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Sep. 20th, 2007 03:53 pmMost Science Studies Appear to Be Tainted By Sloppy Analysis
'Statistically speaking, science suffers from an excess of significance. Overeager researchers often tinker too much with the statistical variables of their analysis to coax any meaningful insight from their data sets. "People are messing around with the data to find anything that seems significant, to show they have found something that is new and unusual," Dr. Ioannidis said.'
'Every new fact discovered through experiment represents a foothold in the unknown. In a wilderness of knowledge, it can be difficult to distinguish error from fraud, sloppiness from deception, eagerness from greed or, increasingly, scientific conviction from partisan passion. As scientific findings become fodder for political policy wars over matters from stem-cell research to global warming, even trivial errors and corrections can have larger consequences.' (italics mine)
For a more expanded view of the situation (warning: math involved) see this:
Most Published Research Findings Are False - But a Little Replication Goes a Long Way
(by the way, the authors of that article were not funded)
'Statistically speaking, science suffers from an excess of significance. Overeager researchers often tinker too much with the statistical variables of their analysis to coax any meaningful insight from their data sets. "People are messing around with the data to find anything that seems significant, to show they have found something that is new and unusual," Dr. Ioannidis said.'
'Every new fact discovered through experiment represents a foothold in the unknown. In a wilderness of knowledge, it can be difficult to distinguish error from fraud, sloppiness from deception, eagerness from greed or, increasingly, scientific conviction from partisan passion. As scientific findings become fodder for political policy wars over matters from stem-cell research to global warming, even trivial errors and corrections can have larger consequences.' (italics mine)
For a more expanded view of the situation (warning: math involved) see this:
Most Published Research Findings Are False - But a Little Replication Goes a Long Way
(by the way, the authors of that article were not funded)
