Slashdot Mirror
Why Published Research Findings Are Often False
Hugh Pickens writes "Jonah Lehrer has an interesting article in the New Yorker reporting that all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings in science have started to look increasingly uncertain as they cannot be replicated. This phenomenon doesn't yet have an official name, but it's occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology and in the field of medicine, the phenomenon seems extremely widespread, affecting not only anti-psychotics but also therapies ranging from cardiac stents to Vitamin E and antidepressants. 'One of my mentors told me that my real mistake was trying to replicate my work,' says researcher Jonathon Schooler. 'He told me doing that was just setting myself up for disappointment.' For many scientists, the effect is especially troubling because of what it exposes about the scientific process. 'If replication is what separates the rigor of science from the squishiness of pseudoscience, where do we put all these rigorously validated findings that can no longer be proved?' writes Lehrer. 'Which results should we believe?' Francis Bacon, the early-modern philosopher and pioneer of the scientific method, once declared that experiments were essential, because they allowed us to 'put nature to the question' but it now appears that nature often gives us different answers. According to John Ioannidis, author of Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, the main problem is that too many researchers engage in what he calls 'significance chasing,' or finding ways to interpret the data so that it passes the statistical test of significance—the ninety-five-per-cent boundary invented by Ronald Fisher. 'The scientists are so eager to pass this magical test that they start playing around with the numbers, trying to find anything that seems worthy,'"
Are you serious?
I wasn't trying to draw a moral equivalency between the two lies, just trying to say that the motivation and form of the rationalization was in some regards similar. I didn't adequately explain what I meant by this though.
Many thousands of people are dead simply because a few people were trying to stay gainfully employed to support their families?
Not a few people, hundreds of thousands of people, and millions to a much lesser extent. The President and his cabinet make all their decisions based on information and advice passed up from the bureaucracies below them. Its not as if Bush and Cheney got together and cooked the whole conspiracy up by themselves. The CIA, the State Department, the Department of Defense, and lots of supporting organizations below those were all culpable. The President obviously bears a lot of responsibility, since he has the last word, but his power is nothing like what most demonizers of Obama or Bush appear to think it is. Consider Obama as an example. How much has his approach to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan really deviated from the direction Bush was heading? Afghanistan is not a bloody war as wars go, but in terms of ratio of civilian casualties to combatants, its bad. Had the US not gone to war in Iraq, there would still have been the problem of maintaining troops in the 'holy land' of Saudi Arabia, which was a motivation for the jihadis, and the never-ending Iraq no-flight-zone enforcement. The current situation is likely worse, but its not as if most critics of the war had a plan for addressing those other real issues. And Afghanistan would still be a mess.
The whole concept of 'weapons of mass destruction', which I'm sure Bush didn't invent, even though he approved it, was always bullshit. Chemical weapons just aren't at all in the same class as nuclear weapons, and its either stupid or dishonest to lump them together like they're the same. I supported the invasion of Iraq though, even though I was fully aware of this at the time and never cared about the WMD angle.
I am truly sorry if this comes off as
offensive as I think it does but if you believe there would be mass suffering from unemployment if we did not bomb the shit out of Iraq and that was the basis for the lies that resulted in many thousands losing their lives then you are seriously deluded.
I'm not offended by your honest perception of me, based on the information you have. I'm offended by the thinking that produced the wars. But if you think I'm deluded, I think you might not realize how big the military-industrial complex is, or how much it drives policy. If you're an engineer living in Maryland, Virginia, and parts of Ohio, there isn't much to do for a living besides the fear business. Its a huge, huge industry. The cold war went away, but now we have the war on terror, or homeland security, or whatever its being called now. And yes, if Obama were to shut it down to what I would consider to be a reasonable size, it would affect the unemployment figures to a politically disasterous extent.
As a U.S. citizen I found Clinton's actions and lies embarrassing, but the lies from Bush transferred billions, if not trillions, of public funds into the hands of a few and resulted in the deaths of many thousands of people.
It has been argued that Clinton had Serbia bombed and blew up an aspirin factory in Africa largely for domestic political reasons, including diverting attention from the sex scandal. I'll happily grant you that Bush was worse than Clinton though, since its arguably true, and it wasn't the point I was trying to make. I also thought that Gringrich's conduct, trying to impeach Clinton while simultaneously being in an affair with an intern himself, was also worse than what Clinton did.
Comparing lies about a blow job to lies resulting in debt and death is absurdity on a grand scale.