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Post by: BrassScorpion
I hear some of the ridiculous arguments shot down here all too often, so I found this article particularly amusing: http://www.blaghag.com/2010/05/your-personal-opinion-does-not-trump.html Your personal opinion does not trump scientific studies As a scientist, one of my big pet peeves is when someone tries to use a personal anecdote to disprove a scientific study. "Cigarette are bad for you?! But my grandpa chain smoked until he was 96, and he was healthy as an ox!" Great for your grandpa! ...But that's irrelevant. The whole purpose of science is to reduce our biases. Looking at your sample size of one (Grandpa) is going to lead you to the wrong conclusion about what's going on with smoking. Your grandpa was an outlier - and while that is interesting, the vast majority of people suffer harmful effects from smoking. But my bigger pet peeve is when someone's culture, personal opinion, or political belief stands in the way of them accepting science. For example, during our unit on aggression in my Social Psychology class, we talked about cultural causes for aggression. One example was the Southern Culture of Honor. People who grow up in this culture see a perceived insult as a threat to their ego, which increases testosterone levels* and violent cognitions, and can lead to acts of violence. Southern cities and states have much higher White homicide rates than those populated by northerners**, and in Southern states homicides exceed suicides. Effects of Insults on Testosterone levels in Southerner and Northerner Participants  When I mentioned this in a tweet, some of my Southern followers got angry and said it wasn't true, and tried to provide anecdotal evidence about how kind and helpful Southerners are. Your neighbors may be sweet, but that doesn't negate an overall trend. Scientific studies aren't saying that all southerners are homicidal maniacs. Though you know, getting angry at a perceived insult doesn't exactly help your cause... Another topic within aggression that really riles people up is spanking. Numerous studies have been done showing that spanking children increases antisocial*** and aggressive**** behavior. But when people who have been spanked or spank their children hear about this, they get very defensive. I can't recall the number of times I've heard "Well I was spanked, and I turned out fine!" or "I spanked my kids and now they're little angels!" I'm sorry, but 1) Your specific experience does not negate the average response seen in hundreds of families, and 2) Your evaluation isn't necessarily correct. You could very well have had an increase in antisocial or aggressive behavior, but you didn't have a psychologist assessing your behavior, did you? I'd really like to see a psychological study on why people like to defend spanking. Do they hate thinking that their parents did something wrong? Do they hate having to come up with a better (and possibly less easy) disciplinary action? And last, but not least: political beliefs that get in the way of accepting science. The one that bugs me the most are feminists who are such huge supporters of female equality that they simply cannot accept that males and females do differ in certain ways. For one, you kind of can't ignore that (biologically typical) males and females differ physically - we kind of have different reproductive organs and chromosomes. We also have different secondary sex characteristics - males are going to be slightly stronger and larger on average. And because our biology differs, it's not insane to suggest our psychology differs. Saying men are better in some areas and women are better in others does not mean one is superior to another. Saying men may have certain mating strategies and females may have different ones does not mean one is morally superior, or that either are things we should actually do - humans are not simply slaves to their biology, after all. There are differences between the sexes in almost every species where there are two different sexes - humans aren't exempt. To deny these differences because they don't jibe with your political beliefs is simply unscientific. Now, I know I'm not perfect. There have definitely been times where I've been skeptical of a study when I personally didn't like the results - it's human nature (especially when the study is saying something delicious is bad for your health). But the thing about being a scientist is reducing our biases as much as possible. So next time you find yourself giving anecdotal evidence, remember: Your personal opinion may be an interesting new hypothesis, but until you do a study of your own, it does not trump previous scientific research. * Cohen et al (1996) Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South **Myers (2008) Social Psychology *** Strauss et al (1997) **** Taylor (2010) in Pediatrics
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Post by: Da Boss
Heh, good article. I like to use the quote-
"The plural of anecdote is not data."
to express the same sentiment.
That said, looking critically at scientific studies is important. The amount of bad science that gets past peer review is shocking!
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Post by: MrDwhitey
I approve of this.
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Post by: Kilkrazy
When I mentioned this in a tweet, some of my Southern followers got angry and said it wasn't true
The irony, the savage irony!
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Post by: dogma
Da Boss wrote:
That said, looking critically at scientific studies is important.
The problem is that your average Joe doesn't know how think critically about scientific studies. This is particularly true of the social sciences, because very few people seem to understand statistics, as illustrated in the article.
Da Boss wrote:
The amount of bad science that gets past peer review is shocking!
No joke.
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Post by: Da Boss
In my experience, plenty of hard scientists don't understand statistics very well, either. A side effect of the way we mass produce PhD candidates I think.
I was a poor statistician until I got some pretty intensive training, and even then my knowledge is limited to experimental design and risk analysis.
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Post by: dogma
Da Boss wrote:In my experience, plenty of hard scientists don't understand statistics very well, either. A side effect of the way we mass produce PhD candidates I think.
I was a poor statistician until I got some pretty intensive training, and even then my knowledge is limited to experimental design and risk analysis.
It also doesn't help that statistics are exceedingly tedious.
Multivariate calculus allows you to discover beautiful truths about the Universe, and stats allows you to perform lots of addition, and maybe fill in Excel spreadsheets.
And God help the person that needs to use R.
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Post by: warpcrafter
There is a point where millions of corroborating anecdotes gain a weight of their own. That's what us non-scientists call common sense. Perhaps if scientists possessed some of that, their science would have a better reception.
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Post by: Da Boss
I dunno, analysing data can be fun, if the data is interesting. But yeah, the way stats was taught at undergrad did not endear the subject to me. I think epidemiology is probably one of the few fields where it gets really exciting.
The stats in most social science studies is complete bunk anyway due to various sampling biases and subjective measures though. I wish they'd stop trying to appropriate the scientific method for things it's not well suited to "proving". Some things are better investigated using other paradigms.
Edit: Warpcrafter, we're not bothered about the reception of our work. We're bothered about getting to the bottom of things. Common sense often isn't.
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Post by: Soladrin
warpcrafter wrote:There is a point where millions of corroborating anecdotes gain a weight of their own. That's what us non-scientists call common sense. Perhaps if scientists possessed some of that, their science would have a better reception.
But if you compile all those anecdotes to form a defense or whatever, it's not anecdotal anymore, it's a statistic. 
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Post by: Ahtman
Scientific studies show that common sense doesn't actually exist as a real thing, but as a rhetorical tool for dismissing scientific studies.
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Post by: Da Boss
Soldarin:No it isn't. Or at least, it's not a very reliable statistc. To tell anything from statistics you need to make sure your samples are a true representation of the total population (whatever that is), by ensuring a truly random sample and a sufficiently large population size. The plural of anecdote is not data because these sampling criteria will not be met.
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Post by: Soladrin
I'd think that if theres literaly a million (as warpcraft said) of individual anecdotes that are all the same it's pretty random and of a sufficiently large population...
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Post by: Da Boss
Not really. It MIGHT be, but I'd be extremely skeptical. It depends bigtime on how the anecdotes are collected and what they are in relation to.
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Post by: biccat
Awwww...look at the social scientist pretending that his studies actually prove something.
How cute.
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Post by: Soladrin
Obvious troll is obvious.
And Da Boss, I by no means claim to know what the hell we are talking about, it's just how I thought it would work.. somehow.
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Post by: biccat
Soladrin wrote:Obvious troll is obvious.
Social 'scientists' see correlation and view it as causation. They don't conduct experiments (mainly because they'd be unethical as HELL) to reduce variables and isolate causes, they manipulate statistics to propose how people behave. You can use statistical analysis to isolate variables and form a hypothesis, but it's not something that can be tested, nor does it explain outliers.
Take the example cited in the linked article: Cigarettes cause cancer. Someone mentions "No, my grandpa smoked for 90 years and never got cancer." A scientist would look at this as a challenge to his hypothesis and either reform the hypothesis or otherwise distinguish the outlier. Social scientists just say "Well, he's an outlier."
That's not science, that's statistics.
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Post by: Soladrin
That doesn't make your previous post less trolling 
It's all mumbo jumbo to me anyway.
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Post by: Melissia
Meh, I have no problem accepting that there's differences between men and women, I just think pop culture and societal expectations exaggerates them far more than they are naturally. We don't have a control for those kinds of studies.
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Post by: Soladrin
Where are the hermaphrodites when you need them?!
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Post by: darkPrince010
I think it's amazing people refuse to accept or even interpret scientific studies. While you have your full right to critically analyze and call aspects of a study into question (Participant number, objectivity of researchers, methods used, etc) it baffles me that some people stick their proverbial fingers in their ears and ignore valid studies. Feel free to disagree, but provide better reasons than "my little internal voice says no!" @biccat: While I certainly believe hard science conclusions have more weight than social sciences, most social sciences actually do provide accurate and/or useful results. I agree studies like "General feelings of happiness in the US" are fairly subjective, but correlation of specific verbal cues to produce measured differences in internal hormone levels seems solid to me. @Soladrin: A million might do it, but iirc, psychological studies that broad need to include disparate genders, ethnicities, social classes, etc in order to qualify. This is mainly to avoid getting a sample of "A million! (Middle class caucasian straight males)."
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Post by: dogma
warpcrafter wrote:There is a point where millions of corroborating anecdotes gain a weight of their own. That's what us non-scientists call common sense. Perhaps if scientists possessed some of that, their science would have a better reception.
Sure, if people were told what they wanted to hear they would be more likely to believe what they're told. Funnily enough there's a phrase used to denote this phenomenon, one which is often used in scientific criticism.
In any case, common sense is just a euphemism for "what I believe, but cannot explain." and appeals to it generally mark a lack of intellectual rigor.
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Post by: Soladrin
I thought common sense was... touching a hot stove hurts. Stuff like that.
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Post by: Ahtman
darkPrince010 wrote:This is mainly to avoid getting a sample of "A million! (Middle class caucasian straight males)."
But they are the most important demo of them all!
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Post by: dogma
biccat wrote:
Social 'scientists' see correlation and view it as causation.
Really? Is that why all those social science papers I read differentiate between correlation and causation?
biccat wrote:
They don't conduct experiments (mainly because they'd be unethical as HELL) to reduce variables and isolate causes, they manipulate statistics to propose how people behave. You can use statistical analysis to isolate variables and form a hypothesis, but it's not something that can be tested, nor does it explain outliers.
The isolation of variables is testing. You're confusing the general concept of "test" with the particular type of test that is "experiment".
biccat wrote:
Take the example cited in the linked article: Cigarettes cause cancer. Someone mentions "No, my grandpa smoked for 90 years and never got cancer." A scientist would look at this as a challenge to his hypothesis and either reform the hypothesis or otherwise distinguish the outlier. Social scientists just say "Well, he's an outlier."
So, you've never actually read a social science journal, have you? Because, while the behavior you describe does occur (just like it does in the hard sciences, go figure) it certainly isn't definitive of the the entire category of "social scientists."
biccat wrote:
That's not science, that's statistics.
They aren't mutually exclusive. Statistics are often used in the hard sciences. Automatically Appended Next Post: Soladrin wrote:I thought common sense was... touching a hot stove hurts. Stuff like that.
Unless you have a particular genetic disorder, or significant nerve damage.
And then we have to wonder if, while touching the stove hurts, hurting is bad. Some people enjoy pain.
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Post by: Soladrin
Well played...
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Post by: dogma
darkPrince010 wrote:
@biccat: While I certainly believe hard science conclusions have more weight than social sciences, most social sciences actually do provide accurate and/or useful results. I agree studies like "General feelings of happiness in the US" are fairly subjective, but correlation of specific verbal cues to produce measured differences in internal hormone levels seems solid to me.
It is also important to note that, while a study might be titled in a provocative manner, the conclusion of that study will rarely be so provocative.
Academics love nothing more than pointing out when their peers screw the pooch, so most of us are pretty good at not making overly bold claims. There are, of course, outliers (  ) who make their careers on bold claims (John Mueller, Chomsky, Alex Wendt, Dicky Dawkins, Einstein), or defending them (Ken Waltz, Huntington).
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Post by: darkPrince010
Plus, common sense for people varies. Some believe not sticking your hand in a fire or licking a frozen lamppost is common sense, while others believe the tenets of their religion or theory of evolution are common sense.
The biggest problem is when people try to use their "common sense" as a replacement for actual proof. I believe evolution is "common sense" (my belief, not nessesarily anyone else's), but unlike some beliefs it can and has been backed up by libraries of scientific data to support it.
EDIT: Also, proving a theory or conclusion wrong using hard, scientific evidence instead of saying "That goes against my gut feeling" is the entire basis of our modern process of scientific rational. If I prove the above study on "Southern Honor" wrong by using a similar test group but a set of different verbal cues or environments and get a drastically lower testosterone result, I can scientifically say the theory is not valid and needs to be reworked to account for the aspects I discovered in my study. Just saying "Well not all Southern People are hot-tempered" disproves nothing. IMO, this is why science and religion (and to a lesser degree, politics in some places) have mixed very badly in the past and present.
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Post by: dogma
Da Boss wrote:I dunno, analysing data can be fun, if the data is interesting.
The analysis is fun, but the entry, that's a curse on men.
Da Boss wrote:
But yeah, the way stats was taught at undergrad did not endear the subject to me. I think epidemiology is probably one of the few fields where it gets really exciting.
Anything involving a survey is fun, because so very many people confuse responses to a particular question with a statement of general truth.
Obviously this happens most often in politics, in which we see very large variation in responses to questions differing by only a single word.
Da Boss wrote:
The stats in most social science studies is complete bunk anyway due to various sampling biases and subjective measures though. I wish they'd stop trying to appropriate the scientific method for things it's not well suited to "proving". Some things are better investigated using other paradigms.
Yeah, psychology is probably the worst for that. Something like 75-80% of the aggregate sample of psych studies is composed of American college students aged 18-23.
Politics and economics do alright though, as there is enough funding to sample a broad spectrum of populations.
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Post by: Howard A Treesong
OP can be summed up thus - anecdote does not make for data. BrassScorpion wrote:
That's a terrible graph, what does it even mean? There's no labels. You can't seriously criticise people's use of statistics and then present a graph elsewhere with no labels on the axis or a unit of measurement (what does the y axis even measure), error bars, an indication of significance in the data... I think I've had this topic before. People generally only want to accept science when it corroborates their personal opinion. That's why people deny reality itself to pretend that climate change is a fraud, or that the Earth is 6000 years old, or that vaccines will kill your kids. On the subject of statistics, I've just put together a 10,000 cell Excel table today with all my statistical data for my PhD. Statistics? Don't talk to me about statistics.
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Post by: dogma
darkPrince010 wrote:Plus, common sense for people varies. Some believe not sticking your hand in a fire or licking a frozen lamppost is common sense, while others believe the tenets of their religion or theory of evolution are common sense.
The biggest problem is when people try to use their "common sense" as a replacement for actual proof. I believe evolution is "common sense" (my belief, not nessesarily anyone else's), but unlike some beliefs it can and has been backed up by libraries of scientific data to support it.
I suppose one could argue that "common sense" amounts to base rationales like "do things you enjoy" and "don't do things you do not enjoy." Unfortunately, as several of us have noted, that isn't how its often used.
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Post by: Ahtman
In all fairness everyone else disagrees with studies they don't like the results of because of ignorance and bias, whereas I am actually capable of knowing which ones are to be trusted and which ones are suspect in their findings because I am better equipped to do so. I know this because a study told me so; I found the results very agreeable.
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Post by: darkPrince010
True. Common sense imo should apply more towards personal preservation instincts (Like said aversion to hot things and digits intermingling), and not towards interpretation of scientific fact ("Despite overhwelming scientific support, I disbelieve global warming because it's snowing, so the globe couldn't possibly be too warm! Plus a well-dressed politician on [Varmit] News told me so...")
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Post by: dogma
Howard A Treesong wrote:
That's a terrible graph, what does it even mean? There's no labels.
Its percent change, at least if this is the original source of the book's data.
Howard A Treesong wrote:
You can't seriously criticise people's use of statistics and then present a graph elsewhere with no labels on the axis or a unit of measurement (what does the y axis even measure), error bars, an indication of significance in the data...
Social sciences have the terrible convention of presenting contextual information by way of end-notes and textual references. Also, lots of us simply assume the reader knows what we're talking about by convention.
It is very, very annoying.
Howard A Treesong wrote:
On the subject of statistics, I've just put together a 10,000 cell Excel table today with all my statistical data for my PhD. Statistics? Don't talk to me about statistics.
Excel? Why not PSAW? Automatically Appended Next Post: Ahtman wrote:In all fairness everyone else disagrees with studies they don't like the results of because of ignorance and bias, whereas I am actually capable of knowing which ones are to be trusted and which ones are suspect in their findings because I am better equipped to do so. I know this because a study told me so; I found the results very agreeable.
Well of course, you studied philosophy, which is basically the same thing as being Connor Macleod.
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Post by: darkPrince010
There can only be ONE (Philosophy major)
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Post by: dogma
darkPrince010 wrote:There can only be ONE (Philosophy major)...
...with gainful employment.
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Post by: Da Boss
Heh, yeah, entry. I kinda black that bit out. I had to use excel because my supervisor was uneasy about other methods. If he'd known how ganky excel was for that kind of statistics he'd have...well, probably not cared. He wasn't that great a scientist.
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Post by: dogma
To be honest, while I prefer PSAW for obvious reasons, having to use R in freshman stats has made me appreciate Excel.
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Post by: Ensis Ferrae
The problem that I have with scientific studies and the results of them, is when they are misused..
Take smoking for instance. The city of New York recently passed a law banning the use of cigarettes and other smoked tobacco (or just plain smoked) products in parks, sidewalks and basically any public and outdoor area. The politicians cited a study conducted by Stanford University, where they said basically that 2nd hand smoke, even outdoors is harmful.. This is the part that the politicians used, but what they failed to quote was the latter half of that.. IF the person exposed to 2nd hand smoke is within approximately 18 inches away from the smoker AND down wind of said smoke.
so yeah.. the part I really hate about scientific studies aren't the studies (for the most part) in and of themselves, its how politicians and the media at large will quote convenient bits of a study for their own ends. I'll not single any one out, because all sides do it.
I also hate how the military (particularly the Army, which I belong to) will present a new PT plan (physical training aka.. exercise) and say that they have "scientific studies" that prove that the exercises they preach in the manner that they preach are good for you, when I personally have found at least five different major universities who have their own studies that conclude the exact opposite. It's almost like there's a conspiracy to wreck soldiers bodies and leave them broken when they leave.
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Post by: Kilkrazy
Haven't heard of PSAW.
When I was on my business course, we used Excel to input the data and a specialist package to do the statistics. I can't remember its acronym.
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Post by: Da Boss
Excel is designed for accounting, it's really good for that.
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Post by: Kilkrazy
Business courses include quite a chunk of social psychology too.
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Post by: dogma
Kilkrazy wrote:Haven't heard of PSAW.
When I was on my business course, we used Excel to input the data and a specialist package to do the statistics. I can't remember its acronym.
PSAW is the new name of SPSS, which may have been what you used. STATA is another common program, as is Q.
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Post by: Howard A Treesong
I have other software for statistical analysis, I'm just compiling the data in Excel. Anyway, what I use needs to be compatible with others in work.
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Post by: Kilkrazy
dogma wrote:Kilkrazy wrote:Haven't heard of PSAW.
When I was on my business course, we used Excel to input the data and a specialist package to do the statistics. I can't remember its acronym.
PSAW is the new name of SPSS, which may have been what you used. STATA is another common program, as is Q.
Yes, SPSS was what I had.
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Post by: BearersOfSalvation
OTOH, a lot of people will accuse you of relying on personal opinion instead of science if you actually look at the whole study and not just the single number they like, or if you probe into what the study actually says, or if you point out that correlation is not causation. "Gosh there's a single study showing this thing, you must agree with me now" isn't really a useful argument technique. I mean, if you count 20-year-old gang members with felony convictions as 'children', you can make some really scary statistics about dangers to children.
Social science experiments (at least the ones that get in the news) also seem to jump to some really wild conclusions for no good reason. I remember one where some researchers went out and tried handing a $100 bill to people in the street. When a lot of people refused, they concluded that people have an innate dislike of unearned money, so this study got brought up a lot in political discussions. I never saw any adequate explanation of how they eliminated the explanation that people turned the money down because scam artists offer you some "free" money are way, way more common than researchers actually offering it for free.
Ensis Ferrae wrote:Take smoking for instance. The city of New York recently passed a law banning the use of cigarettes and other smoked tobacco (or just plain smoked) products in parks, sidewalks and basically any public and outdoor area. The politicians cited a study conducted by Stanford University, where they said basically that 2nd hand smoke, even outdoors is harmful.
On the one hand, the study isn't correct. On the other hand, I don't really want a lungful of smoke when I'm jogging in the park. I doubt that the study is the primary reason for the law, it's just something that gets said during debates to sound better. The laws generally come about because people just don't like cigarette smoke. Arguing bitterly about second hand smoke ignores the fact that, even if it's not dangerous to everyone, second hand smoke is nasty and dangerous to some people.
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Post by: kronk
Kilkrazy wrote:Haven't heard of PSAW.
When I was on my business course, we used Excel to input the data and a specialist package to do the statistics. I can't remember its acronym.
I use minitab to do a lot of my number crunching. Excel for organizing/formulating.
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Post by: dogma
BearersOfSalvation wrote: I mean, if you count 20-year-old gang members with felony convictions as 'children', you can make some really scary statistics about dangers to children.
Sure, which is why reading the definition section is important to understanding what a study is claiming.
BearersOfSalvation wrote:
I remember one where some researchers went out and tried handing a $100 bill to people in the street. When a lot of people refused, they concluded that people have an innate dislike of unearned money, so this study got brought up a lot in political discussions. I never saw any adequate explanation of how they eliminated the explanation that people turned the money down because scam artists offer you some "free" money are way, way more common than researchers actually offering it for free.
Assuming that your memory is accurate, a dislike of unearned money could be correlated with the prevalence of scam artists. The conclusion you phrased is constituted by the alternative you presented.
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Post by: biccat
dogma wrote:Really? Is that why all those social science papers I read differentiate between correlation and causation?
It's entirely likely that they are using "causation" to mean something that it doesn't.
For example, "smoking causes cancer" improperly implies that it is the act of smoking that causes cancer. This is demonstrably false as there is at least 1 person who has smoked but hasn't gotten cancer.
dogma wrote:The isolation of variables is testing. You're confusing the general concept of "test" with the particular type of test that is "experiment".
I understand that some people improperly label their analysis "testing." This does not make it so. A test is the application of facts to determine the viability of a hypothesis.
dogma wrote:So, you've never actually read a social science journal, have you? Because, while the behavior you describe does occur (just like it does in the hard sciences, go figure) it certainly isn't definitive of the the entire category of "social scientists."
I have it's nice you to ask. And I'll admit, there should probably be a difference between "serious social scientists" and "non-serious social scientists." Serious social scientists say that there is a positive correlation between smoking and cancer. Non-serious social scientists say smoking causes cancer.
The serious ones rarely get any airtime. And they don't write blogs like the one quoted.
dogma wrote:They aren't mutually exclusive. Statistics are often used in the hard sciences.
I never said that they are mutually exclusive. But they are also not the same thing. While statistics is an important area of mathematics, it isn't a substitute for scientific study.
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Post by: Kilkrazy
Smoking's relation to cancer is the province of medicine not social science.
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Post by: BearersOfSalvation
dogma wrote:Assuming that your memory is accurate, a dislike of unearned money could be correlated with the prevalence of scam artists. The conclusion you phrased is constituted by the alternative you presented.
Correlation, schmorrleation. There is a huge difference between "I am not accepting that money, it might be a scam artist" and "I am not accepting that money, I don't want unearned money", regardless of how much you convolute the phrasing.
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Post by: dogma
biccat wrote:
It's entirely likely that they are using "causation" to mean something that it doesn't.
For example, "smoking causes cancer" improperly implies that it is the act of smoking that causes cancer. This is demonstrably false as there is at least 1 person who has smoked but hasn't gotten cancer.
The act of smoking causes cancer if any person who has ever smoked has become afflicted with cancer as a result of smoking. Causation is not a process that is intrinsically governed by necessity.
biccat wrote:
I understand that some people improperly label their analysis "testing." This does not make it so. A test is the application of facts to determine the viability of a hypothesis.
I'm glad to see that you agree with me, even if it is unintentional. The application of facts to a hypothesis does not require experiment.
If I hypothesize that person X makes incorrect claims more often than correct ones, I can go back and look at claims person X has made in order to test my hypothesis about his propensity for making incorrect claims.
biccat wrote:
I have it's nice you to ask. And I'll admit, there should probably be a difference between "serious social scientists" and "non-serious social scientists." Serious social scientists say that there is a positive correlation between smoking and cancer. Non-serious social scientists say smoking causes cancer.
The serious ones rarely get any airtime. And they don't write blogs like the one quoted.
Sure they do. Bueno de Mesquita has a blog, and so does Chomsky, and so does Krugman, and so do several others. Most academics now have blogs, and often use them to rant about things which annoy them. Many serious social scientists also get a great deal of media attention, though what they say may not be particularly rigorous.
Are you attempting to use a characteristic irrelevant to claims that are made in order to attempt to discredit that claim?
biccat wrote:
I never said that they are mutually exclusive. But they are also not the same thing. While statistics is an important area of mathematics, it isn't a substitute for scientific study.
Indeed it isn't. Rather statistics are an element of scientific study.
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Post by: halonachos
dogma wrote:Automatically Appended Next Post:
Soladrin wrote:I thought common sense was... touching a hot stove hurts. Stuff like that.
Unless you have a particular genetic disorder, or significant nerve damage.
Which is not altogether that common.
dogma wrote:
And then we have to wonder if, while touching the stove hurts, hurting is bad. Some people enjoy pain.
Which is philosophy and not science.
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Post by: dogma
BearersOfSalvation wrote:
Correlation, schmorrleation. There is a huge difference between "I am not accepting that money, it might be a scam artist" and "I am not accepting that money, I don't want unearned money", regardless of how much you convolute the phrasing.
Yes, there is, but that isn't what you initially said. If you cannot even properly reference your own comments, then I doubt you can properly reference those of others.
To explain the issue: if I claim to dislike X, then I am making no comment on why I dislike X. It may be that X is often misleading, or that X is often detrimental, or that X is often delicious. It does not matter, all that matters is that X is a thing which I dislike.
Automatically Appended Next Post: halonachos wrote:
Which is philosophy and not science.
The many neuroscientists of the world disagree.
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Post by: Ahtman
Kilkrazy wrote:Smoking's relation to cancer is the province of medicine not social science.
More propaganda from the Medical-Industrial Complex!
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Post by: halonachos
Hurting is bad, but how the body interprets the pain is different. Sure there may be a release of endorphins when pain occurs which makes the person think that the pain is pleasurable we acknowledge it as a defect.
What you are implying is that hurting is not always bad because some people enjoy being hurt because they like pain which tends to head into philosphical territory. Scientific territory would say that some people perceive pain as pleasurable and that is due to some sort of biochemical mistake in the body.
Wondering whether or not hurting is bad is philosophy because in the medical field if you hurt someone then you are doing harm and harm is bad.
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Post by: dogma
halonachos wrote:
Wondering whether or not hurting is bad is philosophy because in the medical field if you hurt someone then you are doing harm and harm is bad.
Are you familiar with circular logic?
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Post by: biccat
dogma wrote:so does Chomsky, and so does Krugman
So since two experts in their fields have bomb-throwing political blogs, you think this is illustrative of the point?
Neither Krugman nor Chomsky would write something so trite (ok, maybe Krugman) in their fields. But that's assuming you consider him serious.
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Post by: halonachos
Not circular logic, I am merely stating that harm is bad in the medical field and saying why it is as opposed to philosphy where hurting may be good.
If I had said that hurting is always bad, the fact that bad is painful is proof of this, then it would be circular logic.
I said that in the medical field hurting is harm, which is bad in the medical field according to the hippocratic oath.
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Post by: darkPrince010
halonachos wrote:Wondering whether or not hurting is bad is philosophy because in the medical field if you hurt someone then you are doing harm and harm is bad.
Oooow...my brain...
Pain/hurt is not a "bad" thing; It's a biological response to certain stimuli to inform the host that certain conditions (usually unfavorable) are occuring. if this biological signal is interpreted within the brain as "pleasure," then this is aberrant and "wrong."
If, however, the person in question feels the pain, and derives pleasure from pain (experiencing both, and not getting an accidental swap such as the first example), this is also an aberrant behavior (Aberrant here meaning diffferent from the baseline). The philosophical debate is then whether or not having aberrant behavior is "good" or "bad," not whether or not it is psychologically "normal" or not (It isn't).
As an example: If I strongly enjoy the smell of skunk juice, regardless of whether or not it's philosophically "wrong or right," it's still an abnormal response when compared to the majority of other people. Wrong and right have different meanings depending on the criteria used to apply that label.
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Post by: dogma
biccat wrote:
So since two experts in their fields have bomb-throwing political blogs, you think this is illustrative of the point?
You claimed that "serious social scientists" do not have blogs like the one quoted. I provided examples of "serious social scientists" that have blogs like the one quoted.
I suppose direct evidence of a point in contravention to your own might not be something you consider to be illustrative, but then I imagine you're well above confirmation bias, so that simply doesn't seem likely.
biccat wrote:
Neither Krugman nor Chomsky would write something so trite (ok, maybe Krugman) in their fields.
I doubt that, as both men have written extensively on topics that either they, or others, have covered before. Additionally, they have both written extensively in other fields, often on matters that have been long since settled. Similarly, the quoted blog was written on philosophy of science by a person who appears to be a psychologist, so that what he penned was unoriginal is certainly forgivable.
biccat wrote:
But that's assuming you consider him serious.
Unless serious means "someone I like" I imagine very few people would ever consider Krugman "not serious". Having a Nobel prize and more than 200 publications tends to lead to being regarded with seriousness.
If, as I suspect, you are using serious in that capacity, then it would be kind of you to simply use the correct terminology, rather than attempting to dance around your point. Because, quite honestly, it seems at the moment that you aren't really taking issue with social scientists so much as social scientists who make points with which you do not agree. Automatically Appended Next Post: halonachos wrote:Not circular logic, I am merely stating that harm is bad in the medical field and saying why it is as opposed to philosphy where hurting may be good.
No, you stated that hurt constitutes harm. Leaving aside that the infliction of pain is not necessarily harmful in the sense relevant to medicine, claiming that X is Y and therefore assumptive of all properties of Y only follows if both X and Y exist as premises; meaning that you included your disputed premises in your conclusion.
halonachos wrote:
If I had said that hurting is always bad, the fact that bad is painful is proof of this, then it would be circular logic.
No, flatly incorrect. You should look up the concept of circular logic.
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Post by: efarrer
warpcrafter wrote:There is a point where millions of corroborating anecdotes gain a weight of their own. That's what us non-scientists call common sense. Perhaps if scientists possessed some of that, their science would have a better reception.
Except when it's done in a non scientific manner you get a bunch of yahoos reinforcing themselves.
What your describing is just mob think- which is generally wrong.
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Post by: generalgrog
I wish there was a scientific study that studied the effect of personal opinions on scientific studies.
GG
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Post by: AvatarForm
Howard A Treesong wrote:OP can be summed up thus - anecdote does not make for data.
BrassScorpion wrote:
That's a terrible graph, what does it even mean? There's no labels.
I had assumed it was simply a listing of the opinions and comments received from the blogger's Twitter feed... it only goes up to 14 because not many actually read the blog.
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Post by: J.Black
generalgrog wrote:I wish there was a scientific study that studied the effect of personal opinions on scientific studies.
GG
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Post by: dogma
generalgrog wrote:I wish there was a scientific study that studied the effect of personal opinions on scientific studies.
GG
There are actually many of those. Experimenter bias is a popular topic in a number of fields.
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Post by: halonachos
Circulus in demonstrando (circular argument). Circular argumentation occurs when someone uses what they are trying to prove as part of the proof of that thing. Here is one of my favorite examples (in pared down form): "Marijuana is illegal in every state in the nation. And we all know that you shouldn't violate the law. Since smoking pot is illegal, you shouldn't smoke pot. And since you shouldn't smoke pot, it is the duty of the government to stop people from smoking it, which is why marijuana is illegal!"
Circular arguments appear a lot in debate, but they are not always so easy to spot as the example above. They are always illegitimate, though, and pointing them out in a debate round looks really good if you can do it. The best strategy for pointing out a circular argument is to make sure you can state clearly the proposition being proven, and then pinpoint where that proposition appears in the proof. A good summing up statement is, "In other words, they are trying to tell us that X is true because X is true! But they have yet to tell us why it's true."
I am saying that when you hurt someone you cause harm to them. The very definition of harm is to cause physical, mental, or moral deterioration or to put it simply to damage or injure someone. That's the textbook definition of harm, not some misconstrued meaning that can be twisted but the accepted definition. original hippocratic oath wrote:I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.
In the medical field they pledge an oath to cause no harm because it negatively affects the patient. In effect if a doctor causes harm to his patient he is not following his oath which would potentially cause the doctor to lose his license for malpractice. So when you hurt someone, you cause harm to them, and in the medical field harm is bad. Very simple, not circular, but a line of ideas leading to the overall result that hurting someone is bad because in the medical field causing harm is bad. Again, this was put into contrast with philosophy where harm has no restrictions on whether or not it is good put forth in some oath. So to repeat myself; Wondering about whether or not pain is bad relies on the field of philosophy as opposed to the medical field where harm is always negative, bad, and not at all nice.
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Post by: Kilkrazy
dogma wrote:generalgrog wrote:I wish there was a scientific study that studied the effect of personal opinions on scientific studies.
GG
There are actually many of those. Experimenter bias is a popular topic in a number of fields.
Hence the recognition of the need for the double blind trial protocol.
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Post by: mattyrm
dogma wrote:
And then we have to wonder if, while touching the stove hurts, hurting is bad. Some people enjoy pain.
This is true, I once nailed my testicles to my workbench for the purpose of my own sexual gratification and found the experience highly enjoyable.
Well, until I realised id left my pliers out of arms reach. 
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Post by: youbedead
mattyrm wrote:dogma wrote:
And then we have to wonder if, while touching the stove hurts, hurting is bad. Some people enjoy pain.
This is true, I once nailed my testicles to my workbench for the purpose of my own sexual gratification and found the experience highly enjoyable.
Well, until I realised id left my pliers out of arms reach.
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Post by: Phototoxin
halonachos wrote:
I am saying that when you hurt someone you cause harm to them. The very definition of harm is to cause physical, mental, or moral deterioration or to put it simply to damage or injure someone. That's the textbook definition of harm, not some misconstrued meaning that can be twisted but the accepted definition.
original hippocratic oath wrote:I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone.
In the medical field they pledge an oath to cause no harm because it negatively affects the patient. In effect if a doctor causes harm to his patient he is not following his oath which would potentially cause the doctor to lose his license for malpractice.
So when you hurt someone, you cause harm to them, and in the medical field harm is bad. Very simple, not circular, but a line of ideas leading to the overall result that hurting someone is bad because in the medical field causing harm is bad. Again, this was put into contrast with philosophy where harm has no restrictions on whether or not it is good put forth in some oath.
So to repeat myself; Wondering about whether or not pain is bad relies on the field of philosophy as opposed to the medical field where harm is always negative, bad, and not at all nice.
Otherwise all surgeons would be going to vivisectionist hell!
Also for bad papers has anyone read the Acupuncture paper about 2 months ago that basically showed that acupuncture as the same effect as a placebo then concluded acupuncture is great?
Oh and in relation to all the stats:
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Post by: SOFDC
You know, nevermind what I wrote here. I am going to look for the delete button now.
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Post by: Albatross
I don't think it's that people think that their opinion trumps scientific research, so much as a general resentment of being told what to think in a dogmatic fashion:
'Hey, you shouldn't smoke, dude. Smoking causes cancer.'
'No it doesn't.'
'YES IT DOES, SCIENCE SAYS SO!'
'Oh?'
'Yes.'
'How?'
'I'm not sure... But it's bad, so just stop it.'
This sort of thing is the problem - the people arguing from a scientific standpoint often have as little scientific knowledge as the people they are arguing against. I'm not going to just accept that spanking causes anti-social behaviour purely because someone tells me that that's what the statistics point to - I'd want to know more about how they arrived at that conclusion. For example, I'd want to know if alcohol was a factor in the households sampled, if so, how many units per day/week, I'd want to know how often they beat their children, how many parents in the household etc. There's nothing wrong with asking questions about a conclusion that seems counter-intuitive.
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Post by: Melissia
Albatross wrote:I'd want to know more about how they arrived at that conclusion.
... dunno, how about you go read the study and find out? Most people are too lazy for that, and expect everything to be handed to them. Entitlement comes from across the political spectrum.
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Post by: Kilkrazy
Albatross wrote:I don't think it's that people think that they're opinion trumps scientific research, so much as a general resentment of being told what to think in a dogmatic fashion:
'Hey, you shouldn't smoke, dude. Smoking causes cancer.'
'No it doesn't.'
'YES IT DOES, SCIENCE SAYS SO!'
'Oh?'
'Yes.'
'How?'
'I'm not sure... But it's bad, so just stop it.'
This sort of thing is the problem - the people arguing from a scientific standpoint often have as little scientific knowledge as the people they are arguing against. I'm not going to just accept that spanking causes anti-social behaviour purely because someone tells me that that's what the statistics point to - I'd want to know more about how they arrived at that conclusion. For example, I'd want to know if alcohol was a factor in the households sampled, if so, how many units per day/week, I'd want to know how often they beat their children, how many parents in the household etc. There's nothing wrong with asking questions about a conclusion that seems counter-intuitive.
Most people don't have your level of knowledge though. There's no point people asking questions if they aren't educationally qualified to understand the answers.
I believe anyone of normal level of intelligence can understand principles of science and mathematics if explained well. If they know some basic questions to ask about how a study was constructed, they would be in a better position to distinguish between the kind of crap that gets into the newspapers and politicians's speeches all the time, and studies that may actually yield some valid information.
It isn't necessary to know statistics inside out. People take a lot of science on trust already, because it has been proven to work.
The BBC has been criticised recently about this kind of thing.
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Post by: Ensis Ferrae
Kilkrazy wrote:
I believe anyone of normal level of intelligence can understand principles of science and mathematics if explained well. If they know some basic questions to ask about how a study was constructed, they would be in a better position to distinguish between the kind of crap that gets into the newspapers and politicians's speeches all the time, and studies that may actually yield some valid information.
I think that, in some places, the scientific model is being replaced by political agendas. For instance, another California group sought state funding to conduct a "study" that proved that third hand exposure to smoke would cause genetic defects... This was not to see whether there ARE any effects, but rather they already know that it is a problem. Just an FYI, third hand smoke is what a person is "exposed" to when they buy a car that was previously owned by a smoker, or the same thing for buying/renting a house etc. The study group felt so confidently that their point could be seen, and used in future legislation in California and the country to further impose limits on smoking and tobacco use.
To me, IMO the "scientific process" should go something more along the lines of, "is there an affect from doing activity X, and if so, what is it?" not, "Activity X causes this to happen, and that's bad (or good)" This same thing has been going on since the late 60s and into the 70s and beyond with Nuclear power, though the "clean" energy people have been extremely successful in their goals, even though their claims are completely unfounded. There are folks out there who would have you believe that nuclear power is unsafe. In the course of nuclear power in the western world, there have been 0 casualties in any nuclear disaster. Not even in the latest incident in Japan. How much more safe can you make a reactor that withstood a massive earthquake AND a tsunami, and only then did it have any problems at all. It's the same with Three Mile Island, which would have actually not had ANY meltdowns or emergencies if it had not been for legislation to shut it down.
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Post by: Melissia
Ensis Ferrae: So I take it you dislike efficacy tests in pharmaceuticals?
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Post by: Ensis Ferrae
Melissia wrote:Ensis Ferrae: So I take it you dislike efficacy tests in pharmaceuticals?
What I dislike are things that tend to lead to laws that infringe on what I consider a First Amendment right. Personally, if a pharmaceutical company wants to test their shampoo on dogs and cats, or their latest version of Viagra on Parakeets and chimpanzees, then more power to them; They typically don't do much with law making, as they would be killing their own industry by doing too much in that realm.
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Post by: feeder
Smoking and nukes are your 1st amendment rights?
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Post by: Melissia
Ensis Ferrae wrote:Melissia wrote:Ensis Ferrae: So I take it you dislike efficacy tests in pharmaceuticals?
What I dislike are things that tend to lead to laws that infringe on what I consider a First Amendment right. Personally, if a pharmaceutical company wants to test their shampoo on dogs and cats, or their latest version of Viagra on Parakeets and chimpanzees, then more power to them; They typically don't do much with law making, as they would be killing their own industry by doing too much in that realm.
... efficacy tests are tests that specifically look for a positive result and do their best to ignore side effects. IE: "Drug X causes Y to happen, and this is good."
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Post by: Albatross
Melissia wrote:Albatross wrote:I'd want to know more about how they arrived at that conclusion.
... dunno, how about you go read the study and find out?
Did you even read my post? I'm talking about a specific set of circumstances, under which the people making 'science says...'-type statements have about as much understanding of the subject as their opponent, i.e. none. If you're making an argument from scientific evidence, and a person asks how that evidence was used to arrive at a conclusion, your statement 'how about you go read the study and find out?' is basically an admittance that you haven't got a fething clue what you're talking about, and just like to sound authoritative. If you understood the position that you were arguing from properly, you could explain how a conclusion was arrived at, with no problems at all.
Your rhetorical strategy would be to simply compound your arrogance, and throw rudeness and dismissiveness into the mix too. Brilliant. Must be why you win so many arguments.
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Post by: Ensis Ferrae
feeder wrote:Smoking and nukes are your 1st amendment rights?
Smoking yes, but nukes.. in the power sense, just makes sense as a safe alternative to coal, and one that is more "green" than hydro electric, or arguably even solar.
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Post by: Albatross
Wait, I'm lost - how does banning animal testing infringe upon a persons 1st Amendment rights?
Moreover, if it did, why should that matter?
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Post by: Melissia
Albatross wrote:Melissia wrote:Albatross wrote:I'd want to know more about how they arrived at that conclusion.
... dunno, how about you go read the study and find out?
Did you even read my post? I'm talking about a specific set of circumstances, under which the people making 'science says...'-type statements have about as much understanding of the subject as their opponent, i.e. none.
Right, but the problem is that if they're reading it in the news, and simply dismiss it because noone's there to explain it to them directly, that's laziness.
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Post by: Ensis Ferrae
Albatross wrote:Wait, I'm lost - how does banning animal testing infringe upon a persons 1st Amendment rights?
Moreover, if it did, why should that matter?
By and large, from what I have read, most corporations are supposed to be treated as individual citizens for many things, such as the Freedom of Speech, and as anonymous donators to political campaigns.
Plus, I think that, in many cases there are products that actually need to be tested on animals, because there are stupid people out there who give these products to their animals. For instance, I am sure that we all know at least one person who washes their dog's fur in the bath with "human" shampoo, without any sort of testing done on dogs, who's to say what could happen? Also, I recently read about cat owners in California getting prescriptions for Prozac for their cats. Why the feth does a cat need prozac?!?
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Post by: halonachos
feeder wrote:Smoking and nukes are your 1st amendment rights?
No, second amendment.
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Post by: VermGho5t
Ensis Ferrae wrote:
In the course of nuclear power in the western world, there have been 0 casualties in any nuclear disaster.
While I agree with your statements. The above is actually false. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1
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Post by: remilia_scarlet
So., what's the point of this thread then?
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Post by: Albatross
Ensis Ferrae wrote:Albatross wrote:Wait, I'm lost - how does banning animal testing infringe upon a persons 1st Amendment rights?
Moreover, if it did, why should that matter?
By and large, from what I have read, most corporations are supposed to be treated as individual citizens for many things, such as the Freedom of Speech, and as anonymous donators to political campaigns.
So, does the 1st Amendment govern an individual's right to perform experiments on animals, or something?
Plus, I think that, in many cases there are products that actually need to be tested on animals, because there are stupid people out there who give these products to their animals.
I love this statement. And you.
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Post by: Bromsy
I'd like to point out that just because most peoples opinions don't trump scientific studies, doesn't mean mine don't. Over 100% of the Mes surveyed agree. So nyah!
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Post by: dogma
Phototoxin wrote:
Also for bad papers has anyone read the Acupuncture paper about 2 months ago that basically showed that acupuncture as the same effect as a placebo then concluded acupuncture is great?
Something makes me doubt that the conclusion was "acupuncture if great". It seems more likely that the conclusion was a section at the end of the paper in question, of roughly 2-3 pages in length, which discussed the possible uses of acupuncture given the available data.
However this wouldn't be the first paper to conclude that acupuncture is useful because of its ability to produce a placebo effect, as placebos have long been known to be effective in reducing negative symptoms in a number of patients.
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Post by: Da Boss
The problem with the "go read the study" argument is that many studies are done in journals where a subscription is costly, or time consuming to obtain. People can't be bothered because the current structure of academia keeps knowledge bound up inside profit making structures on purpose.
The other problem is that I am skeptical of a layman's ability to properly criticise a methodology. It's a tricky business and requires specialist knowledge. It's why they don't let just anyone peer review articles for publication.
Some skepticism of science is healthy, but a skeptic has a responsibility to be informed.
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Post by: Ahtman
I agree, I can find the money for the new hardbound Harry Potter release, but an academic journal? That is outrageous for learnin words.
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Post by: dogma
Ensis Ferrae wrote:
To me, IMO the "scientific process" should go something more along the lines of, "is there an affect from doing activity X, and if so, what is it?" not, "Activity X causes this to happen, and that's bad (or good)"
The problem is the legitimate study of a given phenomenon requires a fairly narrow, directional hypothesis. When you submit a research proposal you cannot simply hypothesize that there is an effect, because the answer is yes if there is any way to measure the existence of the phenomenon in question. Instead, you have to hypothesize something like "It is believed that consistent exposure to third-hand smoke prior to the third month of pregnancy increases the prevalence of genetic defects in the population of children born to pregnant services workers employed in California hotels."
In order to engage in the scientific method you need to have some expectation regarding what will be found, otherwise successful experimental design would simply be a matter of luck. Automatically Appended Next Post: Da Boss wrote:The problem with the "go read the study" argument is that many studies are done in journals where a subscription is costly, or time consuming to obtain. People can't be bothered because the current structure of academia keeps knowledge bound up inside profit making structures on purpose.
And its getting worse now that university presses are being replaced by for-profit publishers/distributors.
Da Boss wrote:
The other problem is that I am skeptical of a layman's ability to properly criticise a methodology. It's a tricky business and requires specialist knowledge. It's why they don't let just anyone peer review articles for publication.
Honestly, I'm skeptical of the ability of some scientists to criticize methodology.
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Post by: Da Boss
Well, that too. You've just gotta hope the crap science goes nowhere because it doesn't work, and the good science stays put because it does.
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Post by: dogma
Ensis Ferrae wrote:Albatross wrote:Wait, I'm lost - how does banning animal testing infringe upon a persons 1st Amendment rights?
Moreover, if it did, why should that matter?
By and large, from what I have read, most corporations are supposed to be treated as individual citizens for many things, such as the Freedom of Speech, and as anonymous donators to political campaigns.
True, but animal cruelty isn't, as far as I know, a criminal offense which is thought to countermand the 1st Amendment.
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