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Registered Clinical Trials Make Positive Findings Vanish
schwit1 writes: The requirement that medical researchers register in detail the methods they intend to use in their clinical trials, both to record their data as well as document their outcomes, caused a significant drop in trials producing positive results. From Nature: "The study found that in a sample of 55 large trials testing heart-disease treatments, 57% of those published before 2000 reported positive effects from the treatments. But that figure plunged to just 8% in studies that were conducted after 2000. Study author Veronica Irvin, a health scientist at Oregon State University in Corvallis, says this suggests that registering clinical studies is leading to more rigorous research. Writing on his NeuroLogica Blog, neurologist Steven Novella of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, called the study "encouraging" but also "a bit frightening" because it casts doubt on previous positive results."
In other words, before they were required to document their methods, research into new drugs or treatments would prove the success of those drugs or treatment more than half the time. Once they had to document their research methods, however, the drugs or treatments being tested almost never worked. The article also reveals a failure of the medical research community to confirm their earlier positive results. It appears the medical research field has forgotten this basic tenet of science: A result has to be proven by a second independent study before you can take it seriously. Instead, they would do one study, get the results they wanted, and then declare success.
In other words, before they were required to document their methods, research into new drugs or treatments would prove the success of those drugs or treatment more than half the time. Once they had to document their research methods, however, the drugs or treatments being tested almost never worked. The article also reveals a failure of the medical research community to confirm their earlier positive results. It appears the medical research field has forgotten this basic tenet of science: A result has to be proven by a second independent study before you can take it seriously. Instead, they would do one study, get the results they wanted, and then declare success.
No, it is a pretty accurate summary of what is happening. You focus post-hoc on where you got a good result. Say for example you want to test a new anti-diabetes drug. Does the drug work in the general population? Well, data doesn't support that. So then you look at subgroups. Does your data show success in say just men or just women? What about black men? Black women? White women? Etc. This isn't the only serious problem, sometimes one can choose which statistical tests to do or how to compensate for complicating factors. If you have enough choices you can make anything looks successful.
...such rigor were required of Climate Science.
And now the onus is on your to back up what you say and prove that such rigor isn't required of climate science, or that the results are being significantly skewed because of their funding source. Just because what the science says does not match your gut instinct is not proof. Just because it could happen is not proof; we need evidence of inconvenient funding sources being omitted from research, or a meta study showing differing results depending on how the methodology is described.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that most climate scientists have done a good job of keeping corporate interests away from their research. If a scientist wanted to ensure future funding and be free of political interference, then they would take the easy path of downplaying global warming. No scientific research organisation has been defunded or disbanded because they gave evidence that contrary to man's impact on the environment.
when did academia get taken over by idiots? now that the gatekeepers are dumb we're fucked and all the smart people just go make money.
Well, actually, academia wasn't taken over by idiots. It was taken over - infiltrated - by smart people who were much more interested in money, prestige and power than in scientific truth.
That's the unfortunate fact about American culture. The USA was founded on the belief that all people (well, all white males of a certain age with property, but that's a small detail) should be treated alike. No titles of royalty, nobility or gentry. No class system. No special distinctions or honours.
The result, which became obvious very early on, was a society in which the only value was money. And money, it turns out, corrodes everything that is honest, decent and worthwhile. Now that culture is flooding the rest of the world - although some nations have done their valiant best to build dykes to keep it out.
"As the sociologist Georg Simmel wrote over a century ago, if you make money the center of your value system, then finally you have no value system, because money is not a value".
– Morris Berman, “The Moral Order”, Counterpunch 8-10 February 2013. http://www.counterpunch.org/20...
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
Yes because climate scientists are all trying to get rich by pandering to the Government? THis is the most ridiculous argument against climate change. The only "scientists" with a demonstrable financial interest are the corporate shills denying the evidence. Take a look at the history of the campaign to end leaded additives in gasoline. The kind of corporate-funded "research" trying to discredit the voices sounding the alarm against lead in fuels sound eerily similar to what is going on in the climate change debate today.
You're kidding, right? How often do we have to chant the mantra that climate is not the same as weather. The climate models may suggest that we will see in increase in precipitation, but that doesn't mean that in one specific location that there will be more rain. Also, there are other localised factors with droughts.
None of what was in that article is enough to make the claims that all the models have failed. I also don't understand the point of the article. If 97% of the scientists agree that man has a hand in global warming, it doesn't mean that they agree on all the details. Nor does it mean that any disagreement within the community is proof that the whole thing is a big fat lie.
BS. 'Big Oil' is a red-herring to divert attention away from 'Big Government', whose grants and funding tend to force researchers to become, in effect, lobbyists for political activism in order to 'pay the rent'.
And that is even more BS. There is no proof that there is any "Big Government" that is attempting to control the scientific community, especially when 50% of those people in power are actively against the idea of climate change. Whenever you hear of political interference with the scientific process, how often is it some left-wing conspiracy to force the hand of scientists compared with conservatives attempting to shut down institutions that do research into climate change? Where is the evidence of this giant conspiracy, other than far-right pundits speculating as if it was fact?