Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Replication Crisis

Fantasma4500 - 28-8-2019 at 00:02

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
it could appear that the credibility of science is hanging in nothing but sheer belief, as it struggles to replicate experiments and results, this would indicate opposing parts arent conducting the experiments truly accordingly to the scientific method, and by that.. science is crumbling apart to become nothing but an formally (and, controversially, corporatively) written opinion (or agenda?)
i heard the highest replication rate was biology with just barely scratching 50%
50% is not good enough for science. in science we want replicability, thats what the whole scientific community relies on. that we are observing a common reality

either we are battling reality on a quantum level, or the scientific community is full of fraud, unsure which is the worse?
im especially annoyed by this as i spend some time reading into endocrinology but you never get one answer, or really any answer besides "maybe"
just take the explosively controversial about phytoestrogens impact on testosterone, you can find scientific articles having completely contrary conclusions

i dont think im going anywhere with this, i just think its silly that progress must be sacrificed for here and now materialistic gains, or at the very least childish mindsets in science

XeonTheMGPony - 28-8-2019 at 03:32

science has been heavily attacked the last 20 years, just look at the societal ramifications *Ahem only 2*

It is not by accident and been attenuated by laziness and media, the word science has lost weight, when any half baked *study* is made to get the result you want is tossed under the label of science, then it is mass reported in the media.

As a demonstration of this a group just made shit up but they used special buzz words and it got published, one such instance was literally a page from mine kampf just a few words modified.

We're at a scary epoch where it can lead to full on regression, or a purging of the garbage.

To give you a clearer picture, a modern A grade was the pasts F, rather then improving schooling methods we just cut the bar off and proclaimed higher graduation rates, quantity over quality is the new motto.

Fantasma4500 - 29-8-2019 at 02:09

common core grades barely matter, because i know a bunch of chemistry i was flat out told by my chemistry teacher that i would have to do much better than everyone else to score same exact grades, ontop of that you have teachers bias when handing out grades. hard to eliminate sure

ironically for improving schools it appears (causation, i know.) that homework may work contrary, finnish schools dont have any homework and they have pretty good students

i remember one video explaining how the schooling quality in the US degraded since 1900something, back then they had schoolkids do university math
"the deliberate dumbing down of america"

Godrick VanHess - 10-9-2019 at 07:52

In the US there is a push to pass everyone. In the classes I have to teach they are set up where it is difficult for me to fail students for any reason. About the only way I can fail a student is if they don't show up for lab or lecture for 80% of the semester. The best I can do is give the undeserving a C. We then take these students and applaud them on their accomplishment of nothing and push them into higher level fields and expect them to do what they are physically not capable of. I'm sorry but not everyone is cut out for the sciences. Twist this with the social justice bullshit we are pushed to graduate any minority / female regardless. When I graduated with my chem degree I did so with some of the most brilliant minds and others who (I mean this quite literally) couldn't balance freshman equations. The only way these people get studies published is if they jump on an idea with someone else or fabricate some aspect. Either way another up and coming problem is where it was stated above half of biology isn't reproducible and the field is starting to turn into a joke, and even scarier yet is how the medical field isn't much better. Dr. Piero Anversa from Harvard had what, 31? publications retracted for bogus science. Are these two related or coincidence? I'm not even going to pretend to have an idea. I think its interesting but what is clear to me is science and education as a whole is on the decline here and I believe there is a significant amount of fraud creeping into my beloved world of science. May God strike me dead if I ever knowingly publish fraudulent science.

[Edited on 10-9-2019 by Godrick VanHess]

Ubya - 10-9-2019 at 09:07

Notice how the crisis is mostly in the medicine fields, drugs are expensive and profitable, you are pretty much forced by your sponsor/company to make new drugs to sell. If research was not dictated by money interests it would be better

MrHomeScientist - 10-9-2019 at 09:55

I work with a lot of local teachers in all grade levels and I hear alot of the same sentiments, Godrick VanHess. The whole 'teach to the test' mentality is killing real learning. Our students don't get tested on science until 8th grade; before that it's 100% reading. Teachers get a very small portion of their time allocated to science, but even during that time the focus is heavily on reading. I'm trying to change that with some outreach programs that aim to give teachers free materials and documentation so they can actually do experiments and activities in the classroom. We've gotten very positive feedback so far, so the problem isn't with the teachers or students not wanting to learn the material. So I don't know who's to blame and where we should focus on changing the policy.


Back to the thread topic, the wiki article mentions that some "significant theories are grounded on unreproducible experimental work." How is that possible? How does a theory become "significant" if nobody is able to reproduce the results? If I did an experiment that "proved" the speed of light was different, nobody would take me seriously until other people had repeated my results.

Ubya - 10-9-2019 at 15:51

Quote: Originally posted by MrHomeScientist  



Back to the thread topic, the wiki article mentions that some "significant theories are grounded on unreproducible experimental work." How is that possible? How does a theory become "significant" if nobody is able to reproduce the results? If I did an experiment that "proved" the speed of light was different, nobody would take me seriously until other people had repeated my results.

physics and chemistry are safe enough here, the problem is with psichology, where the human factor is the major influence in the study, as well as medical trials, there are so many variables that dictate the human behaviours and decisions, it is hard to isolate just one, and maybe the experimenter is not even that good to eliminate as many variables as possible, so in the end every experiment has its unique conditions and nobody can replicate the exact conditions

Godrick VanHess - 10-9-2019 at 19:47

Physics and chemistry are in no way safe if there is a hint of incentive and someone thinks they can get away with it. We had a problem with it and I work with transition metal catalysis where it is fairly hard to twist NMR out of context. if your product isn't there, it isnt there. I can't tell you how many times I see it where someone starts setting limits and excludes relevant data as outliers because it doesn't fit their agenda and this is with hard numbers, not subjective soft science studies where it is infinity easier and impossible to prove. People don't need a good reason or a even a financial one at that. I personally know a guy who tried to photo shop a NMR just for the fun of it, though it didn't turn out well for him. Smart smart guy while at the same time is the dumbest guy I know. If no one checks the data it's LAW until someone does and realizes its bogus. It gets worse if it fits someone else's agenda and they cite it and propagate the error.

andy1988 - 11-9-2019 at 20:33

Quote: Originally posted by Antiswat  

either we are battling reality on a quantum level, or the scientific community is full of fraud, unsure which is the worse?
im especially annoyed by this as i spend some time reading into endocrinology but you never get one answer, or really any answer besides "maybe"
just take the explosively controversial about phytoestrogens impact on testosterone, you can find scientific articles having completely contrary conclusions

A mixture of both, maybe some imposter syndrome (which many people feel as they're thrust into new territory) thrown in where many try to satisfy unsatisfiable expectations.

This past month I've been writing a literature review on hyperbaric oxygen therapy in the context of brain injury (personal interest), trying to reconcile inconsistent results on a particular paper I was reading (compared with prior papers). Then I hit these sentences, I paraphrase, "[These marines with brain injury and PTSD temporally reassigned to a Florida Navy base for the study] had enhanced access to leisure time and activities in a noncombat, semitropical beach environment." The authors went on to speculate confounding effects like substance abuse may have thrown a wrench in their careful double-blind, randomized, sham-controlled trial. U.S. Marines with PTSD self medicating with cocaine and booze! Great controls...
Quote: Originally posted by Godrick VanHess  
In the US there is a push to pass everyone. In the classes I have to teach they are set up where it is difficult for me to fail students for any reason. About the only way I can fail a student is if they don't show up for lab or lecture for 80% of the semester. The best I can do is give the undeserving a C. We then take these students and applaud them on their accomplishment of nothing and push them into higher level fields and expect them to do what they are physically not capable of.

Sounds like either you and they were a part of a research study, or it's political/financial (likely the former if a Uni and not a college/trade school). Happened to me as an instructor at a Uni.

For years they subjected students in introductory computer science courses to bizarre protocols which IMO were not in their best interest or served their education. Protocols like treat all these young aspiring professionals like they're in elementary school, have them do brain dead repetitive busy work 20-30 hours a week for a 3 credit course and see if more of them "succeed" (I forgot the particular metrics). I later saw the study containing the wacko protocols by chance written by an Indian PhD student. That hour requirement was explicitly in the thesis, and was more than double the maximum allowed by the uni per credit hour (~3 hours/week per credit). Approved by ethics committee(s)! I learned firsthand U.S. Universities may play god with the futures of their undergraduates like it was nothing!

The outcomes in the thesis was painted as a success on whatever metrics. In truth IT WAS NOT, I know first hand promising academics with their futures crippled (with severe loathing of programming) by such idiocy :mad: :mad: :mad: I'm still angry and it's been almost a decade.

The math department did different skullduggery, mandating all (including incomprehensible [non-fluent] and incompetent-at-teaching) math grad students had to teach introductory math in order to graduate, which ALL university students had to pass to graduate. Many students took to underhanded means to make it through a single course, many just read the book and ignored the person babbling/writing incoherently/illegibly, many went on with a hatred for math, many taking it over and over again till they stopped failing these $$ courses, and many failed out of their intended careers (if their department limited the number of times they could fail a course or cumulatively or whatever). This created a great market for private math tutors (which I took part in), and word-of-mouth who to take it from and who not to. These people were fodder for these math grad student's education in how to educate... Eventually many/most non-STEM departments struck back by taking such math requirements off their undergraduate degree programs (making them electives instead or whatever).
Quote: Originally posted by Ubya  
Notice how the crisis is mostly in the medicine fields, drugs are expensive and profitable, you are pretty much forced by your sponsor/company to make new drugs to sell. If research was not dictated by money interests it would be better

Oh god yes. Such incentive structures seem to tend to be a overwhelming disservice to society.
I thought to reference Jonas Salk, who chose not to patent the polio vaccine as an inspiration, but this article gives me pause (part of me feels like the article author is a bad actor pushing an agenda). Considering that and the story of Dr. Rene Favaloro, featured recently as a Google Doodle, I question whether it is possible for anyone without sufficient capital who wants to act with integrity, do so in any of these capitalist experiments... I'm also sure many ill-equipped individuals, hungry for more come to idolize the "successes" of those like Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos founder) and Martin Shkreli (PharmaBro) in this era of Bubblenomics.

[Edited on 12-9-2019 by andy1988]

karlos³ - 12-9-2019 at 02:12

Years ago when the movie "Idiocracy" came out, we thought it was a good comical movie, but now we see that it was not... and it seems really as it is too late to do anything about it.

XeonTheMGPony - 12-9-2019 at 03:38

Quote: Originally posted by karlos³  
Years ago when the movie "Idiocracy" came out, we thought it was a good comical movie, but now we see that it was not... and it seems really as it is too late to do anything about it.


It was depressingly rather prophetic.