Positive Bias Could Erode Public Trust In Science

ananyo writes "Evidence is mounting that research is riddled with positive bias. Left unchecked, the problem could erode public trust, argues Dan Sarewitz, a science policy expert, in a comment piece in Nature. The piece cites a number of findings, including a 2005 paper by John Ioannidis that was one of the first to bring the problem to light ('Why Most Published Research Findings Are False'). More recently, researchers at Amgen were able to confirm the results of only six of 53 'landmark studies' in preclinical cancer research (interesting comments on publishing methodology). While the problem has been most evident in biomedical research, Sarewitz argues that systematic error is now prevalent in 'any field that seeks to predict the behavior of complex systems — economics, ecology, environmental science, epidemiology and so on.' 'Nothing will corrode public trust more than a creeping awareness that scientists are unable to live up to the standards that they have set for themselves,' he adds. Do Slashdot readers perceive positive bias to be a problem? And if so, what practical steps can be taken to put things right?"

Comments

Obvious Complex System

[Anonymous Coward]

Positive Bias is another word for Group Think. I guess it could also mean deception

There types of articles are moronic.

[atlasdropperofworlds]

There are "studies", and then there is observation, modelling, prediction, model testing which is this thing called science. "Studies" are bullshit. Scientific research functions as it should. I believe the OP's article is just a chunck of sensationalist BS, or utterly ignorant of what science is (and is not).

Re:There types of articles are moronic.

[fearofcarpet]

There are "studies", and then there is observation, modelling, prediction, model testing which is this thing called science. "Studies" are bullshit. Scientific research functions as it should. I believe the OP's article is just a chunck of sensationalist BS, or utterly ignorant of what science is (and is not).

That is not really what TFA is talking about. Daniel Sarewitz is re-phrasing a long-known problem with "studies," as you call them, which is that complex systems are--by definition--too complex to study as a whole. I am a physical scientist, which means that I typically make or measure something in a well-controlled experiment and then change variables in order to test a hypothesis. I can basically publish a paper that says "we tried really, really hard to find it, but it wasn't there." In the life sciences, they are trying to answer vague cause-effect questions like "does this drug affect a particular type of tumor more than a placebo." Thus researchers in those fields have to create models in which they can control variables. He gives the example of mouse models, which are obviously imperfect models for human physiology. How imperfect is the question. The creeping phenomenon that he is addressing is the tendency to relax the standards for what counts as positive evidence--and I'm grossly oversimplifying--by waving your hands around about how mouse models are imperfect, but that there is definitely "a statistically significant trend." The root cause is simply the ridiculous amount of pressure that life science researchers are under to publish, which requires results, because their methodology is standardized. Those poor bastards can spend eight years on a PhD project that goes nowhere or burn four years of their tenure clock figuring out that their experimental design was flawed. *Poof* no funding, no tenure, no degree, time to consider a new career. That sort of potential downside creates the sort of forced-optimism that TFA describes.

Re:Feelings are more important than science

[SirGarlon]

This is a dilemma that is really goes to the heart of the philosophy of government. If the majority is irrational, is it better to give them self-determination and accept they will make frequent bad decision, or have the enlightened few rule them and impose better-informed decisions upon them?

Hint: there is no correct answer. I am not an historian but as far as I know this debate between a pure democracy and some form of republic goes back to Rome and Greece.

What is kind of weird is that the two major parties in America have developed into philosophies that are kind of opposite their names: the Democrats favor the paternalistic nanny state governed by the enlightened few (what I would call a "republic"), and the Republicans favor the ignorant mob ("democracy").

As an aside, when America was a young nation many of her leaders advocated public education as a way to narrow the gap between the elite and the general population. That does not seem to be working out real well, though.

It happens in Slashdot too...

[elsurexiste]

I remember a few days ago someone submitted a story about piracy for "The Avengers" being low compared to potential profits from them. A few high-ranked comments were like "This is yet another proof that [insert common /. parlance here]". I saw very few comments that stated the most plausible reason: a camcorded action film, with crappy audio and a shaking image, can't compete against the real thing. I thought the same thing: confirmation bias.

People do it all the time. If something can somehow support their views (specially if they don't RTFA) they'll use it as yet more confirmation. "I still don't get why this piece of evidence is discarded by everyone else! They must be delusional or have bad intentions". For example, I imagine this article will be used as evidence for: lack of funding, falling standards in the US, the demise of education, lack of scientific reasoning (maybe they'll even extend it to scientists themselves), and other common /. utterances. I wonder how many of them will actually say what I found out after RTFA...

So, everyone is playing the same game, and scientists are no exception. But hey, that study has numbers on it. At least you can try to replicate the findings, if only the entry barrier wasn't so high: these tests are *hugely* expensive. More collaboration may be a good idea. Shared laurels are better than none, right?

P.S., a nice article on confirmation bias (and other goodies) here.

Re:Wow! I guess Science HAS become a religion

[BobMcD]

Saying 'science is a method' is like saying 'Christ was a Jew'. True, but it doesn't change what happened.

Science was an idea designed to seek empirical truth. To find things in such a way that those who followed after could find them again. Then people got a hold of it and started using it as a means to control one another.

Christ (even from the atheist point of view, so bear with me) had a simple message of love being service to your fellow man. Then people got a hold of it and we get monstrosities like the Crusades.

That's where the 'HAS become' part of the above phrase kicks in...

Re:Science comes when results are confirmed

[silentcoder]

There's a brilliant line on this in "The science of discworld" - I won't pretend I can quote it 100% accurately off the top of my head but it goes something like this:
"In the media you will often read that a certain scientist is trying to prove a theory. Maybe it's because journalists are trained in journalism and don't know how science works or maybe it's because journalists are trained in journalism and don't care how science works - but a good scientist never tries to prove her theory, a good scientist tries her best to disprove her theory before somebody else does it for her, failing to disprove it is what makes a theory trustworthy."

Re:Feelings are more important than science

[radtea]

During most of my career in pure physics I got negative results, which were always hell to publish. One of the things you'd hear a lot was, "Don't worry, a negative result is just as good as a positive result!"

At some point I started telling friends and colleagues who got positive results, "Don't worry, a positive result is just as good as a negative result!" Which is false, as proven by the fact that no one but me ever said it.

Negative results are hard to get published, but far more common than positive results. Furthermore, on the road to any positive result there are going to be lots of negatives: even today, working in an area where true positives are much more common, I try to put a section in every paper entitled something like "Things That Did Not Work So Well", because any experiment or computation or theory is likely to involve some dead ends that seemed like a good idea at the time, and if scientists don't report on them they will continue to seem like good ideas to people who haven't tried them, who will then waste effort on trying them, and fail to publish them when they don't work...

Re:Feelings are more important than science

[matthewv789]

Yup, that's the crux of the problem. While it may be true, as others say below, that publication bias against negative results occurs in all fields (such as physics) regardless of study funding, what we are seeing now is the influence of pharmaceutical industry funding in the clinical trials used for FDA approval of drugs (that is, a company funding the trial of its own drug).

Specifically, drug studies funded by pharmaceutical companies are four times more likely to show a positive benefit than ones funded by neutral sources. This is a problem because nearly two-thirds of clinical trials used for FDA approval are now industry-funded.