Is Science Bullshit?

[Karl12]

Is literally everyone full of shit these days?



Including 'science'?






Vid






Examinations Of Utter Corruption In Science:

Here’s a dirty little science secret: If you measure a large number of things about a small number of people, you are almost guaranteed to get a ‘statistically significant’ result. Our study included 18 different measurements—weight, cholesterol, sodium, blood protein levels, sleep quality, well-being, etc.—from 15 people. (One subject was dropped.) That study design is a recipe for false positives.”

Johannes Bohannon



Most science funding comes from governments or corporations with vested interests
: “p-hacking” or “data dredging.”


false results, fake data, bias, manipulation and fraud in science that continues to this day.

John Ioannidis, a physician, researcher and writer at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, rocked the scientific community with his landmark paper “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” The 2005



LINK



Myth of reproducibility in science
Apparemtly another aspect of crisis is the widespread inability to reproduce experimental results

More than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments


In the opening years of this decade, the Center for Open Science led a team of 240 volunteer researchers in a quest to reproduce the results of 100 psychological experiments. These experiments had all been published in three of the most prestigious psychology journals. The results of this attempt to replicate these experiments, published in 2015 in a paper on “Estimating the Reproducibility of Psychological Science,” were abysmal. Only 39 of the experimental results could be reproduced.

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In 2011, Nature published a paper showing that researchers were only able to reproduce between 20 and 25 per cent of 67 published preclinical drug studies. They published another paper the next year with an even worse result: researchers could only reproduce six of a total of 53 “landmark” cancer studies. That’s a reproducibility rate of 11%

These studies alone are persuasive, but the cherry on top came in May 2016 when Nature published the results of a survey of over 1,500 scientists finding fully 70% of them had tried and failed to reproduce published experimental results at some point. The poll covered researchers from a range of disciplines, from physicists and chemists to earth and environmental scientists to medical researchers and assorted others.

Apparently fraud, fabrication and 'wilful distortion of results' is also off the charts (paper) and there's a good article below from the FT

Manipulation of research remains widespread.


Link





Even if all [Tessier-Lavigne’s papers] were retracted, it would be a spit in the ocean of the amount of actual misconduct taking place,”

This literally happens every day. We track 5,000 retractions a year,” he added said Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Retraction Watch, which flags research papers withdrawn from academic publications.



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A study published in 2012 found that fraud or suspected fraud was responsible for 43% of scientific paper retractions, by far the single leading cause of retraction.

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Yes.

So, in short: Yes, there is a Replication Crisis in science. And yes, it is caused by a Crisis of Fraud. And yes, the fraud is motivated by a Crisis of Publication. And yes, thyes.ose crises are further compounded by a Crisis of Peer Review.

The simplest answer is the one that most fundamentally shakes the widespread belief that scientists are disinterested truthseekers who would never dream of publishing a false result or deliberately mislead others.

Incidentally there's some pretty daming info at the link World Health Organization

influencing the decisions of the WHO and what is the role of pharmaceutical industry there. 

'Simpsonwood” was the transcripts of a secret meeting that was held between CDC and 75 representatives of the vaccine industry in which they reviewed a report that CDC had

vaccine industry to gin up these four phony European studies that are done by vaccine industry employees, funded by the vaccine industry and published in the American Academy of Pediatrics magazine, which receives 80% of its revenue from the vaccine industry

Video

Please examine the links before posting a kneejerk reaction.

[ArMaP]

Please examine the links before posting a kneejerk reaction.

I didn't even read all of your post, but I wanted to say that scientists are like everyone else, so it's natural that some of them are corrupt, some are full of shit, some are not very bright and some just want to do their work.

Attacking millions because of what a few do is not right, right?

[Lynyrd Skynyrd]

Scientific reporting may be corrupted, but the scientific method is still valid. One example of bad science in your post is psychology studies, which may not be science at all. Look at all the progress brought to us by science. Was that bullshit?

[Maxmars]

As you might imagine, I can't be attractively brief in my response to this... it's a failing of mine...

A few criticisms...

Opening with the CON:

The author begins with an account of a researcher who 'convinced' many that "something" was "desirable," namely, that eating chocolate contributes to weight loss. 

In pursuit of that goal, he crafted a fake website and called it the product of an "Institute" with a scientific sounding name... providing all manner of website content to 'bolster" the image of legitimacy.

The result could have been easily expected from this falsehood about a sweet - and often sought after - confectionary ingredient.

Then he exposed that it was - as the author characterizes it - "a joke."

The researcher was attempting to quantify just how easily people are misled in scientific reporting... but failed to focus on where exactly the problem is manifesting.

There is a kind of hypocritical (and maybe even base) fraud here.  What he measures is the result of his deception, and how it affected the media... but he reports it as a 'flaw' in common understanding of the scientific information consumer, rather than media, which is solely for the sake of "commerce."

What he actually showed was that lying, is more effective when a so-called report 'contains' the lie.

Reproducibility

Again, it seems unclear why it isn't understood that "science" as he intimated with the video title, is not the problem... the problem is in the media (publication;) science publication was never to be simply, "Here's my paper... print it."  But for reasons (again of commerce) it has generally become so, as the initial example so readily demonstrates.  Institutions, to hail back to the earlier example, are now most frequently effectively corporate fronts... AP-level marketing tools.  They are the the one's "producing" the most "exciting" 'science news.'  So much so that they frequently "publish" themselves.

It is not a wonder that pretty much half of published results are not reproducible?  Why would that EVER be a marketeers concern?  The "con-men" of the world are not motivated to nullify their own claims. But commerce compels them to publish claims as truth anyway.

This is not caused by "science"... it's caused by "selling" scientific output as a "commercial product."

For many people, irreproducibility implies fraud... While fraudulent works will always be a potential reality in the world of science reporting, that would also imply that the fraud leads to a desired end either the scientist, or the publisher, is directly seeking.  Enter the fog of commerce... and it's new dalliance's into the "anti-news market."

Knowing what all they know... you will be very hard-pressed to find a single published scientist who will say they don't trust scientific papers.  I would be surprised if any who did weren't ultimately ostracized, denied support, or even professionally punished for making such an admission...  Does anyone really wonder why?

Why does fraud constitute the leading cause (43%) of 'scientific paper retraction' ("retraction" meaning withdrawal after official publication?)  Are nearly HALF of all scientists "intentional frauds?"

Even so, the problem remains NOT to be of "science"... it remains in the publishing of science... by publishers... a "paid" concern.  Seeing any hints there?... I am.

The video author mockingly tells us "so much for scientists as disinterested truth-tellers."  I find this posture to be wrong-minded.  

Scientist, true scientists, are concerned with the measuring and reporting of reality... everything else is 'external.'  

Scientist can be wrong in their assessments, through error, or personal bias towards an outcome... at best.  Intent to defraud is just a worst-case bias, but without tacit support, it withers on the vine.  "Publishers" sell that tacit support because it is zero-risk for them...  maybe that should change.

How much science refers to (and builds itself upon) prior publications... and where might that lead?

[jaded]

Science is no different now than any other venture. Buyer Beware.

The corporatization of all fields of science is not different than all others like media, govt agencies ect. The onus is on us as individuals to sort the wheat from the chaff. No sense railing against it. (shrugging)

Correct protocols, long standing methodology, science papers are all available for us to research so it's now much harder to pull the wool over our eyes if we are willing to go that extra mile. In fact individual responsibility demands it, as we are responsible for our own welfare in this world. 

THAT knee-jerk response despatched with, laughing!!

Caution is always advised, however knowing older standards of the minimum number of individuals needed for anything in trials to be valid, looking at the company & history of a new drug or treatment, reading the science papers, investigating everything may suck, be time consuming, but it's necessary. 

When C-19 hit I was accidentally pissed enough to google how long long it takes to get a vaccine to market. Turns out 10yrs was the norm. On solid ground with that I did more research. You all know the rest of that story. 

My standard response to any Doctor is don't bother prescribing me anything newer than 1960, or "You take one an if nothing bad happens to you I'll try it!" In reality Doc's just can't keep up with medical literature, are too young to remember epic medical failures, worse just no nutritional knowledge or understanding in the finer points of biological reactions. (read misfires) 

Biofilm kills more people than cancer. Be nice if more internists knew about it.
Nutritional issues and lack of biological availability of vitamins wouldn't kill them either. No sense kavetching about it. You educate the Docs as best you can. You educate yourself as best you can. The overall crap medical system will sort itself out eventually. 
It's our job to live till then.
(huge smiles!!)

[rickymouse]

Science is mostly used to create products to make money for the people doing the research and development.  It is used against us more than for us.  We have become too dependent on technology and things science has created now.

They pay scientists lots of money to do research, yet science created the mess our environment is in.  I have my doubts that science can fix the problems that science created.  Yes, people desiring money are the ones misusing what science discovers, it is not the research itself that is bad but the interpretations of the research are made using opinion or beliefs most times.  Real research is vague and open, kind of boring reading it but I like reading the actual research notes because often the conclusions or summary is not relative or pertinent lots of times.