I don't have that much faith in some science especially with food.
Here’s Why Science Can’t Make Up Its Mind
Hundreds of scientists from around the world redid 100 psychology studies. Fewer than half reproduced the original results.
posted on Aug. 27, 2015, at 2:01 p.m.
Cat Ferguson
Red wine is good for you. Or bad for you. Or good for you. And coffee drinkers have a better shot at surviving cancer. And men prefer women wearing red. And millennials are selfish narcissists. And there’s a “liberal gene.” And semen is an antidepressant.
These stories make for good headlines. But science isn’t a lightning bolt. It’s an incremental process: Slivers of evidence build on each other, over long periods of time, to (hopefully!) get at the truth.
Unfortunately, that means that scientific studies are often wrong — or, at least, aren’t strong enough to show what they claim to. This sobering fact is underscored in a large study published Thursday in the journal Science showing that more than half of psychology studies can’t be replicated.
The study was carried out by 270 researchers from 17 countries. They tried to reproduce the findings of 100 different psychology studies — everything from whether having what we want makes us happy to whether white people look at a black person in the room when they hear racist remarks.
This so-called Reproducibility Project: Psychology is the largest-ever effort to systematically redo social science experiments. And its results are somewhat disheartening: Researchers were able to replicate the findings of just 39 out of 100 studies.
“As a social psychologist I feel like, ugh, boy, I wish we were doing better than this,” Brian Nosek, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and leader of the new study, told BuzzFeed News. “We hope that any individual study provides the answer, but they almost never do. Any study is just a single piece of evidence.”
...
There are plenty of examples of famous studies that were totally wrong, like the faked study showing that talking to gay people makes you more likely to support gay marriage.
And some of the studies that didn’t replicate in the Reproducibility Project got news coverage when they were published, including one that suggested people who have less faith in free will are more likely to cheat.
So just because scientists can’t repeat an experiment once doesn’t mean the findings are wrong. But the next time you read about a hot new study, take it with a grain of salt. Or a lot of salt. Or as little salt as you can manage.
Science Frauds Who Steal Tons Of Federal Money Almost Never Go To Jail
Here’s Why Science Can’t Make Up Its Mind
Here’s Why Science Can’t Make Up Its Mind
Hundreds of scientists from around the world redid 100 psychology studies. Fewer than half reproduced the original results.
posted on Aug. 27, 2015, at 2:01 p.m.
Cat Ferguson
Red wine is good for you. Or bad for you. Or good for you. And coffee drinkers have a better shot at surviving cancer. And men prefer women wearing red. And millennials are selfish narcissists. And there’s a “liberal gene.” And semen is an antidepressant.
These stories make for good headlines. But science isn’t a lightning bolt. It’s an incremental process: Slivers of evidence build on each other, over long periods of time, to (hopefully!) get at the truth.
Unfortunately, that means that scientific studies are often wrong — or, at least, aren’t strong enough to show what they claim to. This sobering fact is underscored in a large study published Thursday in the journal Science showing that more than half of psychology studies can’t be replicated.
The study was carried out by 270 researchers from 17 countries. They tried to reproduce the findings of 100 different psychology studies — everything from whether having what we want makes us happy to whether white people look at a black person in the room when they hear racist remarks.
This so-called Reproducibility Project: Psychology is the largest-ever effort to systematically redo social science experiments. And its results are somewhat disheartening: Researchers were able to replicate the findings of just 39 out of 100 studies.
“As a social psychologist I feel like, ugh, boy, I wish we were doing better than this,” Brian Nosek, a psychologist at the University of Virginia and leader of the new study, told BuzzFeed News. “We hope that any individual study provides the answer, but they almost never do. Any study is just a single piece of evidence.”
...
There are plenty of examples of famous studies that were totally wrong, like the faked study showing that talking to gay people makes you more likely to support gay marriage.
And some of the studies that didn’t replicate in the Reproducibility Project got news coverage when they were published, including one that suggested people who have less faith in free will are more likely to cheat.
So just because scientists can’t repeat an experiment once doesn’t mean the findings are wrong. But the next time you read about a hot new study, take it with a grain of salt. Or a lot of salt. Or as little salt as you can manage.
Science Frauds Who Steal Tons Of Federal Money Almost Never Go To Jail
Here’s Why Science Can’t Make Up Its Mind
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