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Why We Have So Much "Duh" Science
Hugh Pickens writes "Eryn Brown writes in the LA Times that accounts of 'duh' research abound as studies show that driving ability worsens in people with early Alzheimer's disease, that women who get epidurals experience less pain during childbirth than women who don't, that young men who are obese have lower odds of getting married than thinner peers, and that making exercise more fun might improve fitness among teens. But there's more to duh research than meets the eye writes Brown as experts say they have to prove the obvious again and again to influence perceptions and policy. 'Think about the number of studies that had to be published for people to realize smoking is bad for you,' says Ronald J. Iannotti, a psychologist at the National Institutes of Health. 'There are some subjects where it seems you can never publish enough.' Kyle Stanford, a professor of the philosophy of science at UC Irvine, thinks the professionalization of science has led researchers — who must win grants to pay their bills — to ask timid questions and research that hews to established theories is more likely to be funded, even if it contributes little to knowledge. Perhaps most important, sometimes a study that seems poised to affirm the conventional wisdom produces a surprise. 'Many have taken the value of popular programs like DARE — in which police warn kids about the dangers of drug use — as an article of faith,' writes Brown. 'But Dennis Rosenbaum of the University of Illinois at Chicago and other researchers have shown that the program has been ineffective and may even increase drug use in some cases.'"
duh
The biggest reason to run "duh" studies is because you really do have to test the obvious. If you assume something is true without testing it, any theory you build on that assumption is on shaky ground. Showing that your basic assumptions is correct is a vital step before you can do anything more complicate.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Sometimes that can be useful to have a huge mass of data to fall back on. When some study comes out that says something unexpected, then you have a bunch of data to act as a buffer so that people have some context, because most people think the truth is the whatever study the media misrepresented last, not the body of evidence as a whole. The more info you've got, the harder it is to deny something when its convenient. It might be a waste of time if people were rational creatures, but if something is being done to add to a body of evidence that people are still questioning, then maybe it isn't such a waste after all. And I suppose having some study to back your case if you want to make a policy change or legal claim too, rather than just rely on what should be common sense, for example, saying that studies show tired people preform poorly is better than just saying that you're tired and have a hard time working when you're tired.
Real science is quantitative analysis of, for example, exactly how much worse drivers get with age. The specific mechanics of what things they get worse at, etc.
The media takes that, and takes the conclusion: they get worse with age/disease, and leave out the details. The details are for, well, people who actually build cars, or systems or the like. The researcher usually isn't trying to prove a 'duh' point, they're trying to quantify a 'duh' point.
Beautiful women are distracting. Ok. By how much? How do you quantify that? How do you study that? If the presence of beautiful women reduce men's productivity by 0.5% that's very different than 25% - the trend, and effect, may be the same (assuming you can quantify to that scale) to the media. But one is good science, one isn't (and no, you can't even express good science in 2 sentences).
Sometimes you need to state the obvious over and over again because it doesn't take much for a person to internalize a viewpoint that makes the obvious non-obvious. Like Lewis Caroll pointed out, 3 times seems to be enough.
As simple examples, Snopes take on aspartame causing cancer & tumors and as an ant poison The FDA still ends up being inundated with this claim so many times a year that they end up retesting, just to humor the population.
As a more loaded example, check out the belief systems of anyone who claims they are strongly religious. Or Truthers. Or Birthers.
Sadly, it appears that the majority of the population needs to be told what is obvious over and over.
I took Psychology at University, where it seems they were particularly sensitive to the accusation. My instructor read a series of twenty-five research results that should have been obvious before experimenting. Many of them did seem obvious. Then she stated that she had just lied to us. All twenty-five experiments actually found the opposite. Then she read them with the true results, and, surely enough, they did sound obvious that way as well.
In fact, about six to eight did sound dodgy the first way, but that still left far too many.
~Loyal
From TFA:
'Think about the number of studies that had to be published for people to realize smoking is bad for you,' says Ronald J. Iannotti, a psychologist at the National Institutes of Health. 'There are some subjects where it seems you can never publish enough.'
This seems like a bad example, because it's not really "duh science" when you have an entire industry using its combined resources to silence your research. The tobacco industry spent decades flooding the journals with studies aimed at proving that smoking was harmless, or even beneficial. What's more, the tobacco industry was uniquely situated to get those results repeated in the press, while the studies that repeated the finding that smoking was harmful ended up sounding like "duh science" and went unreported. (If smoking is still bad for you, it's not news.)
In many cases, the real problem is not the science, or the journals, but how to communicate the science to the lay public, who can only really comprehend what's actually told to them. If you can't guarantee that anybody will ever hear about your findings, the only way might be to repeat them over and over, as many times as you can -- because that's what industry will do.
Breakfast served all day!
Most "Duh" research isn't "Duh" at all. It only sounds that way because of the atrocious state of science reporting in the popular press. Challenging, technical research has to be translated into terms regular folks can understand, and that often means making ridiculous comparisons or analogies, or just giving an explanation of the research so dumbed down that the researchers themselves would hardly recognize it.
Another contributing factor is the political motivations of people with large audiences who don't know better. For example, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) released a "report" making fun of a number of studies supposedly representing wasting spending on stupid research. It turns out his examples are actually pretty nuanced and important after all--hardly "duh" science.
The general population just isn't equipped to judge which research is important and worth spending money on. That is exactly why we have organizations like the NSF to evaluate grant proposals for us.
Of course. Scientist are positively rolling in cash. That's after all the whole reason why they are doing science. They could do an honest job for less money and go into banking. But no, it is all about the grants.
Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
The "duh" in the population are those who believe that "duh" science is "duh" though. More often than not the outcome of a study is the expected results. When it's not, however, it challenges our preconceptions and we have to adjust to the new facts (or do another study ;).
Just because our intention tells us that something works a certain way it doesn't mean we can accept this as a scientific fact. This is a strength of the scientific method, rather than a weakness.
Well, the third castle fell over, burned down, and sank into the swamp.
I drank what? -- Socrates
It's obvious the Earth is flat, why waste Isabell's gold "proving" someone can sail West and end up back home from the East? Duh.
It's obvious that heavier objects fall faster than lighter ones, that guy in Pisa must be pulling a political stunt to get tax credits or something. Duh.
It's obvious that Saddam has secret nukes, who needs UN institutional opinions? Duh.
It's obvious that taxes cause job losses, cell phones cause cancer, and the world ended two Saturdays ago except for you heathen boogers, and everything worth inventing was already discovered years ago. Let's close the patent office. Duh.
Cross-discipline value judgements are a slippery slope. Science is not Technology, and we techies look pretty ridiculous by other people's criteria if you haven't noticed already.
"News for Nerds" indeed.
Duh.
You've given a perfect example of the "duh" principle. By oversimplifying an already simplistic analysis, you've managed to pervert the original meaning beyond recognition.
This is why it's so important to RTFA. You say that "arthroscopic knee surgery, a very common procedure, doesn't actually help." That's not, however, what the article says.
The article cites two studies which report that certain specific arthroscopic procedures are not effective in treating osteoarthritis. The article then goes on to equate the specific procedures with arthroscopy in general, and osteoarthritis (a specific condition) with knee pain (a general symptom). The original research may be impeccable, but the article has summarized it falsely.
Still, you've managed to make matters even worse. Thanks to your claim, arthroscopic knee surgery has been generalized as useless. Taking this foolishness to the next level, no doubt someone now is going to read your comment, turn to his wife and say. "Honey, it says here that all doctors are quacks. See, I knew it all along."
The reason why arthroscopic surgery has become so commonplace is because it's an excellent refinement on traditional surgical procedure. If an open procedure was traditionally effective (take appendectomy for example) and it can be done arthroscopically, then it will still be as effective but will tend to be less invasive, have a lower risk of infection, and result in shorter hospitalization and faster recovery time. Knee surgery is absolutely not an exception.
At least you linked to the article you misrepresented, which in turn cited the research it misrepresented. Still, just don't do that. You could hurt somebody.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
Hindsight is wonderful.
But 50 years ago, people didn't know how dangerous cigarettes were. They "sort of" knew that cigarettes were bad for your health, but they didn't appreciate *how dangerous* they were. For example, they didn't know that lung cancer is almost always fatal (John Wayne unusually had lung cancer and survived). People had the idea that if they did get lung cancer, they would get it cured. They didn't know about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which kills off a *lot* of smokers, more than lung cancer itself. The increase in heart disease and stroke also kills more smokers than lung cancer.
Probably the first definitive study was the Surgeon General's 1964 report, and in response, the cigarette industry went into overdrive to convince their customers -- particularly young teenagers who were just starting out -- that the Surgeon General's report was wrong, that cigarettes really weren't that harmful, that doctors smoked cigarettes and recommended different brands (Camels, Chesterfields, whatever) to their patients.
Since cigarettes were one of the major advertisers for most newspapers and magazines (with a few notable exceptions like Good Housekeeping and the Readers Digest), you could read articles about every cancer except lung cancer. Some magazines commissioned stories "debunking" the Surgeon General's report, to suck up to their cigarette company advertisers.
The cigarette industry kept coming up with new lies, and each lie required a well-designed study to refute it.
One of the big debates was about whether nicotine was addicting, or whether smokers could stop whenever they felt like it. Teenagers thought they could start smoking for a while to be cool, and then stop later on when they felt like it. The tobacco executives literally swore under oath that nicotine wasn't addictive. It took a couple of "duh" studies to prove they were lying.
Only recently we've had studies of personal networks that showed *why* people start smoking. Basically they follow the lead of certain friends. That may sound like a "duh" study but the details weren't obvious.
Watch out who you're calling jackass, unless you want to demonstrate the Dunning-Kruger effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect