Headline Jan 05, 2018/ ''' SCIENCE SO SERENE '''

''' SCIENCE SO SERENE '''

NOT ALL SCIENTISTS -are equally prone to producing dubious results. The main culprits, an intensive research shows are in social science and medical research..........

BUT lets give science a real chance.

Some news from the human realm was equally promising. While scientists and interested citizens marched for science last spring, statisticians have been more quietly labouring for cause of science by helping scientists produce less bunk.

NOT all scientists are equally prone to producing dubious results. 

The main culprits are in social science and medical research. Both fields came under questioning when reviews of published studies showed that fewer than half were readily reproducible.

The source of the problem doesn't seem to be that scientists are making up data, but that too many are making big mistakes in the way they use statistical calculations to draw conclusions from their data.

The American Statistical Association [ASA] has been on a mission to help scientists in these fields find a better way. 

In 2016, ASA issued a set of guidelines for scientists on how to avoid the most common abuses. Then statisticians and interested scientists held a meeting in October in Bethesda, Maryland, to start out hashing out new systems for doing things right.

The week after the meeting, the depth of the problem came through in a New York Times Magazine story headlined;

''When the revolution came for Amy Cuddy''.

The protagonist, a young Harvard professor, was portrayed as a victim. Her claim -which led to a bestselling book and the most popular TED talk in history -was that the less powerful people of the world could get a leg up through a sort of body language she'd dubbed ''power posing''.

Several independent researchers tried and failed to replicate her alleged scientific proof of the power of posing. Then, a group of statistics-savvy psychologists found flaws in her math and reasoning:

As the subtitle of the Times story proclaimed, ''She played by the rules and won big....then,.. suddenly the rules changed.''

And yet, the old ''rules'' were never rules at all, but common statistical errors, or cheats that got accepted in problematic fields just as drivers sometimes know they can get away with driving 40 mph in certain 25 mph zones.

When physicist Richard Feynman started nosing around in psychology labs way back in the 1960s, he found some researchers were making errors [or cheating] in a way that inflated a quantity known as ''statistical significance'', which is poorly understood and yet a primary criterion for publication in psychology journals.

Psychologist Gerd Giegerenzer identified statistical trouble in a 2004 paper, ''Mindless Statistics'' .

In 2011, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Uri Simonsohn and colleagues published a paper demonstrating that widely used statistical cheats made standards so loose they could drive just about any absurd claim.  

The Times story makes a good case that Amy Cuddy was a victim of inexcusable bullying, mostly in anonymous comments following allegedly respectable academic blog posts. But abuse of statistical methods has its own victims -patients who may not be getting the best treatments possible and-

*Taxpayers whose money can end up funding flashy but flawed science while honest, quality science get starved*.

These are challenging times for scientists. The March for Science happened because, after the 2016 election, scientists got worried they were not valued. 

The US President Donald Trump failed to choose a science advisor, and ignored the opinions of  climate scientists when he exited the Paris Climate Treaty. He's cut areas of science funding and disbanded important advisory groups, including-

One panel aimed at improving the poor-quality forensic science often used in the criminal justice system.

IF scientists are going to fight back, they need to shore up their weakest areas. Getting scientists to improve their use of statistics won't be easy. It will take some serious planning and patience.

Bit if ravens can do it, surely researchers can as well.

With respectful dedication to the Scientists, Students, Professors and Teachers of the world. See Ya all Register on !WOW! -the World Students Society and Twitter-!E-WOW! -the Ecosystem 2011:

''' Gold & Dirt '''

Good Night and God Bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless