stop standing in the way of science

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Yachtie -> stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 1:46:29 PM)
Science is to be trusted. It's self-regulating, self-correcting, and subject to peer review. This is what we here at P&R are constantly told by those who self-declare themselves to be keepers of the truth and the way. The non-skeptics of proclaimed science. "faulty fundamental research" is corrected via peer review and the scientific method. All would be well in the world if only the skeptics would STFU, and stop standing in the way of science. In today's world, brimful as it is with opinion and falsehoods masquerading as facts, you'd think the one place you can depend on for verifiable facts is science. You'd be wrong. Many billions of dollars' worth of wrong. A few years ago, scientists at the Thousand Oaks biotech firm Amgen set out to double-check the results of 53 landmark papers in their fields of cancer research and blood biology. The idea was to make sure that research on which Amgen was spending millions of development dollars still held up. They figured that a few of the studies would fail the test — that the original results couldn't be reproduced because the findings were especially novel or described fresh therapeutic approaches. But what they found was startling: Of the 53 landmark papers, only six could be proved valid. "Even knowing the limitations of preclinical research," observed C. Glenn Begley, then Amgen's head of global cancer research, "this was a shocking result." Unfortunately, it wasn't unique. A group at Bayer HealthCare in Germany similarly found that only 25% of published papers on which it was basing R&D projects could be validated, suggesting that projects in which the firm had sunk huge resources should be abandoned. Whole fields of research, including some in which patients were already participating in clinical trials, are based on science that hasn't been, and possibly can't be, validated. "The thing that should scare people is that so many of these important published studies turn out to be wrong when they're investigated further," says Michael Eisen, a biologist at UC Berkeley and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The Economist recently estimated spending on biomedical R&D in industrialized countries at $59 billion a year. That's how much could be at risk from faulty fundamental research.

DomKen -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 2:39:35 PM)
You and the author don't understand how science is done. A researcher does some experiment and gets a result that the researcher(s) consider significant. They write it up and publish it. Other researchers take that work and try and build on it. If they can't and it becomes clear the original result was a statistical abnormality or the like they publish and yet other researchers then will try to verify which research is wrong. Research budgets are very tight and no one gets a grant to simply verify someone else's research.

Kirata -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 2:48:08 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen You and the author don't understand how science is done. Bless you for your naive faith, but scientists are just as flawed as everyone else. Retraction Watch K.

mnottertail -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 2:49:50 PM)
and corporations moreso. so why are nutsackers servile to them? even the scientific corporations.

Yachtie -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 2:52:26 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen You ... don't understand how science is done. I do understand the science fetishist. How often do you pray at its alter?

DomKen -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 3:02:18 PM)
So precisely how should science be done? Who will pay for independent replication of all results before publication?

Yachtie -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 3:10:40 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen So precisely how should science be done? Who will pay for independent replication of all results before publication? I'd rather discuss what The article is about than go off on your tangents - "The thing that should scare people is that so many of these important published studies turn out to be wrong when they're investigated further," says Michael Eisen, a biologist at UC Berkeley and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The Economist recently estimated spending on biomedical R&D in industrialized countries at $59 billion a year. That's how much could be at risk from faulty fundamental research.

DomKen -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 3:28:33 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Yachtie quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen So precisely how should science be done? Who will pay for independent replication of all results before publication? I'd rather discuss what The article is about than go off on your tangents - "The thing that should scare people is that so many of these important published studies turn out to be wrong when they're investigated further," says Michael Eisen, a biologist at UC Berkeley and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The Economist recently estimated spending on biomedical R&D in industrialized countries at $59 billion a year. That's how much could be at risk from faulty fundamental research. Replication is what the article is about. Huge numbers of scientists are not committing fraud. Sometimes, a lot of times actually, a study can have what is a statistically significant outcome but when repeated on a larger or different population it doesn't. Sometimes the original researchers failed to account for some factor that skewed their results etc. So if you want to prevent that stuff from ever getting published we have to upend all of science and at least double the cost of doing all research, from having to have an independent team replicate all research before publication. In reality the current system works. The reason you have even heard about this is because scientists do take others work and try to build on it. When those later experiments turn out results that don't match up then the original work gets looked at and someone tries to replicate it. This system works so well we have rapid advances in most fields of science.

Yachtie -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 3:36:08 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen Replication is what the article is about. Huge numbers of scientists are not committing fraud. Sometimes, a lot of times actually, a study can have what is a statistically significant outcome but when repeated on a larger or different population it doesn't. Sometimes the original researchers failed to account for some factor that skewed their results etc. But what they found was startling: Of the 53 landmark papers, only six could be proved valid. "Even knowing the limitations of preclinical research," observed C. Glenn Begley, then Amgen's head of global cancer research, "this was a shocking result." Failed to account you say. Like errors and flaws? Eisen says the more important flaw in the publication model is that the drive to land a paper in a top journal — Nature and Science lead the list — encourages researchers to hype their results, especially in the life sciences. Peer review, in which a paper is checked out by eminent scientists before publication, isn't a safeguard. Eisen says the unpaid reviewers seldom have the time or inclination to examine a study enough to unearth errors or flaws.

Rule -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 3:57:35 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Yachtie A few years ago, scientists at the Thousand Oaks biotech firm Amgen set out to double-check the results of 53 landmark papers in their fields of cancer research and blood biology. I have known one researcher who repeated someone else's experiment. She did not get the same results. Upon consulting the original scientist, she learned that he had performed the experiment only once and that he had published these initial results without any further corroboration. It is my heartfelt opinion that no science article ought to be published without me having approved the discussion part of that article. The incorrect speculation in such discussions is mind staggering, in my experience.

thompsonx -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 4:23:47 PM)
ORIGINAL: Yachtie I do understand the science fetishist. How often do you pray at its alter? I pray at the alter of science fools on the other hand would rather pray at the alter of their imaginary friend.

thompsonx -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 4:42:00 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Yachtie Science is to be trusted. It's self-regulating, self-correcting, and subject to peer review. Whole truth This is what we here at P&R are constantly told by those who self-declare themselves to be keepers of the truth and the way. No this is a whole lie. There is no such group as "the keepers of he truth and the way" The non-skeptics of proclaimed science. Those who believe in science are skeptics by nature thus their use of sience as opposed to listening to someone's imaginary friend. "faulty fundamental research" is corrected via peer review and the scientific method. All would be well in the world if only the skeptics would STFU, and stop standing in the way of science. Since the scientist are the sceptics this would be a non sequeter and the beginning of the "whole lie" In today's world, brimful as it is with opinion and falsehoods masquerading as facts, you'd think the one place you can depend on for verifiable facts is science. You'd be wrong. Many billions of dollars' worth of wrong. No I would not be wrong. A few years ago, scientists at the Thousand Oaks biotech firm Amgen set out to double-check the results of 53 landmark papers in their fields of cancer research and blood biology. Gee...that sounds a lot like peer review. The idea was to make sure that research on which Amgen was spending millions of development dollars still held up. Are we to believe that these scientists and capitalist did not check first to see if this shit was right? They figured that a few of the studies would fail the test — that the original results couldn't be reproduced because the findings were especially novel or described fresh therapeutic approaches. But what they found was startling: Of the 53 landmark papers, only six could be proved valid. Why is this startling? Why is it startling that only about ten percent of unvalidated work was validatable?[8\|]duuuuuhhhhh "Even knowing the limitations of preclinical research," observed C. Glenn Begley, then Amgen's head of global cancer research, "this was a shocking result." So ol glen was surprised to find out that he had not been doing his job screening the shit that money was being spent on?Dang that could get a lesser man fired. Unfortunately, it wasn't unique. A group at Bayer HealthCare in Germany similarly found that only 25% of published papers on which it was basing R&D projects could be validated, suggesting that projects in which the firm had sunk huge resources should be abandoned. Once again are we being asked to believe that a corporation like bayer was so stupid that it did not validate preliminary research before sinking "huge resources" into?[8\|] Whole fields of research, including some in which patients were already participating in clinical trials, are based on science that hasn't been, and possibly can't be, validated. this would seem like grounds for some sort of tort action against bayer...testing shit on people that had not been thoroughly tested and validated... what sort of company are they? "The thing that should scare people is that so many of these important published studies turn out to be wrong when they're investigated further," says Michael Eisen, a biologist at UC Berkeley and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The Economist recently estimated spending on biomedical R&D in industrialized countries at $59 billion a year. That's how much could be at risk from faulty fundamental research. What the fuck is the point of this diatribe? That koprorate punkassmotherfuckers in their headlong rush for profits failed to notice that the shit they wanted to sell did not work? That any fool would try to blame science for the failure of marketing seems asanine on it's surface.

deathtothepixies -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 5:20:19 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Yachtie Science is to be trusted. Well done on finding this damning report of science, that pretty much wraps it up doesn't it? If you don't like science then "go"( f word edit) off into the woods and live on bark and berries. Hope you don't get sick while your out there with no medicine, hope a bear doesn't get hold of you without a gun to protect you. The rest of us will carry on, as will the scientists. Mistakes will be made along the way, but so will progress. We'll come and get you when you're ready

DomKen -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 5:27:15 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Yachtie quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen Replication is what the article is about. Huge numbers of scientists are not committing fraud. Sometimes, a lot of times actually, a study can have what is a statistically significant outcome but when repeated on a larger or different population it doesn't. Sometimes the original researchers failed to account for some factor that skewed their results etc. But what they found was startling: Of the 53 landmark papers, only six could be proved valid. "Even knowing the limitations of preclinical research," observed C. Glenn Begley, then Amgen's head of global cancer research, "this was a shocking result." Failed to account you say. Like errors and flaws? Eisen says the more important flaw in the publication model is that the drive to land a paper in a top journal — Nature and Science lead the list — encourages researchers to hype their results, especially in the life sciences. Peer review, in which a paper is checked out by eminent scientists before publication, isn't a safeguard. Eisen says the unpaid reviewers seldom have the time or inclination to examine a study enough to unearth errors or flaws. Failed to account for some factor. It happens. Researchers are not perfect and things that the researcher did not consider relevant turns out to be relevant or the researcher plain overlooked something. and sometimes the mistake is what leads to a breakthrough. Also note the article doesn't say what "proved valid" means. No scientist would use such terminology. It's likely that some of those studies, since they appear to have been biological experiments, had results just above the threshold for statistical significance and when these new researchers tried to replicate them they got just under the threshold which is quite common. That's why when the popular press breathlessly announces some "breakthrough" that will cure something in 5 or 10 years quite often 5 or 10 years later there still is no cure. Consider if you're testing the efficacy of a new cancer drug and it has worked in primates and seems to work in human tissue in the lab. Your next step is often testing on patients with end stage cancer, that is terminal patients. These people have often been through many rounds of chemo and/or radiation as well as possibly other experimental treatments. So if a few tumors shrink after getting the new drug is it a result of the new drug? Or some delayed result from some other treatment or is it one of the rare cases where tumors shrink on their own? Maybe in a population of 100 it shrinks 6 tumors where statisticall significance is 5. Maybe some other researcher tries the same thing and only 4 tumors shrink. Now what? Does the drug work or not?

EdBowie -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 6:28:02 PM)
'Only 6 were proven to be valid' does not necessarily mean that the rest were proven to be fraudulent or unworkable. But if enough people are ready to give up on a science based lifestyle, I'm thinking of starting an airline that would only use the laws of physics on take off... At cruising altitude, the planes will switch over to faith driven perpetual motion engines. If you would like a ticket let me know, I think this would be a great way to fund a 100% faith based hospital, that doesn't waste people's time with science and it's errors.

NoBimbosAllowed -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 6:32:29 PM)
I think that quarterbacks who rarely read books that deal with anything beyond football history and training techniques are the best advocates for libraries. I think people who fail to recognize that the more emotional a person is, the less applicable they are to scream 'rah rah, go science, boo boo, bad Believer'. Since that behaviour is basically the same as the asswipes who attacked Hypatia and burned the library, the records of science, she loves.

DesideriScuri -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 7:06:20 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: EdBowie 'Only 6 were proven to be valid' does not necessarily mean that the rest were proven to be fraudulent or unworkable. While this is absolutely true, it still isn't really smart to base research on science that hasn't been validated.

DomKen -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 8:15:19 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DesideriScuri quote: ORIGINAL: EdBowie 'Only 6 were proven to be valid' does not necessarily mean that the rest were proven to be fraudulent or unworkable. While this is absolutely true, it still isn't really smart to base research on science that hasn't been validated. Actually it is. Which makes more sense, exactly replicating an experiment or using the conclusion of that experiment to design another experiment? Either way validates or invalidates the original experiment but only one potentially adds anything to our knowledge. Keep in mind research budgets are incredibly tight.

NoBimbosAllowed -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 8:58:52 PM)
"exactly replicating an experiment or using the conclusion of that experiment to design another experiment? Either way validates or invalidates the original experiment but only one potentially adds anything to our knowledge. Keep in mind research budgets are incredibly tight." Rather like Synods and Cloisters do, Deacon Dom.

graceadieu -> RE: stop standing in the way of science (10/28/2013 8:59:48 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: DomKen Also note the article doesn't say what "proved valid" means. No scientist would use such terminology. Yeah, I was wondering about that. Science doesn't - can't - work by proving something absolutely. That's impossible. Scientists can only prove that some result is statistically significant - and over time, with that and other related findings, you can build a mountain of evidence for something. But even that's still not absolute proof, it's just the most accurate explanation that we have now. So what does "proved valid" even mean, in terms of the scientific method?

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