How to spot bad science.

[Solly]

Re: How to spot bad science.

Originally posted by Oerdin
1. The discoverer pitches the claim directly to the media.

Climate scientists frequently offer press releases with their work when released.

2. The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work. The idea is that the establishment will presumably stop at nothing to suppress discoveries that might shift the balance of wealth and power in society.

Big Oil and Big Coal are fuelling the sceptics!

3. The scientific effect involved is always at the very limit of detection. Alas, there is never a clear photograph of a flying saucer, or the Loch Ness monster. All scientific measurements must contend with some level of background noise or statistical fluctuation. But if the signal-to-noise ratio cannot be improved, even in principle, the effect is probably not real and the work is not science.

Most of the icons from climate science are made by treating white noise and blips are meaningful occurences. Right on Oerdin.

4. Evidence for a discovery is anecdotal. If modern science has learned anything in the past century, it is to distrust anecdotal evidence. Because anecdotes have a very strong emotional impact

"Malaria-carrying mosquitoes are spreading north from Africa because of global warming"!

6. The discoverer has worked in isolation.

Climate scientists are infamously holed up in their own little clique, peer-reviewing each others work (if it was open to engineers, econometricians, and statisticians we may see more relevant and competent work from them).

7. The discoverer must propose new laws of nature to explain an observation.

"The sun has no effect on the earth's climate, it's all CO2"!

http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i21/21b02001.htm [/QUOTE]

[Solly]

I would add:

8) Failure to disclose data and methods

9) Failure to be self-critical or acknowledge limitations in the work

[Pekka]

DOddler, aye, those are huge .. signs of a bad study, you simply can't do a study without those things. THere is no study, just some novel.

[Drake Tungsten]

The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.

Copernicus? Galileo? Darwin?

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten

The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.

Copernicus? Galileo? Darwin?

Don't forget Doddler and Ned.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Drake Tungsten
Copernicus? Galileo? Darwin?

I think that interpreting the title as "how to spot bad science if you're a modern layman" makes more sense than interpreting it as "how to spot bad science if you're a medieval peasant."

[civman2000]

Originally posted by Dauphin

6. The discoverer has worked in isolation. The image of a lone genius who struggles in secrecy in an attic laboratory and ends up making a revolutionary breakthrough is a staple of Hollywood's science-fiction films, but it is hard to find examples in real life. Scientific breakthroughs nowadays are almost always syntheses of the work of many scientists.

Einstein? Perelman?

Those are exceptions, not the rule. Not to mention than Einstein is hardly "nowadays". And Perelman is a mathematician, not a scientist, though I'm not sure whether that's relevant here.

[Chemical Ollie]

I've seen a peer-reviewed article in chemistry containing arguments like "common sense dictates that", "this process is to capital intensive to risk using new methods" and similar rants. It was an old guy who had did some good work a few decades earlier that couldn't accept that his technical field had moved on since then, and this new guy he was critizising in his rant paper hadn't used his work as reference.

[Drake Tungsten]

I think that interpreting the title as "how to spot bad science if you're a modern layman" makes more sense than interpreting it as "how to spot bad science if you're a medieval peasant."

Darwin's work still has powerful (sort-of) establishments trying to suppress it.

[Jon Miller]

All the examples of older Physicists couldn't happen now adays.

JM

[Aeson]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
All the examples of older Physicists couldn't happen now adays.

History will refute you like it has all such claims in the past.

[Odin]

Re: Re: How to spot bad science.

Originally posted by Doddler


Climate scientists frequently offer press releases with their work when released.

[/QUOTE]

Scientists in general frequently offer press releases with their work when released if the finding it is dealing with something that has implications for public policy.

Big Oil and Big Coal are fuelling the sceptics!

GW is considered fact by the scientific establishment, Big Fossil Fuel isn't the scientific establishment. the crackpots always attack the scientific establishment or claim the scientific establishment are corporate stooges, neither situation is the case with GW.

[Solly]

Re: Re: Re: How to spot bad science.

Originally posted by Odin


Scientists in general frequently offer press releases with their work when released if the finding it is dealing with something that has implications for public policy.



GW is considered fact by the scientific establishment, Big Fossil Fuel isn't the scientific establishment. the crackpots always attack the scientific establishment or claim the scientific establishment are corporate stooges, neither situation is the case with GW.

1) Leave public policy to the politicians and voters. Don't be advocacy lobbyists but instead act as disinterested investigators. Climatologists don't do this.

2) Just like Global Cooling was considered fact?

[Jon Miller]

Originally posted by Aeson


History will refute you like it has all such claims in the past.

I don't tihnk you have a concept of what physics takes now days.

JM

[DaShi]

There is no bad science, just bad actors!