OT Big Science is broken

[Denny Crane]

http://theweek.com/articles/618141/big-science-broken

Advocates of the existing scientific research paradigm usually smugly declare that while some published conclusions are surely false, the scientific method has "self-correcting mechanisms" that ensure that, eventually, the truth will prevail. Unfortunately for all of us, Wilson makes a convincing argument that those self-correcting mechanisms are broken.

...

What explains this? In some cases, human error. Much of the research world exploded in rage and mockery when it was found out that a highly popularized finding by the economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhardt linking higher public debt to lower growth was due to an Excel error. Steven Levitt, of Freakonomics fame, largely built his career on a paper arguing that abortion led to lower crime rates 20 years later because the aborted babies were disproportionately future criminals. Two economists went through the painstaking work of recoding Levitt's statistical analysis — and found a basic arithmetic error.

...

Then there is outright fraud. In a 2011 survey of 2,000 research psychologists, over half admitted to selectively reporting those experiments that gave the result they were after. The survey also concluded that around 10 percent of research psychologists have engaged in outright falsification of data, and more than half have engaged in "less brazen but still fraudulent behavior such as reporting that a result was statistically significant when it was not, or deciding between two different data analysis techniques after looking at the results of each and choosing the more favorable."

Then there's everything in between human error and outright fraud: rounding out numbers the way that looks better, checking a result less thoroughly when it comes out the way you like, and so forth.

 

[crandc]

WTF is "big science"?

And what is your alternative to science? Flawed as it is, like all human enterprises, I have yet to see anything close to the track record of success.
You claim disproven claims disprove science? First, you cite (actually you copy/paste for which I have no respect - are you not capable of original writing?) assertions as proof. Even if they were, "science" is not a corporation. It is a method. And disproving claims is part of science. It was not psychics or creationists or Donald Trump who showed that "Piltdown Man" was a fraud, it was scientists; it is scientific review that is uncovering the research psychology papers you referenced (copied/pasted).

You claim science is "broken"? Fine! Give up polio vaccine, birth control, sterile surgery, and of course the Internet.

 

[Denny Crane]

Big Science. Big Business. Big Government.

It's not science that's bad, it's the people who ruin it.

It's not science to falsify data to fit your agenda. It's good for getting grants, tho.

That's me, original thought.

Your post was non sequitur. Nobody suggested to ditch science. The research paradigm is broken.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

WTF is "big science"?

And what is your alternative to science? Flawed as it is, like all human enterprises, I have yet to see anything close to the track record of success.
You claim disproven claims disprove science? First, you cite (actually you copy/paste for which I have no respect - are you not capable of original writing?) assertions as proof. Even if they were, "science" is not a corporation. It is a method. And disproving claims is part of science. It was not psychics or creationists or Donald Trump who showed that "Piltdown Man" was a fraud, it was scientists; it is scientific review that is uncovering the research psychology papers you referenced (copied/pasted).

You claim science is "broken"? Fine! Give up polio vaccine, birth control, sterile surgery, and of course the Internet.

"Big Science" has been trying to buy influence with both political parties with large donations of tens of dollars and other change found in couch cushions. Denny is one of the few brave enough to stand up to them.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

It's not science that's bad, it's the people who ruin it.

I completely agree!

Check out these losers!

http://www.nationalmemo.com/5-anti-science-congressmen-on-the-house-science-committee/

 

[Denny Crane]

Then there is outright fraud. In a 2011 survey of 2,000 research psychologists, over half admitted to selectively reporting those experiments that gave the result they were after. The survey also concluded that around 10 percent of research psychologists have engaged in outright falsification of data

Or these people.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

Or these people.

When I had my thetans tested I found out that all psychologists are frauds.

 

[Denny Crane]

Not just psychologists.

 

[Denny Crane]

http://www.biospectrumasia.com/biospectrum/analysis/192973/worlds-big-pharma-frauds

 

[Denny Crane]

http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/november/fraud-science-papers-111615.html

 

[Minstrel]

So the self-correcting nature of "science" is broken, because of fraud and errors, which we know about because those claims were thoroughly examined and the errors and fraud was discovered. If only there had been some self-correction, we might have...found those errors and examples of fraud.

That's not to say peer review or other methods of validating scientific papers isn't going to fail at times--all human establishments are going to make mistakes--but that article was spectacularly weak in trying to establish that the entire human scientific endeavor is "broken."

Science is self-correcting because scientists aren't after some notion of objective Truth, simply the best model to explain what we can observe. When a better model, with better explanatory and predictive value comes along, the old model is replaced, in part or in full.

The actual human establishments can always be improved, in pretty much every sphere of society. Even government, which I'm sure is shocking to you!

 

[Further]

So I have a few thoughts from what I have seen working in cell and microbiology for years.

1) There are falsifications that happen, mostly due to error, not agenda. An example that I know of has to do with what causes the release of IL-1 beta. There was a lab that made a finding that was a red herring finding that linked the production to certain ionic exchanges. The discovery was made by a very well respected lab and was based on good science but a poor analyzation of the data. Our lab was much less known and we were able to discover the production of IL-1 beta was actually better attributed to inhibition of protein synthesis. But, by the time we were able to demonstrate this, the original discovery had been sited hundreds of times and had become defacto truth. There were no malicious intents in the original discovery, but it will take several labs repeating what we did before we will ever be able to get the general scientific world to accept that the well-respected lab was wrong.

This above example does highlight a real problem with scientific discovery, and that's that who makes the discovery matters too much sometimes and that it is much more difficult that it should be for the self-correcting mechanisms in science to kick in and correct the record. However, it does usually happen.

2) I have never personally witnessed a lab falsify on purpose or do so to adhere to an agenda. I'm sure it happens, but my guess is very infrequently. Yes, it could make getting a grant easier, but getting discovered presenting malicious findings will just about guarantee that your career is horseshit and will wither away.

3) I have worked in many job, in many fields, and the most honest one I ever worked in was microbiology. Most scientists have put in 11+ years of higher education and gone through medical school in order to do something they believe in. They could easily have gone a different route and made shitloads more money going a different avenue. People do it in most circumstances because they believe it is important to the world and they want to contribute.

 

[jlprk]

And what is your alternative to science? Flawed as it is, like all human enterprises, I have yet to see anything close to the track record of success.

That says it all. Among the powerful institutions--government, rich people, religion, media, science--I'll put my money on science any day, as the most accurate and objective. Sure Denny can find flaws, but science has the least.

Also, the flaws that Denny finds are caused by his favorite economic system, the pursuit of money. If Bernie Sanders had his way, those economic incentives would be reduced. Denny, stop complaining about what you cause.

 

[Denny Crane]

So the self-correcting nature of "science" is broken, because of fraud and errors, which we know about because those claims were thoroughly examined and the errors and fraud was discovered. If only there had been some self-correction, we might have...found those errors and examples of fraud.

That's not to say peer review or other methods of validating scientific papers isn't going to fail at times--all human establishments are going to make mistakes--but that article was spectacularly weak in trying to establish that the entire human scientific endeavor is "broken."

Science is self-correcting because scientists aren't after some notion of objective Truth, simply the best model to explain what we can observe. When a better model, with better explanatory and predictive value comes along, the old model is replaced, in part or in full.

The actual human establishments can always be improved, in pretty much every sphere of society. Even government, which I'm sure is shocking to you!

They poll scientists and half admit fabricate their data or otherwise commit fraud.

Peer reviews catch 2%.

Disconnect.

 

[Denny Crane]

That says it all. Among the powerful institutions--government, rich people, religion, media, science--I'll put my money on science any day, as the most accurate and objective. Sure Denny can find flaws, but science has the least.

Also, the flaws that Denny finds are caused by his favorite economic system, the pursuit of money. If Bernie Sanders had his way, those economic incentives would be reduced. Denny, stop complaining about what you cause.

There you go. Don't trust science. Trust Bernie!

No thanks.

 

[Denny Crane]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...search-once-described-as-holy-grail-feds-say/

Scientist falsified data for cancer research once described as ‘holy grail,’ feds say

One Duke University surgeon called it a “new frontier” in cancer treatment. Another said it could save “10,000 lives a year” or more. A researcher at Mass General Hospital called it “a very, very exciting tool” in the fight against lung cancer. As news spread in 2006 and 2007 of the work of Anil Potti, a star cancer researcher at Duke, the excitement grew.

What he had claimed to achieve, in leading medical journals, was a genomic technology that could predict with up to 90 percent accuracy which early stage lung cancer patients were likely to have a recurrence and therefore benefit from chemotherapy.

He had developed, Potti said in interviews at the time, a genomic “fingerprint unique to the individual patient” that would predict the chances of survival of early stage lung cancer patients.

It was considered a breakthrough because, as the Economist explained at the time, chemotherapy is “a blunt instrument … In most cases a patient’s survival depends on whether he dies from the side effects of chemotherapy before the chemotherapy kills the cancer, or vice versa. A way to pick the right type of chemotherapy would make a big difference. Anil Potti and colleagues, of Duke University in North Carolina, have proven — in principle, at least — that they can do exactly that. Instead of prescribing chemotherapies according to a doctor’s best guess, they propose a genetic analysis to predict which type of chemotherapy would stand the greatest chance of zapping cancerous cells.”

And they had ample reason for their praise. After all, the revolutionary findings by Anil Potti and his team were first published in Nature Medicine, one of the most prestigious peer-reviewed journals in the field, and later in a host of other prestigious journals.

Now, the Office of Research Integrity (ORI), the agency that investigates fraud in federally-funded medical research, has officially declared that the data generated by Potti was not only flawed, but “false.”

 

[Denny Crane]

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/07/5-years-in-prison-for-falsifying-data.html

An HIV Researcher Was Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison for Falsifying Data

Dong-Pyou Han, a former biochemist at Iowa State University, conducted some pretty serious research misconduct by falsifying the results of a number of HIV vaccine trials. Among other things, he “spiked rabbit blood samples with human HIV antibodies so that the vaccine appeared to have caused the animals to develop immunity to the virus,”explains Nature. It’s no surprise, then, that when the scandal came down on Han he was fired from his job and banned from receiving federal research funds for three years — the latter of these two sanctions being, as Nature points out, effectively a professional death sentence for someone in Han’s line of work. What is a surprise is that he’s now been sentenced to a prison term of almost fiveyears.

 

[Denny Crane]

http://splice-bio.com/publish-or-perish-why-scientists-fabricate-and-falsify-research/

“Publish or Perish” – Why Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research

More and more papers are retracted each year. In a reproducibility study Bayer was able to repeat only 14 out of 67 drug target research experiments from landmark papers. Amgen set out to repeat 53 key discoveries in the field of cancer and succeeded in only 6.

(OUCH!)

 

[Denny Crane]

Those aren't right wing or religious sources.

 

[Denny Crane]

This one is interesting. It has numbers.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005738

How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data

The frequency with which scientists fabricate and falsify data, or commit other forms of scientific misconduct is a matter of controversy. Many surveys have asked scientists directly whether they have committed or know of a colleague who committed research misconduct, but their results appeared difficult to compare and synthesize. This is the first meta-analysis of these surveys.

...

A pooled weighted average of 1.97% (N = 7, 95%CI: 0.86–4.45) of scientists admitted to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once –a serious form of misconduct by any standard– and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behaviour of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% (N = 12, 95% CI: 9.91–19.72) for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices.

...

Considering that these surveys ask sensitive questions and have other limitations, it appears likely that this is a conservative estimate of the true prevalence of scientific misconduct.

(Also found at the nih.gov WWW site: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2685008/)

 

[MARIS61]

Psychology is not a science, it is an idle pastime constructed of conjectures, assumptions, gigantic leaps of logic, and personal desire for a specific pre-determined outcome designed solely to inflate the psychologist's feeling of importance among his/her peers.

 

[Denny Crane]

Psychology is not a science, it is an idle pastime constructed of conjectures, assumptions, gigantic leaps of logic, and personal desire for a specific pre-determined outcome designed solely to inflate the psychologist's feeling of importance among his/her peers.

What about cancer research?

 

[Denny Crane]

http://www.nature.com/news/us-vaccine-researcher-sentenced-to-prison-for-fraud-1.17660
US vaccine researcher sentenced to prison for fraud

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...s-bullied-keeping-quiet-claim-colleagues.html
'Scientists falsify data to get research published and whistleblowers are bullied into keeping quiet,' claim their own colleagues

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-behind-the-volkswagen-emissions-scandal/
The Science behind the Volkswagen Emissions Scandal

etc. etc. etc.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

What about cancer research?

Make sure if you or yours get cancer you ask for the non-science treatments.

 

[oldfisherman]

Also, the flaws that Denny finds are caused by his favorite economic system, the pursuit of money. If Bernie Sanders had his way, those economic incentives would be reduced. Denny, stop complaining about what you cause.

Sanders plan would also reduce the amount of money available for scientific research. Reduced research equals reduced progress for our country.

When corporate taxes get raised to the point the incentive is reduced too far, companies will stop spending what little money they have left on R&D. Or they will move to Canada or Mexico where corporate taxes are already much less. You and Bernie just killed the future for our grandkids.

On the bright side, Bernie’s plan will pay for our grandkids to learn how to communicate in Chinese, who will eventually own the USA under Bernie’s plan.

The only way for our country to stay ahead of the rest of the world and China is to increase the incentive to do more scientific research, not reduce the incentive to conduct research.


Yes, the politics involved in funding research can cause corruption; also much of the funding from sources with agendas often results in less than optimum results due to restrictions placed on the researcher to acquire the grants.

The real problem is the politics within the system, not the scientists trying make a positive impact. Reducing the incentive to fund research will only cause more corruption, not less.

 

[SlyPokerDog]

Make sure if you or yours get cancer you ask for the non-science treatments.

 

[jlprk]

Okay Denny, I give up. I'm ready to make a deal with you. Create regulations to ensure truth and objectivity in science...and rich people, government, religion, media, prosecutors and the legal system...I'll just have to eat my losses.

 

[Denny Crane]

Okay Denny, I give up. I'm ready to make a deal with you. Create regulations to ensure truth and objectivity in science...and rich people, government, religion, media, prosecutors and the legal system...I'll just have to eat my losses.

I don't think regulations are required. Throw them in jail when you catch them. And don't let the fox guard the hen house (don't let scientists review criminal actions by other scientists).

I do think skepticism is required. Not of science, but of the claims of scientists. There'a a lot of shamanism involved: "I'm the scientist so I know all this voodoo better than you and I say blah blah blah."

Find an accountant or realtor you can trust and give them guns.

 

[Denny Crane]

The funny thing is they poll scientists:

1) Do you falsify data? 2% say yes.
2) Do your colleagues falsify data? 74% say yes.

Huge disconnect.

 

[rasheedfan2005]

SCIENCE DAMNIT

Hey sly, why do these losers walk on 2 legs when they have 4 perfectly good legs?