The Crisis of Science

Sources and transcript here: https://www.corbettreport.com/sciencecrisis/

Some might say this belongs in the political subforum but I disagree as it gets right to the heart of what is talked about on this forum.

This is one of my all time favourite articles:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC300797/

Please note the date of publication - the Christmas issue of the BMJ and a number of other medical journals are for humorous, satirical, and nonsensical research articles. But it wouldn't be funny if it wasn't true.

It becomes obvious why I and others have emphasized that all research needs to be read/evaluated with that in mind. Sackett and Oxman are two of the originators of Evidence-Based-Medicine thirty years ago - a program which puts measures in place to prevent the issues mentioned (and others), and which educates physicians on how to perform a critical reading of medical research, plus avoid the spin from pharmaceutical companies, etc. This has been spreading to other scientific fields over the last ten to twenty years, although it's slow and still needs a lot of work in some areas (like Parapsychology and Psychology).

Not all of the issues presented in the Corbett Report are valid (the almost comical misrepresentation of the Simpsonwood report, for example). But scientists and scientific establishments regard the valid issues as important enough to devote quite a lot of effort to addressing them.

Linda

Sources and transcript here: https://www.corbettreport.com/sciencecrisis/

Some might say this belongs in the political subforum but I disagree as it gets right to the heart of what is talked about on this forum.

I'd say a distinction needs to be drawn between (1) criticism of how some people apply (or misapply) the scientific method and (2) criticism of the scientific method itself. Perhaps the scientific method is difficult to define rigorously, but in practice I don't think that distinction is hard to draw in most cases.