And next on Fox News, we will hear from the experts both sides of the issue, the researchers and the internet jackass.
“the jackass researchers and the internet expert”
Well, sometimes there’s another step missing just before the Bullshit: “Use the small, narrow findings to inform a greater narrative beyond the data’s scope”
I love how all the comments in this thread are like “yeah but it is bullshit tho!”
Well I’d like to think I’m not! I wanted to point to an actually dubious thing where we might call into question a study, so we could still respect the work being done while validating the importance of keeping standards in research.
You’re right though that it’s disappointing how many responses seem to address only the flaws in modern science and not acknowledge the strength of the scientific process. I think a big part of it does come down to how scientific findings are interpreted and reported to the public, and even further an all-too-human misunderstanding of epistemic limitations. Our cultures should spend more time educating people about the limits of knowledge and fact, how they are constrained by other flawed systems, etc. That would be a half-decent start, if we could only fix the entire reporting problem too.
Thank you for pointing this out.
Hasn’t read the article methods but still decided to comment: cOrReLaTiOn dOeSn’t eQuAl cAuSaTiOn
All my literal this
this is the way doggo puppers, hecking upboats to the left
Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there’.
There’s a generation of internet debate guys who seem convinced that correlation disproves causation
herp doesn’t imply derp
Yeah but also just publishing correlation is a shitty practice. That’s supposed to be a hint to look deeper, not the end conclusion.
guy on lemmy “this was already obvious, why don’t they try studying something actually useful”
This, but to some degree, unironically. If studies aren’t reproducible (or deemed worthy of reproduction) then there’s definitely a disconnect between the folks handing out research assignments and the folks engineering applicable solutions to scientific problems.
That goes two ways. You could be a guy who successfully formulates a mathematical model to support the existence of Neutrinos and face a funding board that has no interest in building a LHC. That’s arguably a problem of malinvestment within the scientific community. Or you could be a guy who successfully formulates a mathematical model for a new kind of mouse trap that’s 10% less efficient than traditional mouse traps. That’s more of a university research assignment problem. Or you could have a researcher who claims he’s the only one who can do a particular thing, because he’s got the magic touch. If the research is unfalsifiable by design, that’s an entirely new kind of problem.
i think you bring up valid instances where this is fair.
but i think i’m speaking to the very obvious and important ones that are worthy of reproduction. like i’ve seen articles be like “these corporations are responsible for 99% of climate change” or something
and the comments will be like “duh we knew that”
which true, but not empirically. being able to cite data from actual research from professionals is so valuable and far better than anecdotes or guesses. edit: and also informs meaningful policy.
that said, is there some way for a layperson like me to identify when research is not deemed worthy of reproduction? or is it a lost cause
Anything could have enough significance to warrant further study. If it has societal implications or environmental concerns, it could be deemed worthy. I’ve read some guidelines on how to read scientific papers, but don’t have the link on me. The scientists are supposed to list their biases, but it’s kind of on the honor system, I think.
which true, but not empirically. being able to cite data from actual research from professionals is so valuable and far better than anecdotes or guesses.
While its certainly helpful to get the raw numbers down on paper, you don’t need a filing cabinet full of documents to recognize that fossil fuel consuming electricity producers and airliners and manufacturing centers the but-for cause of climate change. Fossil Fuel goes in. Carbon emissions come out.
We can definitely use a more meticulous bit of R&D to find exactly where and when these emissions peak, in order to reduce total emissions without sacrificing an abundance of economic productivity. But “did you know burning the fuel makes the pollution?” isn’t a shocking conclusion.
Where things get annoying (and where in-depth research genuinely comes in handy) is in the functional policy that follows this recognition. Once you know a widget factory in China is 10x less efficient than its counterpart in the US, you can formulate a trade law to limit imports contingent on reform. But as soon as you start impacting some retailer’s bottom line, you get some screamer ad “Congressman Greenpeace Wants To Make Your Widgets 10x as Expensive to Save The Stupid Spotted Owl! In Truth it is the Spotted Owl that produces all the emissions! Kill the Spotted Owl!” financed by the worst people you know.
And that’s when you get some facebook troll group (or marketing team or bot army) spamming “Spotted Owl Farts Killed The Environment While Joe Brandon Clapped!!!” And then it becomes orthodoxy in the denialist community such that you’ve got Sunday Morning talk shows with people arguing over Spotted Owl emissions rather than trade law.
is there some way for a layperson like me to identify when research is not deemed worthy of reproduction?
Not practically, no. As soon as you’ve got that kind of info, you’re no longer a lay person.
At some level, you need a network of trust with someone who does know and does have a serious take on this. And that network is going to be informed by who you already trust and listen to. And that’s going to be informed by who they trust and listen to.
That’s the real terror of the modern mass media system. We’ve corrupted so much of our information stream that its genuinely hard to find a serious media venue that’s not been gobbled up by a for-profit marketing firm.
So what’s the harm of doing research on subjects with “obvious” no-surprise conclusions? The basic reality that it provides foundation for meaningful policy should be enough to justify it, no?
You kind of lost me with your spotted owl hypothetical? Not disagreeing I just genuinely got lost there was a lot if layers to it lol.
And thanks for the details on identifying problematic research as a layperson. Good to know, even if it’s depressing.
Spot the Brit?
Not sure which other countries have 3y bachelor’s degrees and will let you do a PhD without a master’s degree and also have 3y doctorate degreesWhere do you need a Masters to attain a PhD? Honest question, I just never heard of it before.
My wife attained her MD/PhD from the University of Chicago/Pritzker and does not have a Masters. She’s on the MD/PhD committee for her university and they do not require anything other than a BS in the field of study.
With that said, it probably isn’t much of a stretch to just get a Masters in the way to a PhD.
Me? I’m depriving some poor village of its idiot. I have a BS and that’s it.
In the EU it’s usually like that. 3 years for a bachelor’s, 2 years for a master’s, only then you can start pursuing a phd.
I graduated in 2005, and back then we had a different system, where I did a single 5 year program for a computer science degree (engineering), that today is the equivalent of a master’s (diplom engineer). I could have continued to go for a dedicated master’s, another 2 years, but I got lazy.
In Germany you can officially start a phd program with a bachelor’s, and I assume it’s the same all over Europe, since the degrees are supposed to be compatible.
No one does it without a master’s, and no prof will accept you into a phd program without one, but theoretically on paper it’s not needed.This is true in Sweden. Though by the 5 year program you might be Swedish too. // Got a civilingenjörsexamen
All of continental europe?
I get that this is the Internet.
But how about this one time, we all converse as adults.
How does that sound?
An adult response would have been:
“Virtually all European universities require a Masters to attain a PhD.”
This is Lemmy and not Reddit after all.
This is the most reddit response Ive ever gotten lmao
The fuck did I just read?
There are roughly speaking two kinds of systems. The kind of system where Bachelor is the default degree you get from university, and you can go on to get a Masters and/or a doctorate. And the other kind of system where the default university degree is a combined Bachelor and Masters, and you can study further to get a doctorate. The latter kind is in use in a lot of continental Europe, at least.
Definitely depends on the field. Most “humanities” studies require a masters first, although for that reason many PhD programs include the step of getting your masters so it can all be done as a single track. So still a standard ~6 year program but you get both, masters after the first 3 and then PhD after 3 more. I’ve only ever run with folks in humanities I’m realizing, so I didn’t even realize there were PhDs you could get without a masters
Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Asia.
I’ve never heard of Masters for PhD? Coursework is opposite direction?
6 semester for a Bachelor’s degree is pretty common…
Yes and that addresses only one of the three parts of my statement
The worst part is when that guy’s right.
Yup. They forgot that sometimes what’s actually happening in that one line is-
- Go to School for a Bachelor’s Degree
- Get 10 years working experience in specific field
- Watch researcher whose never stepped outside of a lab make assertion counter to real life.
- Call Shenanigans
- Watch the findings go nowhere
To be fair, journal articles and scientific research in general have gotten to be pretty bullshit. Haven’t they studied this and proven the vast majority of published journal papers probably shouldn’t have been?
A couple easily Google examples of discussion regarding scientific publications likely being bullshit.
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
Surge in number of ‘extremely productive’ authors concerns scientists
Too much academic research is being published
More than 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023 — a new record
Whistleblowers flagged 300 scientific papers for retraction. Many journals ghosted them
Top 10 most highly cited retracted papers
And on and on. Publish or perish and general shitty culture in academia is why I quit phd and took my masters and left.
I saw a clip on how kids out of uni don’t believe anything not peer reviewed; even intuitive observations in nature that otherwise undocumented or site specific observations that went against the grain.
Science is a way of thinking and observing, rather than papers, but papers are a good way to refine your thinking
In theory, a paper gives you a methodology that you can use to reproduce the findings. And a refusal to use papers to repeat findings (because shit costs money and nobody wants to publish iterative studies) means you end up with a bunch of novel findings that are never confirmed through repetition.
But the fact that nobody is bothering to repeat these studies also raises a question of what exactly is being researched. Certainly, the more useful scientific research efforts are about formulating applicable techniques. So they would need to be reproducible to have any functional value.
The fact that we’re not seeking to replicate studies suggests that we’re investing a ton of time in niche under-utilized fields. And that may be a problem of investigative research (we’re so focused on publishing that we don’t care what we’re actually studying) or a problem of applied sciences (we’re so focused on scaling up older methods to industrial scale that we’re leaving better methods of production on the cutting room floor).
But its definitely some kind of problem.
TBF I’ve lost count of the number of times someone has cited some paper as a reference for the point they are trying to make and when I inspect the paper it has shitty “n”, the paper is written for an agenda (not sure what that’s called where I.e. a paper saying smoking is good for you/not harmful is paid for by the tobacco industry and written by tobacco industry scientists), or it might even just be straight up bullshit written to look like a legit paper.
Peer Review at least offers some barriers to the problems with papers, but it’s definitely not a panacea.
The problem is without peer reviewed papers it’s hard to credit that someone all the way around the world observed something.
In a perfect world nobody is lying and everyone has the scientific base education to understand how to report phenomena properly. But uhhh… Yeah.
I’m guessing not all hypotheses receive the same interest or funding to begin with. Definitely seems to be a selection bias on what actually gets funded/studied. Even worse, when they withhold results they don’t like from being published.
If after all that preparation, your pride can be pierced and wounded by one of myriad neckbeards or Karens on twatter, you might need to let go a little bit.
Sometimes it is bullshit.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/scientists-aghast-at-bizarre-ai-rat-with-huge-genitals-in-peer-reviewed-article/Like callouscomic said, sometimes academics are incentivised to churn out bullshit
A better example is the Stanford prison experiment. Guy purposely put cruel bullies as the “guards” and more submissive participants as the “prisoners” to sway the study preemptively. Not to mention all the funky things people do with collected data. This isn’t to say that when somebody with no expertise in a field doesn’t understand a study that that study is bs tho, and I’ll admit this is a fine line to walk as many pseudoscientists and crackpot theorists are created this way.
Three years for a PhD? Must be a Brit or combined degree. Average is almost six at the moment.
I’m a microbiologist in the US, it’s at least eight years for us.
They are 5-6 in my neck of the woods. You can go straight to a PhD from a bachelor’s though
Even as a Brit that’d be fast. Here you’re funded for 3.5y with 6mo unfunded “writing up time”.
You did the meme and got upvotes? We’re doomed.
Maybe that guy was just one of the people who worked on one of the 19 other studies that didn’t publish because of the negative result
Dunning Kruger curve. The people who know the least about a topic speak the most confidently about it.
Don’t think it’s exactly Dunning Kruger. We all think about the curve of gathered knowledge and perceived knowledge.
But they didn’t even start to gather knowledge, they just respond with something that sounds truthful and fits their world view in order to feel better without doing anything.
But hey maybe that’s just my Dunning Kruger talking.
I see this name everywhere these days. I think… I’m having a Baader-Meinhof about Dunning-Kruger
Nice we’re keeping the Reddit tradition of just repeating “Dunning Kruger” every time we see disagreement
You know, the guy on the internet might have also been doing stuff all that time
nah it’s fair in all my life I’ve never once done anything. I’ve not even logged onto the internet ever
Solution: don’t give a fck on the brain farts of random people.
Simple solution, spend 1 second and decide to consciously ignore guy on internet for the rest of your life.
Works wonders for mental and physical health, zero downsides!
True. Until 70+ million of them decide to vote in a fascist dictatorship.
Fucking happening over here. The thing with echo chambers is that someone eventually starts farting, and then people start breathing it in. Those people start farting, and boom a moronic fascist dictatorship or radical conspiracy group is born
