There is much truth in the old saw about Liberals....they snap to attention at the phrase 'studies show.....'
But, this great Liberal noted:
"Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good."
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
But Moynihan didn't go nearly far enough. The need for that 'healthy skepticism' goes far further than the belief in government.....it needs to begin early and continue throughout life. We need more 'Show Me Missourians' in the body politic.
"There is very good reason to believe that much scientific research published today is false, there is no good way to sort the wheat from the chaff, and, most importantly, that the way the system is designed ensures that this will continue being the case."
Big Science is broken
1. ".....a must-read article in First Things magazine, in which William A. Wilson accumulates evidence that a lot of published research is false. But that's not even the worst part.
Advocates of the existing scientific research paradigm usually smugly declare that while some published conclusions are surely false, the scientific method has "self-correcting mechanisms" that ensure that, eventually, the truth will prevail. Unfortunately for all of us, Wilson makes a convincing argument that those self-correcting mechanisms are broken.
2. For starters, there's a "replication crisis" in science. This is particularly true in the field of experimental psychology, where far too many prestigious psychology studies simply can't be reliably replicated. But it's not just psychology. In 2011, the pharmaceutical company Bayer looked at 67 blockbuster drug discovery research findings published in prestigious journals, and found that three-fourths of them weren't right."
Ibid.
"The problem with science is that so much of it simply isn’t." Scientific Regress
But, this great Liberal noted:
"Somehow liberals have been unable to acquire from birth what conservatives seem to be endowed with at birth: namely, a healthy skepticism of the powers of government to do good."
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
But Moynihan didn't go nearly far enough. The need for that 'healthy skepticism' goes far further than the belief in government.....it needs to begin early and continue throughout life. We need more 'Show Me Missourians' in the body politic.
"There is very good reason to believe that much scientific research published today is false, there is no good way to sort the wheat from the chaff, and, most importantly, that the way the system is designed ensures that this will continue being the case."
Big Science is broken
1. ".....a must-read article in First Things magazine, in which William A. Wilson accumulates evidence that a lot of published research is false. But that's not even the worst part.
Advocates of the existing scientific research paradigm usually smugly declare that while some published conclusions are surely false, the scientific method has "self-correcting mechanisms" that ensure that, eventually, the truth will prevail. Unfortunately for all of us, Wilson makes a convincing argument that those self-correcting mechanisms are broken.
2. For starters, there's a "replication crisis" in science. This is particularly true in the field of experimental psychology, where far too many prestigious psychology studies simply can't be reliably replicated. But it's not just psychology. In 2011, the pharmaceutical company Bayer looked at 67 blockbuster drug discovery research findings published in prestigious journals, and found that three-fourths of them weren't right."
Ibid.
"The problem with science is that so much of it simply isn’t." Scientific Regress
