Is Science Broken?

[One Bad Pig]

You would have to ask the people who wrote the article. It is funny, both of my later links (including where I quoted this) seem to have been taken down.

No, you just didn't provide correct urls. I corrected them in my reply to you above.

[seer]

No, you just didn't provide correct urls. I corrected them in my reply to you above.

Thanks

[Jedidiah]

What this proves is that scientists are not what they ought to be often. The scientific method is still sound, it is the users at fault.

Lest anyone doubt it, I do see the tongue in Seer's cheek.

[Carrikature]

You would have to ask the people who wrote the article.

Since you repeatedly refer to the bias of the journals, you had better be able to back it up.

[Carrikature]

Yes, there is some work being do to correct this, but reading all three links, it seems that the problem may be insurmountable. Especially in light of the fact that journals have a bias again replicative work, and link mentioned in the "Sokal affair" where most of the reviewers did not seem to have a clue!

'Insurmountable'. Yes, run with that word. Hyperbole always pans out in the end.

[seer]

Since you repeatedly refer to the bias of the journals, you had better be able to back it up.

I'm only quoting what the article said.

[seer]

'Insurmountable'. Yes, run with that word. Hyperbole always pans out in the end.

Again:

The peer review process doesn't work. Most observers of science guffaw at the so-called "Sokal affair," where a physicist named Alan Sokal submitted a gibberish paper to an obscure social studies journal, which accepted it.

Less famous is a similar hoodwinking of the very prestigious British Medical Journal, to which a paper with eight major errors was submitted. Not a single one of the 221 scientists who reviewed the paper caught all the errors in it, and only 30 percent of reviewers recommended that the paper be rejected. Amazingly, the reviewers who were warned that they were in a study and that the paper might have problems with it found no more flaws than the ones who were in the dark.

This doesn't speak to the issue of peer review?

[TheLurch]

This doesn't speak to the issue of peer review?

Why don't you define what you expect peer review to accomplish, and then we can have an intelligent discussion of whether those expectations are reasonable and, if so, how the system could be improved.

"this seems bad" is not going to work as the basis for this sort of conversation.

[seer]

Why don't you define what you expect peer review to accomplish.

To correct errors.

[Carrikature]

I'm only quoting what the article said.

Then do more than that. Don't regurgitate.

Again:

This doesn't speak to the issue of peer review?

If anything, I'd say it speaks more about potential issues with understanding what quality papers look like. Peer review doesn't work if your peers don't know what they're looking at, either.

[TheLurch]

To correct errors.

Well, it may surprise you that this isn't what scientists or journals view as the role of peer review. If reviewers catch errors, it's up to the researchers involved to correct them to the reviewer's satisfaction. But most errors are invisible to the reviewers, because the errors took place in a lab in the past, neither of which the reviewers will have access to. They can only really catch errors of interpretation, not errors in experimentation.

Mostly, the job of reviewers is to ensure that the experimental approach is sound, the interpretations are reasonable (and alternative interpretations haven't been ignored), and the authors accurately integrate their results into the current scientific consensus. In the biosciences they'll often suggest new experiments to ensure that the paper's claims are thoroughly supported.

But if mistakes are made in the lab - the wrong mice bred, the wrong solution added - there's no way for a reviewer to catch that. How would you propose they could?

[rogue06]

To correct errors.

AFAICT, it is primarily meant to see if the methodology employed was valid. It is other scientists investigating the original research who correct errors.

[shunyadragon]

I generally agree, but a position like Shuny's makes God the creator of all our evil acts. Meaning that we are not personally responsible for doing evil. God is. Shuny does not believe that men are broken - morally or otherwise.

Your misrepresenting me big time. I never said individual humans are not responsible for committing wrongful acts. This my friend is a lie on your part. I said God is ultimately responsible for the nature of humanity as well as all of Creation. Creation and humanity is not broken. It is as God Created. Traditional Christianity classically blames the sinful nature of humanity on the Fall and Original Sin, and the acts of Adam and Eve, fallible humans.

[Yttrium]

This doesn't speak to the issue of peer review?

No. It only applies to the journal's review process. It could certainly be a problem with the journal's review process that needs to be fixed.

Peer review is an ongoing process. After the paper is published, other scientists will get to work at trying to replicate or falsify it, and identify any errors.

[Trout]

I wish I could kiss the scientist that developed my new asthma medicine.

That said, I think the article to be true certainly in some ways.

People have preconceptions. Even scientists. I think the article certainly rings true in many ways.

But a larger issue in the OP is that science in fact is a priesthood. People believe the things that their priesthood says. They don't typically recreate the studies themselves.

A priesthood is a priesthood any way you slice it.