Maybe there's something to the Republican rejection of science

[Loren Pechtel]

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/fraud-so-much-fraud

1 in 7 scientific papers is fake, suggests study that author calls ‘wildly nonsystematic’

James Heathers In 2009, a now highly-cited study found an average of around 2% of scientists admit to have falsified, fabricated, or modified data at least once in their career. Fifteen years…

retractionwatch.com

What has the scientific community come to?!

(And I really would like to see some indication of where it's coming from and in what fields, but they don't discuss that.)

 

[bigfield]

What has the scientific community come to?!

Hold your horses, American Samoa. As Heathers points out, his claim is pretty far-flung. And his paper has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.

(And I really would like to see some indication of where it's coming from and in what fields, but they don't discuss that.)

If you really want to know then there's nothing stopping you from following some links.

Based on Heathers' citations, there is a problem in biomedical and pharmacological research.

Maybe there's something to the Republican rejection of science

Man, you're trying really hard to drag this forum down.

 

[Swammerdami]

I read the first few sentences and leapt to a guess ... supported by the paper itself a few paragraphs down:

Daniele Fanelli, a metascientist at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland who authored the 2009 study, is not convinced by the new analysis. “Metascience research is sometimes not metascientific,” he says, arguing that the study falsely labels studies with some problem as definitely being a fake.

Any minor problem turns a paper into a "FAKE"? Hyperbole really is getting out of control.

 

[Politesse]

What has the scientific community come to?!

The fact that individual studies cannot be relied on - for a host of reasons, not just intentional dishonesty - is exactly the reason why we built this whole rigorous system of public academic critique (that the Republicans and their allies overseas are overtly trying to tear down in favor of a fully privatized market of information where favorable "scientific" results can simply be bought without respect to consistency or consensus). Beginning with the very process of peer review that this paper intentionally skirted by pre-publishing it in OSF in advance of its being justifiably skewered by experts in the field but then promoting the article on social media as though it had been reputably published.

 

[Shadowy Man]

So, if a paper claims that 1 out of 7 papers is fake does that mean this paper has a 15% chance of being the fake one?

 

[GenesisNemesis]

Nope, still not very valid. Even if we accept this conclusion that means 6/7 studies aren't fake. That sure is a lot of studies that aren't fake, and it still means more likely to be correct than not correct.

 

[pood]

7/7 of everything any Republican MAGGAT says is fake, so science is still doing much better.

 

[lpetrich]

That's a problem with relying on cutting-edge research. Many of the results of such research may not survive further scrutiny; they may be modified or outright rejected. On the other hand, what is very well-established may have too limited applicability or may turn out to be flawed or outright mistaken. One has to strike a balance between being too willing to accept new things and being too unwilling to accept new things.

Consider  X-ray vs.  N-ray

After X-rays were discovered, observations of them were almost absurdly easy to replicate, and there were oodles of papers on them soon after their discovery.

N-rays were another story. After the announcement of the discovery of them, many physicists tried to replicate them, and many of them failed. Physicist R.W. Wood tried some experiments on some observers of N-rays as they observed these supposed rays in a darkened lab. He removed a prism that was involved in some N-ray observations and he replaced a metal file with a piece of wood, because wood supposedly does not emit N-rays. The observers kept on observing.

What they "observed" was borderline effects that they expected to see, a case of observer and experimenter effects. That is why subjectivity is often distrusted. One may see what one expects to see, and one may observe patterns that are not really present. That's why statistical testing is such an important part of observational and experimental science. There are plenty of things that are hard to quantify, so one has to be creative. I know of an attempt to quantify patriotism with visits to nationalistically significant sites, like for the US, George Washington's Mount Vernon estate and the Statue of Liberty.

 

[lpetrich]

 Pathological science - Irving Langmuir, 1953

1. The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
2. The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability, or many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
3. There are claims of great accuracy.
4. Fantastic theories contrary to experience are suggested.
5. Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses.
6. The ratio of supporters to critics rises and then falls gradually to oblivion.

N-rays were one of his examples. Observations of them were on the borderline of perception, satisfying (1) and (2). As to statistics, particle physicists try to avoid that problem by being unwilling to claim to have observed something unless it departs by over 5 standard deviations (5 sigmas) from its null result. That's why p-hacking is such a problem: claiming positive results on the basis of some very weak statistics.

As to (4), there are some very counterintuitive results of science, satisfying (4), but they are accepted because they violate (1) and (2) very strongly.

 

[steve_bank]

I worked with Christian creationists who were very good engineers, but when it came to religion they compartmentalized religion and science.

If you expect us all to go by factual science all the time you will be unhappy.


There is a flip side to the republican climate deniers.

The problem is m is factual science does not say what to do, it can provide guidance.

The term 'since based' became popularized during COVID.

It appears in supplants TV ads, our claims are science based.

Our governor would clam his decisions are science based, he is doing what the science says to do.

He made unrealistic mandates to get rid of gas cars and natural gas. It is what science said to do, an so on.

 

[Tigers!]

Nope, still not very valid. Even if we accept this conclusion that means 6/7 studies aren't fake. That sure is a lot of studies that aren't fake, and it still means more likely to be correct than not correct.

Very true but the false ones can have devastating effects. And how does one easily determine false ones?
Thalidomide springs to mind.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

(And I really would like to see some indication of where it's coming from and in what fields, but they don't discuss that.)

If you really want to know then there's nothing stopping you from following some links.

Based on Heathers' citations, there is a problem in biomedical and pharmacological research.

I didn't look, I figured it would be paywalled.

Maybe there's something to the Republican rejection of science

Man, you're trying really hard to drag this forum down.

I was joking.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Nope, still not very valid. Even if we accept this conclusion that means 6/7 studies aren't fake. That sure is a lot of studies that aren't fake, and it still means more likely to be correct than not correct.

Very true but the false ones can have devastating effects. And how does one easily determine false ones?
Thalidomide springs to mind.

Yeah, there have been an awful lot of fakes done so somebody could profit.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Who ya gonna trust -- "Science" with a capital S, or the Republicans? It's a bit silly as a question, because it's identifying two entities that won't fit entirely into a generalized judgment. But:
Scientific Misconduct
This has its own list on wikipedia. A lot of the examples come from medical research: fraudulent studies that claimed to show that ivermectin could treat covid; many other pharmacological studies; the recent concern that Alzheimer's research stemming from a 2006 study was falsified. Some of those who were shown to be guilty of falsifying results were found guilty of fraud and drew prison terms.
There are well-known examples in anthropology: Piltdown Man and, much more ludicrously, the Cardiff Giant, which can be seen in Cooperstown, NY.
And how were these cases brought to light? By researchers who attempted to duplicate the original studies. In the Alzheimer's case, Science magazine spent six months analyzing the data and images from the 2006 study.
The Repubs
Donald Trump spent 5 years spreading the Birther lie (2011-2016). In that time, how many Republicans came out and disputed his claims? When John Boehner, The GOP Speaker of the House, was asked if he would clear up the matter in a public statement, he made this statement:
"The American people have the right to think whatever they want to think...It's not my job to tell them."
Trump of course has told multiple thousands of lies -- didn't the tabulation get to 30,000 by the end of his Presidency? Just in the last two months he has unleashed these lies:
> American children are going to public school, where they get gender reassignment surgery without their parents' knowledge, and they come home with "brutal operations". (This one is so deranged that it should be made into a Harris ad -- Trump is clearly out of his mind.)
> Trump won the 2020 election AND Trump lost, but "by a whisker". (Again, it's deranged, and it shows the contempt he has for his audience, since he knows he can spout any amount of nonsense and still hold his followers under his spell.)
> The Haitians of Springfield, OH, are there illegally, and they are eating -- do I have to go on?
> The Biden administration has diverted FEMA disaster relief funds to housing for illegal aliens.
> Relief for hurricane victims is capped at $750.
> If you make a claim for relief, FEMA can and will claim your house and property.
Who is calling him out on these destructive lies? There are a few brave outliers in the GOP (Liz C.) who consistently tell the truth about Trump -- and of course Liz has been drummed out of the party. A few Republican governors and legislators have corrected the record on Springfield and on hurricane relief. But the party as a whole sustains Trump and is locked into a slavish relationship with him.
Scientists reform Science. Very few Republicans will tell the truth about Trump.

 

[Elixir]

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/fraud-so-much-fraud

1 in 7 scientific papers is fake, suggests study that author calls ‘wildly nonsystematic’

James Heathers In 2009, a now highly-cited study found an average of around 2% of scientists admit to have falsified, fabricated, or modified data at least once in their career. Fifteen years…

retractionwatch.com

What has the scientific community come to?!

(And I really would like to see some indication of where it's coming from and in what fields, but they don't discuss that.)

One in fifty scientists writes one in seven papers? Good for them, I guess.

So, if a paper claims that 1 out of 7 papers is fake does that mean this paper has a 15% chance of being the fake one?

If this guy is one of the 2%, it’s a virtual certainty.

 

[barbos]

It's inescapable result of "publish or perish" race.

 

[thebeave]

The state of scientific publications is abysmal and has been polluted by political and ideological nonsense from all sides. One of the more recent and egrigious examples being Scientific American. Reason wrote a detailed article on its recent downturn. Its really unbelievable.

How Scientific American's Departing Editor Helped Degrade Science

But increasingly, during Helmuth's tenure, SciAm seemed a bit more like a marketing firm dedicated to churning out borderline-unreadable press releases for the day's social justice cause du jour. In the process, SciAm played a small but important role in the self-immolation of scientific authority—a terrible event whose fallout we'll be living with for a long time.

When Scientific American was bad under Helmuth, it was really bad. For example, did you know that "Denial of Evolution Is a Form of White Supremacy"? Or that the normal distribution—a vital and basic statistical concept—is inherently suspect? No, really: Three days after the legendary biologist and author E.O. Wilson died, SciAm published a surreal hit piece about him in which the author lamented "his dangerous ideas on what factors influence human behavior." That author also explained that "the so-called normal distribution of statistics assumes that there are default humans who serve as the standard that the rest of us can be accurately measured against." But the normal distribution doesn't make any such value judgments, and only someone lacking in basic education about stats—someone who definitely shouldn't be writing about the subject for a top magazine—could make such a claim.

Some of the magazine's Helmuth-era output made the posthumous drive-by against Wilson look Pulitzer-worthy by comparison. Perhaps the most infamous entry in this oeuvre came in September 2021: "Why the Term 'JEDI' Is Problematic for Describing Programs That Promote Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion." That article sternly informed readers that an acronym many of them had likely never heard of in the first place—JEDI, standing for "justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion"—ought to be avoided on social justice grounds. You see, in the Star Wars franchise, the Jedi "are a religious order of intergalactic police-monks, prone to (white) saviorism and toxically masculine approaches to conflict resolution (violent duels with phallic lightsabers, gaslighting by means of "Jedi mind tricks," etc.)"

You probably think I'm trolling or being trolled. There's no way that actual sentence got published in Scientific American, right? No, it's very real.

The crisis of expert authority has many causes. But one of them is experts mortgaging their own credibility. When magazines like Scientific American are run by ideologues like Helmuth, producing biased dreck as a result, it only makes it more difficult to defend the institution of science itself from relentless attack. This lack of trust absolutely contributes to the sorts of dunderheaded, reactionary populism presently threatening America and much of Europe.

If experts aren't to be trusted, charlatans and cranks will step into the vacuum. To mangle a line from Archer, "Do you want a world where RFK Jr. is the head of HHS? That's how you get a world where RFK Jr. is appointed head of HHS."