jupitersterrain four

14 September 2012 12:14PM

"In many respects, psychology is at a crossroads ? the decisions we take now will determine whether or not it remains a serious, credible, scientific discipline along with the harder sciences," says Chris Chambers, a psychologist at Cardiff University

oh here we go the you don't need therapy brigade usually someone with very serious issues festering in them from child abuse or adoption that prefers to dump out on people anything rather than actually go and talk about their feelings

"We have to be open about the problems that exist in psychology and understand that, though they're not unique to psychology, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be addressing them. If we do that, we can end up leading the other sciences rather than following them

um thats for like psychologists to do rather than lay people like yourselves would you undertake a review of the latest technology in plumbing for instance?

Cases of scientific misconduct tend to hit the headlines precisely because scientists are supposed to occupy a moral high ground when it comes to the search for truth about nature. The scientific method developed as a way to weed out human bias. But scientists, like anyone else, can be prone to bias in their bid for a place in the history books

groan another one of those tedious state the obvious articles that you have to read nevertheless because people are influenced by them. Scientists do not have a moral high ground they just know more about science than non scientists doh ?

Massaged results can send other researchers down the wrong track, wasting time and money trying to replicate them. Worse, in medicine, it can delay the development of life-saving treatments or prolong the use of therapies that are ineffective or dangerous. Malpractice comes to light rarely, perhaps because scientific fraud is often easy to perpetrate but hard to uncover

well yes this is where your linear statists addicted heart falls down. You can't have forensic evidence for everything in life ? some of it is qualitative ? the fruits of the treatment not only on those treated but also people that have been affected in the manufacturing of them ?

At the other end are questionable practices such as adding an author's name to a paper when they have not contributed to the work, sloppiness in methods or not disclosing conflicts of interest

good point there .. .

If things go wrong, the responsibility to investigate and punish misconduct rests with the scientists' employers, the academic institution

no if things 'go wrong' its the responsibility of anyone that knows about it to say something ?

"Just the fact that the software is out there and there are people who can look at stuff, that has really alerted the world to the fact that plagiarism and redundant publication are probably way more common than we realised,"

and that makes it ok does it ?

The refrain from many scientists is that the scientific method is meant to be self-correcting. Bad results, corrupt data or fraud will get found out ? either when they cannot be replicated or when they are proved incorrect in subsequent studies ? and public retractions are a sign of strength

indeed ? it is very important to be self critical and to retract things that are not true and also to test with null hypothesis and etc until you are sure that what you are saying is the truth which does tend to come out in the wash especially when everyone is going on about it ?
*********
submitted

Katyia14 September 2012 12:23PM

And, often, research studies are very difficult to replicate. "If someone says they did a 15-year clinical study with 9,000 subjects and they publish their results, you may have to take their word for it because you're not going to be able to run out and recruit 9,000 patients of your own and do a 15-year study just to try to corroborate something that somebody else has done," says Fang

people do sometimes though if they feel the need to get their teeth into a juicy bit of research ?

If it turned out that only the price of a single type of instrument, violins, say, went up after people had listened to Mozart, it would be possible to publish a research paper that omitted the fact that the researchers had ever asked about any other instruments. This would not allow the reader to make a proper assessment of the strength of the effect that Mozart may (or may not) have on how much a person would pay for musical instruments

that is pretty basic statistics there Alok factoring in the variables and that ?

In a separate study, Fanelli found that "the odds of reporting a positive result were around five times higher among papers in the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry and economics and business compared with space science"

oh right and he's really tested that one out thoroughly himself ? why does everyone have to dis psychology? probably because they are afraid that they need it ? if you have a rotting tooth you need a um dentist right ? and so ?

"We have a culture which values novelty above all else, neophilia really, and that creates a strong publication bias," says Chambers. "To get into a good journal, you have to be publishing something novel, it helps if it's counter-intuitive and it also has to be a positive finding. You put those things together and you create a dangerous problem for the field."

well thats life isn't ? original ideas are hot property ? the property of the person that made it ?

"The reason the public stops trusting institutions is when [its members] say things like, 'There's nothing to see here, let us handle it,' and then they find out about something bad that happened that nobody handled. That's when mistrust builds

yeah ok thats a good one

The following year, Hwang published results showing he had made stem cell lines from the skin of patients ? a technique that could help create personalised cures for people with degenerative diseases. By 2006, however, Hwang's career was in tatters when it emerged that he had fabricated material for his research papers

hilarious!

The alarm was raised by some of his students, who disagreed with Hauser's interpretations of experiments that involved the, somewhat subjective, procedure of working out a monkey's thoughts based on its response to some sight or sound.

that is a standard and widespread experiment like making new brands of scouring powder I mean people insist on these things being done its like saying please don't brush your teeth ? and just to add a bit more to the subject of plagiarism in the age of surveillance ... it is also very feral and aggressive at the moment with people having much quicker and cheaper access to other peoples creative and personal material ... with my own I feel I have to publish and copyright it it immediately before someone else gets their sweaty little imagination free hands on it ... surely Im not alone in that feeling which also extends into the legalities of privacy which no doubt there will be an article on in the next few days ...
************
submitted
***************
nb the norwegian prosser is not welcome to ogle intimate footage of me to titilalte itself ...