Study shows one third of all studies are nonsense

[reinhard]

Let's hope this isn't one more of them.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/HEALTH/07/13/co ... index.html

and

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/294/2/218

I'm not trying to bash science, but science isn't about blindly trusting scientists. With so many contradictory studies around, you can pretty much believe what you want to, especially with regard to diet. So don't retire your common sense just yet and want wisely.

[fawnmarie]

I couldn't agree more. I was recently involved in perusing medical studies about the effects of certain phytoestrogens on breast cancer.

About half of them said they increased the risk, the other half said they decreased the risk. VERY frustrating.

Fawn

[doulachic]

I think the only way to do an accurate study on things concerning humans is to study every human on the planet. For example: A certain diet may work for a high percentage of people according to a "study", but how do you know for sure if it is really effective just because it worked for (in reality) a VERY small percentage of the human race? Hhhmmmm.....Just my thoughts...

[navin]

Well, that's the thing about studies with human beings... we are very complex critters! So much can affect a study, such as too small a sample size, the wrong sample (e.g., not representative of humans as a whole), bias, unknown variables, etc., etc.

Actually, finding out that 1/3 of studies end up being "wrong" is really not that surprising. That also means that the majority of studies end up being useful to some extent. I do think studies are good and necessary, but only after many well-formed studies from different researchers plus some time and common sense do we really come up with good, useful information.

[Ariel King]

Well said Navin. I think the best lesson we can take away from this is that no single study should be used as the basis for any big decisions or conclusions. (And that the mainstream media are criminally irresponsible in trumpeting huge headlines based on one tiny study just because it suggests something controversial, but I digress.)

[JWL]

OK. Warning: rant ahead.

In college, I started as a psychology major (ended up graduating with a philosophy degree, but that's another story). The main reason I switched is because I couldn't square some contradictions I saw with how psychology is done. There are a few problems.

First, every psychological study I've ever seen involved something like questionnaires. It seems odd to me that something as rich, as complex as human consciousness, is studied using simple questionnaires with multiple choice answers. It doesn't make sense. I would even argue that the scientific method breaks down in psychology, as human consciousness is almost never repeatable or verifiable.

But here's the one that really gets me: they don't even get the subject/object split down. Keep in mind that the goal of science is to be "objective" (which is, in fact, utterly impossible). So, when a psychologist studies a patient, the psychologist is the subject, and the "object" of the experiment is the patient, since they are what is being studied. But psychologists can't even get that right! They refer to the patient as the "subject." So what does that make the psychologist?

Objectivity is an illusion when it comes to the human psyche.

I'm not gonna emulate Tom Cruise and claim that all psychology is nonsense and psych meds are evil. I think psychology has done a lot of good for a lot of people. But ever since it split from philosophy, there has been trouble.

OK. Rant over.

[gratefuldeb67]

Oh Freakwitch! That was a mere mini rant!
Good thing you became a philosopher... Your daughter won't get to be all screwed up then!
(sorry psychologists!)
(ps.. my Mom is a psychoanalytical social worker! LOL... )
Love,
Deb
Life is such a beautiful mystery...
How could any test capture it all?
Why do we need all these answers anyway? LOL....

"Without looking out of my door, I can know all things on Earth..
Without looking out of my window, I can know the ways of Heaven...
The farther I travel, the less I know, the less I really know...."
from "The Inner Light" -George Harrison/Beatles....

[carolejo]

I'm sure there is a crossover here somewhere between this thread and a thread on 'weekend luddite' in the Everyday systems lab.

Knowledge and the quest for it.... Does it make you happy to know something just because you 'might need to know it later'?

My 8 years of studying Physics demonstarted to me that there are plenty of hard scientific studies that are complete rubbish, so how we're supposed to study and make sense something as ephemeral as the human phyche or conciousness, I've no idea.

[Prodigalsun]

And then you have the studies that are politically or commercially motivated. Studies conducted by drug companies to see if their drug is safe. The FDA is so underfunded they just accept many of these defacto. God, you see some of the side effects on these drugs, sometimes they're worse than what they're trying to cure. "Hey, my depression's gone, but now I've got anal bleeding and can't operate heavy machinery."

And now the political think tanks are sponsoring studies. They get scientists to say that they'res no such thing as global warming, or that evolution is bunk.

[carolejo]

It's interesting too, to note the general public perception of 'science' as a noble, self-sacrificing and objective exercise.

In fact nothing could be further from the truth.

Science is carried out by those most flawed of creatures, human beings. Each person has their own drives, desires, motives and ego. Most of the science I've ever come across was driven by the egos of a few key individuals, who behave almost as if they were Gods, controlling vast funding budgets and running the lives of armies of postgrad researchers. There is infighting, territorial behaviour and disagreements - sometimes bordering on violent!

C

[JWL]

Yeah, the whole "standing on the shoulders of giants" image is powerfully embedded in the ambient psyche in the west....

But it's true. Today "science" and technology research are motivated almost solely by money. You could argue that military advancement is also a factor, but these days I would say that the military is governed more by the profit addiction than anything else.

Science is a very useful tool, but it misses a lot, especially in terms of human experience.

[carolejo]

it's especially amusing, as the phrase 'standing on the shoulders of giants' was not actually a noble thing for Newton to say. In its proper context, it was a line in a letter to a rival scientist who was known to be rather 'vertically challenged'. The line was really a very sarcastic comment by Newton to this other guy "and I, being a giant, standing on the shoulders of giants" (meaning, and you, little man, being of no importance or stature are about as 'great' at science as you are in height(!))

There we go. Those pesky scientists and their egos again!

C.

[BrightAngel]

I think this is an interesting Thread.
My undergraduate work was sociology,
and my doctorate is in law.
That education and my 25 years of experience in practicing law
has also led me to the same belief system...
..........a grain of salt with everything.......

[blueskighs]

if you have ever studied statistics you pretty much know a study can be designed to prove or disprove just about anything ....

tricksy they are

Blueskighs