It may very well be that other disciplines are, in fact, just as guilty. But this essay does not cover those disciplines.

Medicine is a notoriously difficult field to make definite claims about. Normally all you have is a correlation to go with. And as others have said much medical research is driven by the dollar. It is a business more than other fields. And I would bet many of those doing the research are more concerned with the art of medicine than the method of science. I would guess many of those on the bad end of 50% where studies that used incorrect statistical methods on the data given or the data was thrown at a bunch of methods and the one that produced significance was used. That is a very easy error that many "armature" researchers make.


Another part of the essay was about misusing single result sets. Well duh. The media is horrible about this. I mean common! WSJ took 1 ESSAY that is based on a very small number of papers then makes the bold claim "Most Science Studies Appear to Be Tainted By Sloppy Analysis"

Anybody see some irony here?

Edit. Yes, I seem to be repeating what was said. Just consider it a second paper to back up the first results.

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jex

it seems this guy looks at medical science - I doubt he is talking about all science and most science, as I understand it, is peer reviewed? However, If it's wrong then further analysis wshould correct it.

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Jex

jex

I think the point is that they end up with a PHD. A PHD is a PHD and you have to know your stuff to get one. Even if someone just passes, they still know the required amount to fulfill the PHD status. I don't really see the point you are making.

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BigGaayAl

I have to say that in general I agree with the idea in Tybalt's post. Errors in data are one problem, and they are apparently not rare, but there is another factor too.

In studying psychology at uni, I learnt that there is an insane trust in anything statistical in human science disciplines today.

It was once neatly described by my then professor in methodology (!). He showed us the plan of a house. Then he said some people believe you can't measure a human (and his inner workings) like we do a house, but I do. He said he believed that you can measure anything about a human just as you can measure a wall of your house.

I find that preposterous, but it is generally accepted in that field of science. It is a high level of belief in the quantification of anything human. This statistical optimism results in a current practice where the most insane ideas are proven, with less and less attention paid to validity of an experiment/survey.

A good example is the DSMIV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). It is a classification of mental illnesses that is widely accepted and used. A lot of research, treatment and even politics are based on its division of syndromes.

The problem is it lacks any real validity. The diseases in it aren't diseases as say a flu, with a cause, a working mechanism and associated symptoms. Instead the "illnesses" are really syndromes; simply groupings of symptoms without any knowledge about a mechanism and cause. These classifications aren't diseases but syndromes, so they may actually be groupings of totally different problems, that generate similar symptoms.

Yet they are treated as if they were as clearly "diseases" as the flu. Examples are autism and adhd. Anyone noticed a huge increase in these diseases? The reason is not that suddenly they are more prevalent, the reason is in large part that these aren't diseases at all, that have a common cause (and therefore treatement). The effect ensues that as the diagnosis is fashionable, more and more people are labeled with it, so they notice the illness doesn't work too well, and has too many people in it. Then they enlarge the definition (autism-spectrum disorder anyone). They just keep fumbling along the way and all this time people are being labelled with quasi meaningless diseases, and they believe the scientists, and they change their lives for it.

Now when you have a look at how this classification is created, the optimistic belief in statistics and their validity is staggering. This tool, that is accepted as true, and influences millions of lies, is based on surveys gathering reports from psychologists and psychiatrists all over western civilization. I've had to fill these in myself. Hardly anyone takes them seriously, answers to them are highly arbitrary and very much influenced by "fashion" (popularity of paradigms).

I say much of current human sciences is an incredible load of crap. They waste millions in funds, researching things anyone with common sense knows. They have their heads in the numbers so much, no one bothers to ask a patient things like "do you think life has meaning?" They are acting as if they are dealing with a computer they don't totally understand just yet , but soon they will as they understand better what this area f the brain does, or what this transmitter does.

In the end, they are totally missing the point, and are dealing with only half of a human, the bit that is somewhat quantifiable. They simply act as if the other part doesn't exist.

At this point, scientists in quantum physics are less posh about quantifying their field of work, as they have hit the limits of our methods, and are confronted with ambiguity. At the same time so many people in human sciences are not confronted with ambiguity, and it is because they are blind. They are like rabbits in your headlights, enchanted by a shiny thing.


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Well I wrote this rather quickly, I hope it makes some sense. Most of this I got from a great professor who also publishes in English, Paul Verhaeghe. His book "love in times of loneliness" is a great read for anyone, and I got most of the ideas here from the book ""Clinical psychodiagnostics from a psychoanalytical point of view" which explains what I try to convey so much better.

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