Home » Explaining the research replicability problem

Comments

Explaining the research replicability problem — 7 Comments

  1. Scientific ‘research’ is an industry

    “Most “scientists” are bottle washers and button sorters.” “Time Enough for Love” by Robert A. Heinlein

  2. Geoffrey Britain is absolutely right.

    Most “scientific” “research” done today is neither.

    Thanks for linking to this, Neo.

    The essence of REAL science, is a topic about which whole books could be be written, have been written, will be written–and it has more impact on human life than most of the issues about which people daily engage in (often fevered) debate. The “research” done most often in the name of Science is part of funded propaganda machinations. Most of the “explanations” of why there are so many non-reproducable “results” are basically rationalizations attempting to save the appearance of “research”, and don’t include the inevitable and widespread deliberate fraud that takes place.

    I note that you didn’t write even a sentence about it, Neo I feel the same way. I wanted to say something about the scope of this issue, about how imperative it is, how vital and even structural it is to the human experience, and all I could manage was the weak paragraphs above.

    Science and mathematics are profoundly beautiful when done correctly, and replicability is crucial.

  3. Adding to my comment above, I want to say that the reason it is so hard to write something short and meaningful about this topic, as I state above, is because it is so complex a subject, and so important, that it would take a a multi-page discussion even to present an overview of its depth and importance.

  4. Minta Marie Morze
    Science and mathematics are profoundly beautiful when done correctly, and replicability is crucial.

    The replicability problems are concentrated in the social sciences, such as psychology. Social science is to science as Wonder Bread is to French bread.

  5. Guys, while the problems of replicability of results is concentrated in the social “sciences”, it is alive and flourishing in all areas of “research” that can be stamped with the imprimatur of Science and/or Mathematics. Whenever money, funding, and/or propaganda can grab it, “research” is vulnerable.

    A few examples: Energy, “climate change” medicine, agriculture, atmospheric studies, biology, microbiology, DNA linkages, miracle cures, statistics, creative graphing, computer models, selection of data, evaluation of results, interpretation of constraints, complex systems, cigarettes vs marijuana, Rachel Carson-ism, etc., etc., etc.–everywhere and anywhere someone wants to scam an issue and it can be made to look as though Science and Mathematics are “proving” things, there is vulnerability.

    Some of it is due to ignorance and/or faulty methodology, and unconscious motives; but all too much is deliberate.

    Even the history of science has been and is being re-written to validate such scams, just as other academic subjects have been have been and are being re-configured by those who want to destroy Western Civ.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>