Just like the idea of democracy presumes an informed and virtuous citizenry, the idea of science as a self-correcting practice presumes that a certain kind of person is more likely to become a scientist: someone dedicated (to a greater or lesser degree) to the pursuit of true knowledge. That is why it’s so important to realize that science is a social practice, done by a community of people, not an autonomous machine inexorably spinning the flax of data into the gold of truth. Like any group of people, scientists are susceptible to economic, cultural, and social forces, which affect their choice of research topics, methods, and publication venues etc etc.
Because of this, it’s very important to incentivize (financially, culturally, socially, normatively) truth-seeking amongst scientists, and strongly disincentivize political or social partisanship. Similarly, we should not tolerate the social script of scientists as “prophet-priests”, which does not conduce towards truth seeking for its own sake (I say this as a very religious person myself!).
I understand the point being made with the random walk analogy, but I believe (unless my memory fails me) that a random walk doesn’t lead you back to your starting point in the long run, or even stay in the vicinity of the starting point on average. Because if it did, it wouldn’t be random. So if we use random walk as an analogy for scientific investigations, it casts doubt on the idea that enough studies will eventually self-correct to a reliable answer.
I have made it a point of emphasis in my reading of science related publications to perform 'citation analysis'. I look for those citations that are central to the paper's conclusions or inferences and dig into them. Too often I find that (as in your examples) the citations say something less - or categorically different - than claimed by the author(s). Your highlighting this issue is important and welcome!
I love science, but I don’t trust scientists. This wasn’t always the case, but some of the nuttiest claims I’ve heard come from scientists. For instance, we were told by a well-known scientist that protesting against COVID-19 lockdowns was a threat to public health. When asked if Black Lives Matter protesters were also a threat to public health, that same person said no - these protests were good for public health because racism is a worse health threat than even COVID. Most of everything public health said about the pandemic was BS. However, I see the same issues in all areas of healthcare. Cochrane reviews indicate that fewer than 10% of common medical treatments are supported by high-quality evidence. The biggest problem I see isn’t methodology, it’s integrity. Science has been perverted by money, politics, ideology, and ego. It’s going to be very difficult to fix these.
Great information on science. Simple summary is that most of the "scientific errors" for many reasons were not truly based on scientific methods. Significant revelation that oversight is performed by part time people who lack the knowledge and experience to perform that duty.
I really enjoyed this. I've never really bought the idea that science is self-correcting, at least in so far it will just happen, just as the universe proceeds to entropy. Perhaps over lengthy time periods. I almost wonder whether self-correcting is the wrong term and we need something more aspirational, like driven-correcting. Well that's the best I can come up with on limited coffee.
Hey, Guys - As long as we have people abusing the methods of science to exonerate widespread exposures as their singular goal, and as long as well allow them to label their fraud as science, science will have a terrible, well-earned reputation. We need to hold our colleagues to the proper standards we learned in graduate school. It's simple. #BeBrave https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/yet-another-epidemiological-hatchet
Excellent article! One general cause of the problem is not adhering to principles of measurement, experimental design, and analysis. If we could better teach core principles I think researchers would do better research. For the statistics part I made an attempt of listing principles at https://fharrell.com/post/principles (input would be appreciated). On another dimension the famous NIH-HCI statistician-epidemiologist Nathan Mantel once quipped “There’s nothing wrong with bad cancer research that a little lack of funding woudn’t fix.”.
And then there is the politically motivated climate science graveyrtrain.
...the number of articles indexed under "climate change" in the Web of Science Core Collection increased from an annual average of almost 16,000 between 2014 and 2018 to over 33,000 annually between 2019 and 2023...
One wonders how much of this is replicatable, and how is it collated and curated with any meaningful utility?
Great read! Curious your thoughts on role of centralization & politicization of science with this compelling concept of error propagation. How independent are most scientists in their thinking? What are the tradeoffs of institutionalizing research efforts? How do we know when an institution needs error correction?
Science is rigor and if you do it in Bayesian fashion you're guaranteed to always approach truth.
Doug Altman wrote this in 1994 in a BMJ, "As the system encourages poor research it is the system that should be changed.
We need less research, better research, and research done for the right reasons.
Abandoning using the number of publications as a measure of ability would be a start."
Even after 20 years, little has changed!
Amyloid Beta and alzheimers anyone?
Feeding their families is a scientist's primary concern.
Everything else is way down the list.
What an excellent article.
Just like the idea of democracy presumes an informed and virtuous citizenry, the idea of science as a self-correcting practice presumes that a certain kind of person is more likely to become a scientist: someone dedicated (to a greater or lesser degree) to the pursuit of true knowledge. That is why it’s so important to realize that science is a social practice, done by a community of people, not an autonomous machine inexorably spinning the flax of data into the gold of truth. Like any group of people, scientists are susceptible to economic, cultural, and social forces, which affect their choice of research topics, methods, and publication venues etc etc.
Because of this, it’s very important to incentivize (financially, culturally, socially, normatively) truth-seeking amongst scientists, and strongly disincentivize political or social partisanship. Similarly, we should not tolerate the social script of scientists as “prophet-priests”, which does not conduce towards truth seeking for its own sake (I say this as a very religious person myself!).
I understand the point being made with the random walk analogy, but I believe (unless my memory fails me) that a random walk doesn’t lead you back to your starting point in the long run, or even stay in the vicinity of the starting point on average. Because if it did, it wouldn’t be random. So if we use random walk as an analogy for scientific investigations, it casts doubt on the idea that enough studies will eventually self-correct to a reliable answer.
Great analysis. Therefore happy now also to be a paid subscriber.
Q: I'd like to see older 'subscriber only' posts. Can you unlock them?
You should be able to. Please open a recent "Don't be Fooled" Wednesday video to check.
Thnx. 🤔 I thought the same. And like to learn. So I did check. See images for the result.
It seems my paid subscription is somewhere stuck? See images. I can’t open paid episodes - But I can add comments as paid subscriber.
I have made it a point of emphasis in my reading of science related publications to perform 'citation analysis'. I look for those citations that are central to the paper's conclusions or inferences and dig into them. Too often I find that (as in your examples) the citations say something less - or categorically different - than claimed by the author(s). Your highlighting this issue is important and welcome!
I love science, but I don’t trust scientists. This wasn’t always the case, but some of the nuttiest claims I’ve heard come from scientists. For instance, we were told by a well-known scientist that protesting against COVID-19 lockdowns was a threat to public health. When asked if Black Lives Matter protesters were also a threat to public health, that same person said no - these protests were good for public health because racism is a worse health threat than even COVID. Most of everything public health said about the pandemic was BS. However, I see the same issues in all areas of healthcare. Cochrane reviews indicate that fewer than 10% of common medical treatments are supported by high-quality evidence. The biggest problem I see isn’t methodology, it’s integrity. Science has been perverted by money, politics, ideology, and ego. It’s going to be very difficult to fix these.
Great information on science. Simple summary is that most of the "scientific errors" for many reasons were not truly based on scientific methods. Significant revelation that oversight is performed by part time people who lack the knowledge and experience to perform that duty.
I really enjoyed this. I've never really bought the idea that science is self-correcting, at least in so far it will just happen, just as the universe proceeds to entropy. Perhaps over lengthy time periods. I almost wonder whether self-correcting is the wrong term and we need something more aspirational, like driven-correcting. Well that's the best I can come up with on limited coffee.
Hey, Guys - As long as we have people abusing the methods of science to exonerate widespread exposures as their singular goal, and as long as well allow them to label their fraud as science, science will have a terrible, well-earned reputation. We need to hold our colleagues to the proper standards we learned in graduate school. It's simple. #BeBrave https://popularrationalism.substack.com/p/yet-another-epidemiological-hatchet
Excellent article! One general cause of the problem is not adhering to principles of measurement, experimental design, and analysis. If we could better teach core principles I think researchers would do better research. For the statistics part I made an attempt of listing principles at https://fharrell.com/post/principles (input would be appreciated). On another dimension the famous NIH-HCI statistician-epidemiologist Nathan Mantel once quipped “There’s nothing wrong with bad cancer research that a little lack of funding woudn’t fix.”.
Now do "climate science."
And then there is the politically motivated climate science graveyrtrain.
...the number of articles indexed under "climate change" in the Web of Science Core Collection increased from an annual average of almost 16,000 between 2014 and 2018 to over 33,000 annually between 2019 and 2023...
One wonders how much of this is replicatable, and how is it collated and curated with any meaningful utility?
Geez, I thought with the computer age and A/i there would be no more errors. What happened is that they are compounded at light speed.
Great read! Curious your thoughts on role of centralization & politicization of science with this compelling concept of error propagation. How independent are most scientists in their thinking? What are the tradeoffs of institutionalizing research efforts? How do we know when an institution needs error correction?
Richard Feynman spoke about this in a famous lecture
https://speakola.com/grad/richard-feynman-caltech-1974