Sunday, June 26, 2011

why "science" needs new field workers

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/opinion/sunday/26ideas.html?_r=1

 Science runs forward better than it does backward.

Original, albeit highly criticised studies stand because

*scientist's are busy people and have their own work to do, their own grants to obtain in order to survive.

*some journals don't publish replication studies, the only form of self-correction for flawed studies. "Scientifically I think trying to replicate the claimed results is a waste of time" one says.  Yeah...so lets let it stay in the literature.  Okay...

*Authors of original studies can refuse to retract their work, citing it would be "premature".

Very good read.  Makes you think. 

Science is really, really a mix of good and bad, and it seldom separates the two.  It must charge into the future.  No growth is bad news...  Only time separates the wheat from the chaff, and sometimes even that never happens.  It is an industry, it feeds on new ideas.  Not necessarily correct ideas.  As long as it is an idea that pleases the benefactors, one gets paid.

Science, as a self correcting entity in theory, is beautiful. In reality...not so much.  Ideas built upon ideas that were deleterious to begin with, and it begins to look more like mush, not something solid.

Let the winnowing begin.  Please...

Why do we take the word of "experts" as gospel, when it could be they only are more adept at confusing people, and thus, allowed to continue.

Yah-teh-hay.........


I wish I had more sense of humor
Keeping the sadness at bay
Throwing the lightness on these things
Laughing it all away


Thanks, Joni, I needed that now...

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