guy on lemmy “this was already obvious, why don’t they try studying something actually useful”
This, but to some degree, unironically. If studies aren’t reproducible (or deemed worthy of reproduction) then there’s definitely a disconnect between the folks handing out research assignments and the folks engineering applicable solutions to scientific problems.
That goes two ways. You could be a guy who successfully formulates a mathematical model to support the existence of Neutrinos and face a funding board that has no interest in building a LHC. That’s arguably a problem of malinvestment within the scientific community. Or you could be a guy who successfully formulates a mathematical model for a new kind of mouse trap that’s 10% less efficient than traditional mouse traps. That’s more of a university research assignment problem.
i think you bring up valid instances where this is fair.
but i think i’m speaking to the very obvious and important ones that are worthy of reproduction. like i’ve seen articles be like “these corporations are responsible for 99% of climate change” or something
and the comments will be like “duh we knew that”
which true, but not empirically. being able to cite data from actual research from professionals is so valuable and far better than anecdotes or guesses.
that said, is there some way for a layperson like me to identify when research is not deemed worthy of reproduction? or is it a lost cause
which true, but not empirically. being able to cite data from actual research from professionals is so valuable and far better than anecdotes or guesses.
While its certainly helpful to get the raw numbers down on paper, you don’t need a filing cabinet full of documents to recognize that fossil fuel consuming electricity producers and airliners and manufacturing centers the but-for cause of climate change. Fossil Fuel goes in. Carbon emissions come out.
We can definitely use a more meticulous bit of R&D to find exactly where and when these emissions peak, in order to reduce total emissions without sacrificing an abundance of economic productivity. But “did you know burning the fuel makes the pollution?” isn’t a shocking conclusion.
Where things get annoying (and where in-depth research genuinely comes in handy) is in the functional policy that follows this recognition. Once you know a widget factory in China is 10x less efficient than its counterpart in the US, you can formulate a trade law to limit imports contingent on reform. But as soon as you start impacting some retailer’s bottom line, you get some screamer ad “Congressman Greenpeace Wants To Make Your Widgets 10x as Expensive to Save The Stupid Spotted Owl! In Truth it is the Spotted Owl that produces all the emissions! Kill the Spotted Owl!” financed by the worst people you know.
And that’s when you get some facebook troll group (or marketing team or bot army) spamming “Spotted Owl Farts Killed The Environment While Joe Brandon Clapped!!!” And then it becomes orthodoxy in the denialist community such that you’ve got Sunday Morning talk shows with people arguing over Spotted Owl emissions rather than trade law.
is there some way for a layperson like me to identify when research is not deemed worthy of reproduction?
Not practically, no. As soon as you’ve got that kind of info, you’re no longer a lay person.
At some level, you need a network of trust with someone who does know and does have a serious take on this. And that network is going to be informed by who you already trust and listen to. And that’s going to be informed by who they trust and listen to.
That’s the real terror of the modern mass media system. We’ve corrupted so much of our information stream that its genuinely hard to find a serious media venue that’s not been gobbled up by a for-profit marketing firm.
So what’s the harm of doing research on subjects with “obvious” no-surprise conclusions? The basic reality that it provides foundation for meaningful policy should be enough to justify it, no?
You kind of lost me with your spotted owl hypothetical? Not disagreeing I just genuinely got lost there was a lot if layers to it lol.
And thanks for the details on identifying problematic research as a layperson. Good to know, even if it’s depressing.
If after all that preparation, your pride can be pierced and wounded by one of myriad neckbeards or Karens on twatter, you might need to let go a little bit.
Three years for a PhD? Must be a Brit or combined degree. Average is almost six at the moment.
They are 5-6 in my neck of the woods. You can go straight to a PhD from a bachelor’s though
There is some field dependency - mathematics is notoriously fast. The other one I talk about below is the PhD portion of an MD/PhD. In some fields (mine included) there’s 2 years of coursework plus lab research so it was heavily results driven.
I dunno how, but my brother got his PhD in three years and was a doctor by the age of 21. Yes he was pretty smart to begin with, but he really did it in record time. I don’t think it would be the same today, I think requirements have changed a lot since then.
I’m a microbiologist in the US, it’s at least eight years for us.
Dunning Kruger curve. The people who know the least about a topic speak the most confidently about it.
Don’t think it’s exactly Dunning Kruger. We all think about the curve of gathered knowledge and perceived knowledge.
But they didn’t even start to gather knowledge, they just respond with something that sounds truthful and fits their world view in order to feel better without doing anything.
But hey maybe that’s just my Dunning Kruger talking.
I see this name everywhere these days. I think… I’m having a Baader-Meinhof about Dunning-Kruger
To be fair, journal articles and scientific research in general have gotten to be pretty bullshit. Haven’t they studied this and proven the vast majority of published journal papers probably shouldn’t have been?
A couple easily Google examples of discussion regarding scientific publications likely being bullshit.
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
Surge in number of ‘extremely productive’ authors concerns scientists
Too much academic research is being published
More than 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023 — a new record
Whistleblowers flagged 300 scientific papers for retraction. Many journals ghosted them
Top 10 most highly cited retracted papers
And on and on. Publish or perish and general shitty culture in academia is why I quit phd and took my masters and left.
I saw a clip on how kids out of uni don’t believe anything not peer reviewed; even intuitive observations in nature that otherwise undocumented or site specific observations that went against the grain.
Science is a way of thinking and observing, rather than papers, but papers are a good way to refine your thinking
TBF I’ve lost count of the number of times someone has cited some paper as a reference for the point they are trying to make and when I inspect the paper it has shitty “n”, the paper is written for an agenda (not sure what that’s called where I.e. a paper saying smoking is good for you/not harmful is paid for by the tobacco industry and written by tobacco industry scientists), or it might even just be straight up bullshit written to look like a legit paper.
Peer Review at least offers some barriers to the problems with papers, but it’s definitely not a panacea.
In theory, a paper gives you a methodology that you can use to reproduce the findings. And a refusal to use papers to repeat findings (because shit costs money and nobody wants to publish iterative studies) means you end up with a bunch of novel findings that are never confirmed through repetition.
But the fact that nobody is bothering to repeat these studies also raises a question of what exactly is being researched. Certainly, the more useful scientific research efforts are about formulating applicable techniques. So they would need to be reproducible to have any functional value.
The fact that we’re not seeking to replicate studies suggests that we’re investing a ton of time in niche under-utilized fields. And that may be a problem of investigative research (we’re so focused on publishing that we don’t care what we’re actually studying) or a problem of applied sciences (we’re so focused on scaling up older methods to industrial scale that we’re leaving better methods of production on the cutting room floor).
But its definitely some kind of problem.
I’m guessing not all hypotheses receive the same interest or funding to begin with. Definitely seems to be a selection bias on what actually gets funded/studied. Even worse, when they withhold results they don’t like from being published.
Why are they always so concerned with guy on Internet?
Because most of the population is partly ‘guy on internet’ and is influenced by other guys on internet
My dad has a friend who is like 65. I lives quite isolated. He’s not dumb or anything at all, but he only talks to maybe 6 people and 4 of them are alcoholics and almost as sheltered as he is. The other day i went by because my dad asked me to help him.bwe talked for a bit and he said his knee is fucked but don’t want t o do anything about it. I just shrugged and said that everything involving knee or hip surgery is scary. Hell, every surgery is pretty scary. Somehow the conversation (obviously) pivot towards covid. And he said he’ll never get another vaccine in his life, because it was a plot from the higher ups, covid is made to kill people but it didn’t kill enough. What struck me the most was he kinda saw that i didn’t cared abd disagreed, so he quickly said: it’s not just me, many people are saying it. Yeah sure, but i also know the people you hang out with who are “saying it” and who have “theories”.
That is the guy on the internet, who doesn’t even has the internet.Lmaooo that is so insane. Great story
Well, sometimes there’s another step missing just before the Bullshit: “Use the small, narrow findings to inform a greater narrative beyond the data’s scope”
The worst part is when that guy’s right.
Yup. They forgot that sometimes what’s actually happening in that one line is-
- Go to School for a Bachelor’s Degree
- Get 10 years working experience in specific field
- Watch researcher whose never stepped outside of a lab make assertion counter to real life.
- Call Shenanigans
- Watch the findings go nowhere
Simple solution, spend 1 second and decide to consciously ignore guy on internet for the rest of your life.
Works wonders for mental and physical health, zero downsides!
True. Until 70+ million of them decide to vote in a fascist dictatorship.
Fucking happening over here. The thing with echo chambers is that someone eventually starts farting, and then people start breathing it in. Those people start farting, and boom a moronic fascist dictatorship or radical conspiracy group is born
Solution: don’t give a fck on the brain farts of random people.
Maybe that guy was just one of the people who worked on one of the 19 other studies that didn’t publish because of the negative result
Hasn’t read the article methods but still decided to comment: cOrReLaTiOn dOeSn’t eQuAl cAuSaTiOn
herp doesn’t imply derp
Yeah but also just publishing correlation is a shitty practice. That’s supposed to be a hint to look deeper, not the end conclusion.
There’s a generation of internet debate guys who seem convinced that correlation disproves causation
All my literal this
this is the way doggo puppers, hecking upboats to the left
Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there’.
Worst best shiitpost ever. Absolutely the truth.
Are you the token boomer, or a toking boomer?
Former. I don’t touch the devil’s lettuce 🥬
More for me then, cheers mate 🤙
Maybe stop studying cow dung.
What about piles of dirt?
I’m not sure that’s not my area of expertise.
It’s mine though
Guy on internet: “this study is flawed in the following ways [proceeds to list shit they thought of in 25 seconds that may in no way matter, but since they thought of it, it totally disqualifies any and all science which may not agree with the armchair brain farts]”
