From the Journal of Irreproducible Science – over 2/3s of researchers say they are unable to replicate study results
WUWT Reader “QQBoss” writes:
The BBC reports (shockingly), that the journal Nature is going to begin requiring a reproducibility checklist of authors, based on a survey performed last year where at least 70% of respondents (self-selected, of course) indicated that they were unable to reproduce expected results. As the ability to replicate studies is what allows science to demonstrate meaningfulness and continue moving the body of knowledge forward, it is surprising that it has taken this long for top of the line journals to more strongly encourage replication to establish validity.
“Replication is something scientists should be thinking about before they write the paper,” says Ritu Dhand, the editorial director at Nature.
But will they take the next step and more actively police published research and denote when it is not replicable? There needs to be an accessible list of papers that sits between valid, replicated studies and the full blown Retraction Watch . I highly doubt that most journals are willing to self-police themselves, so just as Retraction Watch has come into being, perhaps there needs to be be a web site that aggregates the list of all papers published each year and allows researchers who are able to replicate results to make some fanfare when they are able to remove a paper from the list, since replications are usually quiet affairs.
In the face of the hockey shticks, 97%s, and PAL reviews, combined with researchers refusing to release data “because you want to find fault with it” or just handing their hard drives over to their dogs to chew on, what percentage of AGW-related studies should be listed as unreplicable, perhaps even nonredeemable?
Has Nature thought through the implications of what they are suggesting for a significant amount of the papers they have pushed through that under tougher (aka more meaningful) standards would never have seen the light of day?
More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39054778?SThisFB
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Well, it’s a start! Now to see if they follow through and other journals get on board.
PMK
Agreed, and it’s long overdue.
it would be their ruin if they do it. Most papers are sort of speculative
Leopoldo February 25, 2017 at 10:01 am
Not a problem Leopoldo, as long as all parties make it clear that it is speculative and a work in progress. It is important also to publish failures as well. This way we don’t keep trying to reinvent the square wheel.
The problem is where individuals push the publication of inaccurate and fundamentally flawed research.
michael
Leopoldo, sure that is tongue in cheek, don’t you mean “speculative”.
“Has Nature thought through the implications of what they are suggesting for a significant amount of the papers they have pushed through that under tougher (aka more meaningful) standards would never have seen the light of day?”
In the vein of that great scene in “The Shipping News” todays speculative headline “Deadly Storm Threatens Town” is just a segue to tomorrow’s “Town Saved from Deadly Storm.
Think of all those wonderful papers debunking ‘climate science’ and the ‘con’-census. It will be a gold rush, the crap we have being seeing was just the product of (thirty pieces of) silver (per paper). How many vengeful, ravenous true scientists wil line up to rip apart Mann, Karl, Gergis etc o cleanse their profesion. Put some blood in the water and the sharks will come.
Most? I have yet to find one article on AGW that was not riddled with qualifying holes: might be, could, possibly,..in “Most” cases, suppositions founded upon Computer Modeling programmed to the qualifier. If I program it to tell me this then it will tell me this. Circular Science. Voila! Settled! Debate over! Move it along to the Politicians. Oh and don’t forget to add that request for more funding.
With MathCad and giga-/tera- byte peronal comuters, there is no excuse for not showing most of your data, operations, and work, clearly with the original data.
Publishers should require all the work to be submitted with the files in duplicate….
I think you may have missed the point: The journal of irreproducible results
https://www.google.com.au/?gws_rd=ssl#q=journal+of+irreproducible+science&*
is a tongue in cheek publication –
and “The journal Nature is going to begin requiring reproducibility in submitted papers” is about as tongue-in-cheek as you are likely to get – Al Gore might apologize first.
“The journal Nature is going to begin requiring reproducibility in submitted papers”. Excepting climate alarm papers of course!
When it comes to climate ‘Nature’ is little more than an activist paper for climate alarmists to publish pal reviewed papers. The editor has already made comments to the effect that they are not going to publish any “climate denial” papers! For anyone to reproduce your results you first have to be allowed to publish. No climate science going on in ‘Nature’, only alarmist propaganda.
The important measure in how many times replication was tried and failed. Try enough times and eventually you will get a false positive replication.
Nature will probably have to reduce its contents by 2/3rd; at least.
But if all of their published studies are reproducible than more true scientist will use it. That might also might improve the journals approval ratings and profit.
Reproducible results?
Bang go my chances of getting investors for my zero-point energy project.
Bingo!!! I’ve been arguing that for years!!!
Exhibit O: Climate “Science” Temperature Reconstructions are not reproducible outside the “Peer Review” community
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/climate-science-on-trial-the-forensic-files-exhibit-o/
that is the reason they blame the computer models or suggest the argument is sort of infallible because of the computers. They have not any intelligence, it is the computers that have all the intelligence.
SkyNet is into climate science?
Well that would explain a lot..
…”computers have all the intelligence”…. as opposed to the programmers who formulate the algorithms and scientists that collect the data from observation.
We’re in deep doo doo.
“They have not any intelligence, it is the computers that have all the intelligence.” ->
They have not any discipline, it is the computers that have all the discipline.
Computers are dumb. They’re just very good at following directions.
What would be a step is if the US federal government required the same sort of reproducibility rules for all research it finances, or if the IPCC required those rules for submissions.
Great idea. How to implement? A lot of honest research results in negative outcomes.
And there’s the problem in the current “publish or perish” mentality. To my mind (as an ERP software developer / technical consultant), finding that something doesn’t work is a completely valid outcome of research (even if it disappoints customers to find that).
My wife is an academic (although is working to escape). During her PhD, one of her supervisors was having trouble finding enough data to support his paper, which was at this stage 80% written and publication lined up. He offered for her name to be on this paper in exchange for an interview where she answered the questions “the right way”. She said no and quit her PhD shortly afterwards, and the paper was published anyway (with made up data to support the hypothesis). This was in Educational Psychology, and the paper was part of a series of recommendations to the government.
Publish or Perish encourages dishonest research, and if Nature is going to demand reproducibility in some way, shape or form, then good on them!
Why can’t one just try the experiment again and if it’s still negative, then that hypothesis can be crossed off and on to finding a better one?
I don’t see the point here. In physics it’s often said that a null result is a good result – because it saves other researchers from having to go down that blind alley again. But that honest research which demonstrated the null result has to be repeatable in exactly the same way as research leading to positive results. Any ‘research’ which is unrepeatable is unscientific – by definition.
Neil, would that that be the only problem with Educational Psychology. Congratulations go to your wife for having the moral convictions to say “no” and not continue her PhD studies under that supervisor. I do hope she found another area of interest or location to pursue that one.
Neil – “Publish or Perish encourages dishonest research, and if Nature is going to demand reproducibility in some way, shape or form, then good on them!“. I have serious doubts that this is what Nature are doing. I suspect that they are printing the words which they think are needed to rescue their reputation. Without a leadership change at Nature, it is very difficult to believe that they have any intention of actually doing what they say.
“Sheri on February 25, 2017 at 10:09 am
Why can’t one just try the experiment again and if it’s still negative, then that hypothesis can be crossed off and on to finding a better one?”
Never worked, Sheri when you ask from the tester to dedicate his life for withdrawal of 1 single paper – of another one.
Tom
There was a book/article by an independent researcher that traced all references of the IPCC and found that over 30 percent were reference from news articles. That is a fact.
That was Donna Laframboise and her book is “The Delinquent Teenager,” referring to the IPCC. A summary outline (pdf) is available here.
Here’s her summary of finding:
UN’s Climate Bible Gets 21 ‘F’s on Report Card
. all 18,531 references cited in the 2007 IPCC report were examined
. 5,587 are not peer-reviewed
. IPCC chairman’s claim that the report relies solely on peer-reviewed sources is not supported
. each chapter was audited three times; the result most favorable to the IPCC was used
. 21 out of 44 chapters contain so few peer-reviewed references, they get an F (59% and below)
. 43 citizen auditors in 12 countries participated in this project
The BBC has quite a few semi-scientific programmes and they often have scientists on who talk about the need for replication and for scientists to be sceptical. But they throw talk of scepticism and replicability out of the window when it comes to climate “science”. No programme which mentions climate “science” allows any scepticism or talk of replicability. Normal science and climate “science” are treated totally differently by the BBC.
this was the main reason I become suspicious with AGW. I did not see anyone showing even a bit of skepticism.
The BBC are a national embarrassment. They’ve now hit pretty much their all time nadir by being ignominiously slung out of the White House as sleazy undesirable fake new peddlers. I don’t watch any of their grotesque propaganda and the day they manage to extract any cash from me for ‘licence fees’ is the day Satan will be skating to work.
To my mind the refusal to allow the BBC entry reflects badly on Trump, not the BBC. The BBC may not be free from bias, but they are certainly not “fake news” peddlars.
@ur momisugly cephus0
February 25, 2017 at 11:45 am: Good one Cephus0. Our own Public outfit, Radio NZ, is now the same. Leftist sounding-box, with continual CAGW cheerleaders lovingly interviewed and feted. Sadly, this will lead to the network’s closure or privatisation. Probably in the next 2 years or so.
He’s Satan skating at work:
http://s21.postimg.org/x3wh462vr/satan_shoots_scores.png
….but they are certainly not “fake news” peddlars….
Of course they are. BBC is worse in fact.
For a start their are funded by stateist violence.
Their main objective is to censor news that are detrimental to their cause and to inflate or outright lie those that are in support of their cause.
For example most news about Climate on BBC are fake news. Most Israeli news from BBC are fake news. The website BiasedBBC is full of BBC fake news.
“seaice1 February 25, 2017 at 2:18 pm
The BBC may not be free from bias, but they are certainly not “fake news” peddlars.”
With regards to climate change, the BBC is certainly in the “fake news” business. I am glad my job application was rejected in the 1980’s.
My idea is the “news” media should be ground into fine powder and spread over deep water. However, my wife is of the opposite persuasion and has no patience for my weak and conciliatory opinion.
What news organisations do you think are reliable?
Concur. If the Beeb told me the sun was shining, I’d have to go out and check! So warped is their agenda that I automatically take it that they are lying unless I can prove otherwise.
Patrick, when it comes to anything dealing with politics or economics, the BBC prefers fake news to real news.
Psychiatrists removed homosexuality from their list of illnesses because they didn’t know what caused it and they didn’t know how to treat it. True?
As Climate Science disintegrates, Nature will be the first to sack some staff, blame them for the mistakes, and claim they dealt with the problems, once they were drawn to their attention.
The length of time taken to draw their attention to the mistakes, can also be blamed on the previous management (now sacked) That is how Cover-Ups are carried out.
Wasn’t it the editor in chief of Nature, McCarthy, who said they were not going to publish any more “climate denial” papers. They should start the sackings at the top.
If main stream media / all media had to have provable facts before publishing there would be nothing but advertising on the television and in the papers .
Ugh, Climate Science needs to reform / heal, not disintegrate. The more we understand our climate the better. And by heal I mean remove the political parasite from the discipline.
When a machine reaches this state, you melt it down for scrap and build a new one.
It is both faster and cheaper than trying to fix the unfixable.
IMHO climate science is still in its infancy and there are “climate scientists”, like Mann and Hansen, that have set real climate science back by about 30 years.
Climatology is still in its infancy because it is run by children.
Why would Nature care about whether or not climate change is happening and if it is man-made or not?
Nature is a for profit journal publishing the work of others. If anything what it would love would be a paper
disproving climate change since that would sell more copies.
That reminded me of something…
http://s21.postimg.org/xcyn7u51z/sacked_credits_holy_grail.png
Call it the Trump effect…
I saw something that made me laugh out loud a couple nights ago, and this might be slightly O-T but not really. Tucker Carlson was interviewing Zac Petkanis, a DNC Senior Adviser, and Tucker asked him if there was any scientific basis for thinking that Gender is only what the individual in questions asserts it to be. (if you hadn’t noticed, this is now official Democrat dogma)
Zac has obviously spent some time arguing in favor of Global Warming, because as soon as Tucker brought up science, Zac said “of course the science supports this view! Lots of scientists!” Tucker said nothing more than “Really? What scientists? What science?” and Zac went straight into “The Science is Settled! There’s no question!!!” (of course he produced no names or actual “evidence” of this.
So this is now the go-to line in every dispute the Left has. “The Science is Settled! You Cannot Question it!!!!” (Galileo’s judges must be nodding in approval.) It’s a hilarious interview to watch. At one point, he’s asked “how can someone like me tell, when I meet someone, what gender they are, if everyone is only what they think they are?” and the reply was “Well, I don’t know if you’re enlightened enough to know that.”
It’s a hilarious video to watch.
(and so THAT’S why I don’t “get” the climate change issue – I’m not “enlightened enough”)
Reminds me of a local zealot who, in response to the spontaneous formation of a protest against a draconian bylaw, stated: “The only people against it are either conservatives or libertarians, and they don’t count!”. Well, Lady Godiva, hang onto your saddle horn!
Mr. Petkanis sounds like a genital denier or a biology denier or at the very least a chromosome denier.
@wws…
I think you mean this clip.
Thanks Roy, I love that clip. It’s a shame most of the progressive true believers just don’t have the intelligence to see the implications of that position. Or, hopefully, they’re just blinded by their own heartstrings.
Ah, it’s “settled science” , that’s why we’re not allowed to question it. And when the host does question it he gets insulted as having “issues” with this state of “enlightenment” and accused of rightwing pseudo-science.
Interesting response to whether one can also chose what race one wants to be. That apparently is “different”.
Can’t we crowdsource fund an ark ship and send all of these nutjobs to Trappist-1?
“It is so because I say it is so.”
This is the level of absurdity that the left has sunk to. I just cannot believe that other “news” organizations elevate such nonsense to worthy-of-discussion status and give it credibility.
(And of course, having written that statement, I suppose I’m now an evil person who wishes harm on differently-gendered people.)
Thinking of starting a pool on when Carlson will overtake Bill O’Reily as most watched show on Fox News.
Ipso facto I can’t be racist or sexist when I criticise anyone because there’s no such thing as different races or sexes. Is that where these folks are going?
Yeah I know I’m about to be labelled a criticist.
I found this on Ted the other day .It is not about climate science, per se, but, my word, there are some similarities. It is about the manipulation of messages in the media and “astroturfing”. It describes how people who speak the truth are systematically marginalised and how Wikipedia is manipulated.
I saw this some years age. It is an excellent talk, well worth the time.
Grab a fresh coffee.
Here are Sharyl’s comments on the techniques we’ve seen used by the alarmists:
In her talk, she also exposes the shortcomings and corruption of Wikipedia. We’ve seen that for sure.
Watts Up With That? (or WUWT) is a blog[1] promoting climate change denial[2][3][4][5][6] that was created by Anthony Watts in 2006.
That is the first line of the Wikipedia entry for this site (Watts up with that). Could they be more blind to their ideological slant? Apparently adding 5 footnotes pointing to 5 ad hominem attack articles justifies a Wikipedia ad hominem attack of climate change denier. Great, that is what encyclopedias are for I guess.
Not surprisingly the attributions are to articles by the likes of Mann , Cook, etc. It would be just as easy having a first line using the same footnotes that reads.
Watts Up With That? (WUWT) is a blog created by Anthony Watts in 2006, that takes a critical look at Global Warming and is often attacked by climate change zeolots[2][3][4][5][6].
Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that Jimmy Wales, founder and boss of Wikipedia joined the board of that well-known Left-wing propaganda mouthpiece ‘the Guardian’ as a non-executive director in Jan 2016.
Thanks graph. Enlightening!
Insightfull and thought provoking TED lecture concerning ‘fake’ news that is created to push an agenda.
Thanks for the post and the link.
I have found that Google searchs concerning any issues related to climate ‘change’ show obvious selection to push the cult of CAGW dogma and have found recent evidence the Google searches are now pushing their paid advertisers.
Yahoo ‘science’ news and Yahoo world news is now filled with articles which are obviously/comically propaganda for the cult of CAGA or the Democrate Party.
According to Tom Steyer, 99.5% of the public are not super sophisticated enough to understand climate science http://www.cnsnews.com/mrctv-blog/curtis-kalin/liberal-billionaire-995-americans-are-not-super-sophisticated
“According to Tom Steyer, 99.5% of the public are not super sophisticated enough to understand climate science”
It just struck me that probably throughout all of human history, every King, Pope, Pharaoh, and Emperor would most powerfully agree that 99.5% of their subjects were not fit to govern themselves, and thus needed to have their most important decisions made by someone much Stronger and Wiser than they were.
Whether the dirty peasants liked it or not, of course.
Yeah … that’s everyone who isn’t part of this blog :))
The 0.5% who understand are here :))
According to Tom Steyer, 99.5% of the ‘demo-KtraZen’ are not super sophisticated enough to understand climate science … there, fixed that 😉
Yeah, we have this rubbish in Britain right now. Apparently those of us who voted to leave the hated EU didn’t know what we were voting for, or had, according to Tiny Blur “imperfect knowledge” I knew EXACTLY why I voted leave, and if it happens to pi$$ on their bonfire, then so much the better
“Well, I don’t know if you’re enlightened enough to know that.”—I think he meant “gullible enough” and just misspoke.
wws @ur momisugly 7.30 am, I saw that as well, Carlson has had a few like types on the last few days ( did you see the one SJW lady that just kept on going on? screaming at Carlson?) . I wish Carlson had an volume off switch so he could stop these crazies from ducking the question. Every single time he asks a question they just start talking over top of him and completely deflect the question. They must be “trained” to do so.
Frankly I find the way this is being done, this talking over the interviewer is extremely impolite and really irritating to watch, Let the other person finish the question or maybe ask it twice and end the interview if they don’t answer ( Okay sometimes it is hilarious to watch them dig the hole deeper but still bloody irritating!).
Yes, saw that – what was amazing was that she actually thought this was an effective debate style!
But I don’t think they are “trained” so much as that this is just the way today’s Leftists talk, and act. It’s like a person needs to have a really severe personality disorder to move up very far in the leftist hierarchy these days.
And they just can’t figure out why us “normals” are more and more just tuning them out.
I had the exact same problem discussing global warming with believers, especially the intelligent & educated ones. One day at the pub, I was surrounded by about four believers all throwing questions at me. I answered every one as well as I could, but nobody addressed my answers at all, they just threw different questions at me. It was exasperating. Eventually I was just told that I was an irredeemable case, yet I was the only one actually answering any questions, as all mine were deflected by new questions, mostly unrelated to my questions.
From that day I’ve refused to discuss it, and if anyone asks, I just tell them to look at the actual data, not the media, and read what the IPCC actualy state*, not the summary for tax gougers.
*as I understand it, they say we may get 1.7C warming in total, and any environmental effects will be completely overshadowed by the effects of changes in society and technology.
Is there a list of papers in which the science could not be reproduced? How about a list of climate science paper in the cue for some reproductive examination?
That could be a very long list!
Russ, if you’re serious, start with the works of Michael Mann. One of his most egregious is Mann, Bradley, & Hughes, 1998: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v392/n6678/abs/392779a0.html
Mann repeatedly refused to turn over his data and methods for replication. Steve McIntyre painstakingly reproduced his work and ultimately showed it was fraudulent. Check out his site:
https://climateaudit.org/
I think this is mainly for Life Sciences (medicine, drugs etc.)
Nature started a reproducibility checklist for Life Sciences in 2013 already.
http://www.nature.com/news/announcement-reducing-our-irreproducibility-1.12852
http://www.nature.com/authors/policies/checklist.pdf
Made no difference of course, it is just not sincere.
It will not apply to “Nature Climate Change” or global warming in general because nothing published in there can be reproduced except for applying the exact same faulty assumptions. Like all the tree ring reconstructions apply the same Mannian math to produce hockey sticks. Not reproducible with other techniques but there are 20 of them with the same statistical techniques.
Tree rings mainly track rain more than temperature. Especially winter moisture. In the desert, the ‘trees’ which are very stunted, grow like crazy during wet winters. So assuming these same trees in tree studies are showing temperature has been a total fraud from day one.
” Like all the tree ring reconstructions apply the same Mannian math to produce hockey sticks.”
Bill, Mann’s hockey stick was not a tree ring reconstruction. It used a whole range of different proxies. The problem was how he combined a whole bunch of proxies from different sources. So tree ring reconstructions are not producing hockey sticks using Mannian methods.
Also verification by reproducibility would have made all the difference as it did when M&M tries to reproduce it and found the Tiljander varves were being used upside down and that even red noise would produce a similar hockey stick.
He would also have been able to validate CRU land temp data had they not been beligerently obstructive and then disappeared the data.
So, no, this does and should be applied to climate science and would make it more meaningful and probably reduce by a factor of the ten all the pointless BS studies that are flooding the literature for the last ten years or so.
Greg February 25, 2017 at 12:09 pm
” Like all the tree ring reconstructions apply the same Mannian math to produce hockey sticks.”
Bill, Mann’s hockey stick was not a tree ring reconstruction. It used a whole range of different proxies. The problem was how he combined a whole bunch of proxies from different sources. So tree ring reconstructions are not producing hockey sticks using Mannian methods.
————
The hockey stick part comes from vastly over-weighting the white mountain bristlecone pine trees, as in ridiculously over-weighting. [I note there is a very near-by airport to these specific trees that does not have a hockey stick temperature record, so the whole thing should just be thrown out.]
How one could even use cores from such trees is totally beyond me.
http://www.hikingwalking.com/files/US/CA/bristlecone_pines/lrg_ca_P1340500.jpg
This could really reduce the magazine’s paper consumption.
For some areas this would mean one page journals
Allencic,But that way it should cut down on trees being killed for paper!
“Therapists and educators rely on such findings to help guide decisions.”
To tell you the truth, there are virtually no solid theories in human psychology
that deal with any significant human behavior. Psychology is a junk science –
just watch some clinical psycologist testify in court for the defendent (and usually
contradicted by the prosecutor’s psychologist) and state that the defendent is not
a danger to society, followed a few days later by news that the freed defendent
killed some bloke. The only valid response by any psychologist to just about any
question is “I don’t know.” This from a graduate psych student of decades past.
And Hillery and Bill (the Fools) Clinton, once wanted the Fed to pay for psychological
counselling for the population. Had that come to pass, the university clinical psych
programs would have expanded exponentially. Every manjack a therapist. Easy money.
No knowledge required, since psychology the science cannot rule out any guy’s theory
since psychology knows from nothin’. Take John Cook’s 97% study. Looked at journal
articles of years’ past and tried to figure out what they writers believed back when the
article was writen (before the pause, most likely) , which is invalid if estimating
current opinions. Any sane researcher would simply have called the article writers (and
other notable climatology folk) on the phone and ASK THEM DIRECTLY what their
opinions about global warming were. But NOOOOO………
I know someone who worked on a case involving a serial killer. The guy was already locked up, I think the case involved additional murders discovered after conviction. Apparently the guy seemed normal for the first few minutes of conversation, but as it went on, you could tell something was off with him.
At any rate, a psychologist involved with the case said that there was really no way to be absolutely 100% positive if someone was faking insanity or not. If I recall correctly, he said the only cases where he felt “sure” were cases where the person WAS faking. My take on it is this: only believe the psychologist if he admits he does not know if the person is crazy or reoffend. Or if he says the person is faking. (In court cases.)
In the old days lunatics were “diagnosed” in a court of law – because psychiatrists had not yet been invented. Now we think we use science to diagnose – because we think psychiatrists are scientists. But there exists no science about lunacy – only clinical knowledge handed down from generations. And yes, a diagnosis of “homocidal mania” can still only be diagnosed in a court of law, i.e. by common sense (and, funnily enough, common human compassion and charity).
Reminds me of a story about medical specializations I once heard (from a General Practioner by the way):
A General Practitioner knows what is wrong with the patient, but he doesn’t know what to do about it, a Surgeon doesn’t know what is wrong, but he knows what he’s going to do about it, a Psychiatrist doesn’t know what is wrong, and he doesn’t know what to do about it and a Pathologist knows what was wrong and what should have been done about it.
Or, birds flying over a blind. The generalist says they are ducks; the specialist says they are geese that look like ducks; the surgeon goes ‘BLAM BLAM’, turns to the pathologist and says go find out what they are.
===================
There’s another good one that I’ve forgotten all but the last line for: ‘and the pathologist knows what it is and what to do about it, but it’s too late.’
==============================
Oops, it’s just a variant of tty’s. We need tinting, fixing and microscopy to determine just what variant.
============
Psychiatrists removed homosexuality from their list of illnesses because they didn’t know what caused it and they didn’t know how to treat it. True?
I did tend to follow the field casually, even though I never used my degree in Psych. Partly it was political, and again somewhat political inside the field, the Freudians lost influence. Freud was very obsessive about homosexuality, and blamed repression of homosexual urges for a vast variety of syndromes. There was a tendency to examine anything associated with Freud, and most of the Freudian model did not survive examination. The only real attempt to revive Freudianism was the “repressed memory” foofraw some years ago. Add that to political lobbying by gay groups, and it went away.
Mr. Baer, Robert Reilly explains the deception involved in removing homosexuality from the APP Manual of Mental Disorders in his book Making Gay Okay.
Agree completely that psychology is, kindly, a very squishy science that can be done by anyone who is observant. I scored in the 99 percentile on a psych CLEP back in the ’70s that I took just to get rid of a requirement. I had never taken a single psych course and didn’t want to!
PMK
I have a BS of psychology (BS seems appropriate, doesn’t it?). It was so easy. I also have a BS in chemistry, where actual work was required. My minor was in philosophy, also easy. “Hard science” is called that for a reason. I was fully aware of the lack of science in psychology (there are or were some areas in experimental psych that weren’t bad) and I will fully admit that pscyh is more philosophy than anything else. There are virtually no hard and fast “laws” in psych, nothing but squishy guidelines and list of symptoms that fit three-quarters of the population. It’s very, very limited.
As the holder of a nearly 40 year old BS in Psych, I agree with you entirely.
@ur momisugly Sheri and Tom, actually I am thankful for what you guys do. I had to talk with a “shrink” as part of my process to deal with a chronic pain problem and the Workmen’s Compensation board. ( Who of course were doing their best to deny compensation). The Dr was a very compassionate person and we had great interaction and he helped out a great deal and favorably with my case.
But the main thing that I learned was that his help made me think for myself in a very different way, less reactive and more proactive . He helped me organize my ( and my wife’s).thoughts. We went through a very difficult time that included some serious negative stuff. If it would not have been for him and the litterature he gave us to read and the different course he set us on we really do not know what would have happened to me and my family, that was 10 years ago and we are fine although the pain is still there.
Don’t be hard on yourself, maybe they call them “Personal Trainers” these days but we feel strongly you are great sounding boards and can help people to see the trees rather than the forrest.
“…just watch some clinical psycologist testify in court for the defendent (and usually
contradicted by the prosecutor’s psychologist) and state that the defendent is not
a danger to society..”
There is an easy fix for that. Just hold them legally responsible for providing a correct diagnosis or at the least pull their credential. Same thing with the review boards that release people from prisons and mental institutions who committed felonious acts.
That should also apply to judges that let criminals out of jail on parole that then go an kill someone.
Exactly: Once liability is properly applies across those participating, errant decisions are minimized.
In most cases it would suffice only to puplic papers with the data and methods they are based on.
Without data and methods they are by default not reproducible.
Not always. Good papers would have methods of COLLECTING data by which the findings through analysis are reproducible. The best papers would identify data collection and processing methods that would identify precursors and high probability windows by which a significant event is about to happen. This applies to fields from genetics, solar astronomy, aircraft maintenance, to card-counting in blackjack.
This should be the end of the repeatedly falsified CACA conjecture, but probably won’t be.
The only repeatable results in so-called “climate science” are those made up by the Team, ie (as yet) unindicted coc0nspirators.
I not sure it could be in total. Where there is data extant (and available) and properly documented methods of processing that data to produce a result, then maybe. In most of the cases it seems all or at least part of the source for Climate Science papers is modeled output. That output is NOT data. Even that cannot reproduced as the key algorithms use randomisation even in the presence of all known starting states. To use the output of one model as the input to another. That is just plain insane to assume that it has some value in the real world other than, “well, that’s interesting”.
Science should also require some logical reasoning in its articles.
Climate “Science” on Trial; Clear-Cutting Forests to Save the Trees
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/25/climate-science-on-trial-clear-cutting-forests-to-save-the-trees/
Also, lack of reproducibility should be considered evidence of fr@ud in some cases. I’ve outlined the Criminal Case here. IMHO, it is time we take a hard look behind the curtain.
Climate “Science” on Trial; The Criminal Case Against the Alarmists
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/02/21/climate-science-on-trial-the-criminal-case-against-the-alarmists/
First you let them get away with bastardizing the peer review process…
Peer review is just plausible speel chex….then you throw it out there and see if it sticks
Somehow peer review morphed into reality check
This could mean that the climate scientists reckon they have the historical data so well ‘adjusted’ that it will be easy to replicate scare stories….
On the other hand, will Nature accept papers showing that certain critical papers CANNOT be replicated? if not, then Mann et al can claim that their hockey stick paper is now published ‘in a journal with really tough replication standards’…
Who Cares?
For the 97%, reproducibility is just a phone call away.
From here, it just looks like they are circling the wagons.
“The study was Reproduced!
It must be true. Same faked data, same faked methods, same faked results. Reproduced!
Remember the (in)famous MBH “Hockey Stick” paper, which was reproduced by at least half a dozen researchers. It must be true.
The alarmists control the funding, who gets published, and who speaks at conferences. Now they put forth a program to reproduce each others work. So what?
As far as I know nobody has ever managed to figure how the uncertainty range in that paper was calculated and Mann et al refuses to tell. So, no, MBH hasn’t been reproduced.
Good Lord.
Steve McIntyre over at ClimateAudit had a scientific Soap Opera going on for well over a year as he and McKittrick broke the Hockey Stick. Several people (I will not call them researchers) came to the same conclusions as Mann, using the same data and methods.
Was it all exact, exactly? No, of course not. It does not need to be.
On the other hand, Exactly:
You want Exact Replication? Give me your data set and your method. (read that as your computer program)
I will run your computer program on my computer and get the same Exact numerical result. Then we can give the program to someone else, and see that they get the same *Exact* result.
So what did it prove? A computer program can have the same output when run on different machines.
Score one for AMD vs. Intel.
And that is all that proves, but you get *Exact* replication.
TonyL,
Unless one is using Excel and other spreadsheets because there are known flaws in the Excel calculations and apparently no interest by Microsoft to correct the problems.
TonyL:
Exact replication gives you the starting point of your own research. If you can not replicate the results exactly then either the data or method is incorrect leading you to believe that the original researcher got it wrong.
The benefit of exact replication is that you can take the paper, data and methods and move forwards with your own research – step by step…
I suspect in your world you it does not matter if a climate paper is in correct!
@ur momisugly Clyde Spencer
“there are known flaws in the Excel calculations”
Still?
It is going on 20 years now that people have known that the Excel math library is screwed up.
They still have not fixed it?
Way back ~2004 I was doing high precision calculations. Everything was in IEEE 80 bit format. (This by the way is what the hardware math co-processor is set up to do).
The Microsoft compiler was Evil because it *silently* truncated 80 bit values down to 64 bits, then sent them off to the 80 bit FPU.
Certain monks of certain Orders take a Vow of Silence.
I have never seen a greater justification for a Vow of Silence.
@ur momisugly stevenrichards1984:
“I suspect in your world you it does not matter if a climate paper is in correct!”
You are absolutely correct. I consider the field to be totally bogus, and without merit. At this point I do not care if one paper or another has something in it which is correct.
“The benefit of exact replication is that you can take the paper, data and methods and move forwards with your own research – step by step…”
OK, there is some merit in this. But consider this. If you do an exact replication and get the exact results, that is all well and good, but it is little more than an undergraduate laboratory experiment. (Still necessary, nonetheless)
To truly replicate results on a larger scale:
Understand the principles. What was done, how it was done, why it was done.
Now, do it your way. That is to say, do not run somebody’s computer code, write your own.
Do not accept someone’s adjustments and corrections to the data, do your own, using the same principles.
Now, did you get broadly similar results? Did you get largely the same results? Did you get complete agreement?
If so, that is a positive confirmation. If you have *independent* work which gives the same result, that is confirmation. If the work just duplicates what has been done, it is not really an independent confirmation.
steverichards1984 February 25, 2017 at 9:56 am
Hello,
“Exact replication gives you the starting point of your own research. If you can not replicate the results exactly then either the data or method is incorrect leading you to believe that the original researcher got it wrong.”
The first point of your paragraph if flawed. The person reproducing the research is NOT doing research , they are engaging in quality control.
If the person does out to the same area cuts their own tree sample and gets a different result then the process is not reproducible.
I know this means every reconstruct is fair game. But that is the real game. 100% replication.
In the case of the “Hockey Stick” you must go out and get you own samples. If it does not yield the same result the original research was flawed and sloppy.
By the way it is bad form to insinuate that the people here or in disagreement with CAGW would refuse to acknowledge legitimate replication. You should retract the statement.
michael
“The alarmists control the funding, who gets published, and who speaks at conferences. Now they put forth a program to reproduce each others work. So what?”
I think this is likely correct. Nature are probably aware how thin are their castle walls and this is nothing more than an exercise in shoring up the ramparts. No one can back away from this debacle now. Way too much time and effort and other people’s money has been invested in it and the slightest sign of weakness would be fatal.
No, they are hunkering down and hoping to survive. I expect this will end not even with a whimper but the World will gradually move on and the once mighty journals will be slowly sidelined as it becomes increasingly more evident that their credibility is a total bust.
Here is what I want to know: Did they take the names of the 70% and the pertinent papers? When should we expect to see the retractions?
Hahahaha. I have no simple idea of how to fund this, but I think there ought to be some sort of independent group in charge of attempting to replicate data before a study is accepted for publication. Of course, no matter what one does, someone will figure out how to game the system. Unfortunately.
Nature is so full of sh!t…where has their integrity been wrt their rules of the peer review process (not pal review). Notwithstanding climate ‘replication’ is nearly impossible. However they could start with explicit details of how any and all data is manipulated ( warmer-speak for modeled) and a completely transparent reveal of all the data so that others can ‘replicate’ the conclusion of said paper.
But hey, what do I know, I just frame houses for a living.
OT but significant…
Former SUNE exec’s file whistleblower lawsuit
https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-sunedison-executives-file-whistleblower-lawsuits-1487970358
I suggest this opens a door to setting up a group with statisticians and major science practitioners to be a watch dog organization. Take random samples of papers to gauge the percentage of replicable studies plus select studies with “flashy” findings and those with potential for high impact social costs. It could pass the main workload on to the discipline by being a reporting centre for those in the discipline with the availability of funding where costs could be significant.
There is so much foundation money available for destruction of western civilization. Surely there is money for a societal benefit like this. Hopefully it could be non partisan politically though it doesn’t look attractive to Ngos who are all Champaign marxbrothers. I would also honour honest scholarship by collecting such work or at least their abstracts in its own prestigious publication. This would further incentivize the cleanup. Perhaps give the work a seal or some form of recognition.
I think there is an overwhelming number of people not properly trained in their disciplines or adequately talented to participate in scientific work. (I agree with S. McIntyre that in climate science, the Team members would be lucky to get jobs as high school science teachers a couple of generations ago). A massive requalifcation is necessary with remedial courses, research to re-obtain their degrees after such a destruction of education in the west. What to do with today’s professors? Maybe some one else can tackle this!
Dang not Ngos, NWOs!
Is ISIS the ultimate NGO?
it would only take a small bit of regulation change to require federally-funded research to be replicated prior to publication. The formal replication would need to include statistical review, archived datasets, archived code, and specs for all equipment and processing hardware. Organizations like Underwriters Laboratories ( Research Replicators, anyone?).
Add that a preliminary study be published in the NSF web site with allowable comments.
Rather than delaying publication of the research, any conclusions derived from that research may be treated/referenced as no better than conjecture until two steps have been performed. First, the funding agency must authorize and fund an independent verification of both the data and methods of the original study. Second, at least one additional independent study, using different data and methods should be performed and must validate the original conclusions prior to them being assigned any significance.
Gary Pearse
I’m sorry but the solution to big government over reach is not MORE government or NGO’s that are funded by the government. The very organization your proposing could, and probably would, be corrupted to support the governments desire at a particular time. What your proposing is a government funded “fact checker” and would be little different than so called “fact checkers” we have now which are in fact tools of partisanship created due to the lost credibility of the press.
No, this blog and so many others have been doing a great job of exposing the elements of this fraud machine by bringing their claims into the light where a simple truck driver like I am can read and assess and learn. With the current government in place what we see now is simply the inertia of a an ever slowing climate change train. Give it time. The truth will win.
“over 2/3s of researchers say they are unable to replicate study results
..it is surprising that it has taken this long for top of the line journals to more strongly encourage replication to establish validity.”
How did it get to that point? Not by osmosis.
It was people with names who corrupted the journals. They should be listed, highlighted, shamed and disgraced for having allowed, enabled and produced the stench.
It’s bigger than just the researchers. See comment above. Actually they are somewhat innocent.
1) The fewer people know how to do something. The more of an expert you are, the more valuable you are. Publish a basic outline of your method and claim that anyone skilled in that domain can achieve the same results. Give out the least amount of information you can get away with.
2) Sometimes data is just too noisy, especially in areas like social science where borderline p values <= 0.05 show up in studies that psychologists consider 'science'.
3) There's a bit of outright fraud.
4) It's better for one's career to publish 5 studies with small sample sizes than 1 with an adequate size. More publications. The true careerist must resent that 'wasted time' in the field and lab.
Steve O ===> “They should be listed, highlighted, shamed and disgraced…”
YES sir, replacing the U of East Anglia artwork against Lord Monckton (et al), with “Lest we forget the derailleurs…” emblazoned in solar LEDs.
In a field of science where the output of somebody else’s computer simulation (“model”) of future climate is considered to be “data” that is as reliable, if not more so, than actual observations and measurements of real things, I would say that reproducibility should be the least of their concerns.
All this talk about reproducibility brings up some memories.
I was in Grad School at the time, as an analytical chemist. I wanted to observe some proteins via fluorescence. So I had to tag the proteins with some fluorescent compound, to make them visible with my technique.
A friend of mine, who was much more into biochemistry than I was, came up with a research paper, about 4 years old, which described a technique. The paper described a reaction where a specially modified fluorescent dye is bound to the N-terminus of a globulin protein. I tried it out, doing just as the paper described, and ended up with perfectly tagged protein, on my very first try!
Try that with “Climate Science”
Everywhere in real science, reproducibility is alive and well.