Isn’t that the point?
I've just read this article in New Scientist, a researcher shows most published scientific data is wrong.
Not necessarily wrong but inaccurate. And without any bad intention from the scientists.
So?
People have got this weird concept that everything worth printing is true.
Also common believe is the fact everything reviewed and approved by the most knowledgeable person(s) on a field is also true.
Thus everything reviewed and printed on a scientific magazine must be The Ultimate Truth.
This is not true and it really wasn’t supposed to be true in the first place. One of the main reasons people publish scientific data and findings is exactly for others to assess it, to try and replicate the results.
Basically the people remember that publishing results is good to establish precedents (who got the results first), to share the truth (makes no sense after the last sentence, does it?) and for a lot of scientists to show work (sad as it may be, sometimes people publish things that have no worth except for showing patrons results are being attained).
Science is basically trial and error. Some things are easily recognizable as errors, others are accepted as truth by the scientific community for long periods of time only to become discredited later.
Publishing should be seen mostly as a way to exchange information among peers and not as adding pieces to the tree of knowledge.
Not necessarily wrong but inaccurate. And without any bad intention from the scientists.
So?
People have got this weird concept that everything worth printing is true.
Also common believe is the fact everything reviewed and approved by the most knowledgeable person(s) on a field is also true.
Thus everything reviewed and printed on a scientific magazine must be The Ultimate Truth.
This is not true and it really wasn’t supposed to be true in the first place. One of the main reasons people publish scientific data and findings is exactly for others to assess it, to try and replicate the results.
Basically the people remember that publishing results is good to establish precedents (who got the results first), to share the truth (makes no sense after the last sentence, does it?) and for a lot of scientists to show work (sad as it may be, sometimes people publish things that have no worth except for showing patrons results are being attained).
Science is basically trial and error. Some things are easily recognizable as errors, others are accepted as truth by the scientific community for long periods of time only to become discredited later.
Publishing should be seen mostly as a way to exchange information among peers and not as adding pieces to the tree of knowledge.
posted by DCveR at 8:56 AM
10 Comments:
agreed.
scientists should be a little bit mmore like lawyers-- adding the word "allegedly" to all their statements...
allegedly the earth is X millions of years old... allegedly it will rain tomorrow... etc...
at least that way, their butts will be covered if anyone would like to sue them for misinformation... hehe
'Ordinary' folks, you see, don't know much about this. And when we do read, it's written as if it's The Ultimate Word. Perhaps scientists need to explain themselves better? :-)
ale: Scientists are proud. Hell, if one day I hit a major breakthrough I'll be proud also. So most times people just say this IS SO AND SO! Of course other scientists usually are wise enough to question it. The major issue here is not those who publish being wrong, the real issue is that those who read don't question enough.
GG: There are two kinds of scientific magazines: the science magazines where scientists publish their research, these are usually read by those in a specific area only; the science ‘digests’ like Scientific American, these are the ones most people read and usually the articles are written by journalists rather than scientists.
The ‘digests’ are usually more ‘down to earth’, but still the publishers want the common folk to buy it, so they usually present science as either the Brave New World or as the Doom Prediction Geek Squad.
The guy who wrote that paper meant the first kind of magazine. But you are right, science should be brought in simple terms to ordinary people, without mystification.
Absolutely true! Humans and human logic are inherently flawed. It’s amazing how our minds automatically want to trust what we read. And dangerous…
For the longest time I've had it in my mind that everything we know of science today will prove wrong in the long run (hence in my last comment I stated that I don't believe in Einstein)
It's just a matter of time...
bees knees: When I was in Scotland we had a technician who used to say the reason it is called research and not just search was because we never ever get things right at first trial. But some people prefer just to pick up a magazine and yet those are the ones who want the truth served to them.
viking: Denial of science is not the answer either. Even if something is proved not completely accurate in the long run it doesn't mean in the meanwhile it is not applicable. Science works mostly with models, these are simplifications of what happens in nature, these simplifications usually don’t take into account all parameters involved, yet they can be used to ‘predict’ what will happen, whether the end product of a chemical reaction or if a building will be able to stand. Thus it doesn’t always matter if ‘philosophically’ something is absolutely correct.
The word research conjures a philisophy exam from my Baccalauréat days...
The question was simply:"Le biologist passe, la grenouille reste." "The biologist moves on, the frog remains. Discuss."
I understood and discussed. (Got 17/20!)
However thorough research is, its subject remains well beyond the researcher has passed away.
Future researchers using more accurate tests will discover other stuff and life goes on!
Kermit remains!
cream: You are absolutely right. Theories and models are but that, representations of something far more complex. But... probably a particle physicist would tell you "maybe the frog will stay, but the muon won't!".
tacit: One of the things the said author studied was the lack of statistical significance on case reports on the Lancet. Taking his arguments on a reductio ad absurdum logic, rare diseases would never be studied because you never get a big number of subjects to study.
I'm not denying that science has its applications. The truth is, I love science. I love learning what makes things tick. I took four years of bio, physics, and chem courses beyond the requirements in college just because I had extra time.
One of these days though, someone will knock a glass of milk of the table and it will fall up to the ceiling.
That's all I meant. I believe with certainty that Einstein and the likes will be proven wrong (or wrong-ish) in the future. Whether that matters is another discussion...
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