Veritasium - 2016-08-11
Mounting evidence suggests a lot of published research is false. Check out Audible: http://bit.ly/AudibleVe Support Veritasium on Patreon: http://bit.ly/VePatreon Patreon supporters: Bryan Baker, Donal Botkin, Tony Fadell, Jason Buster, Saeed Alghamdi More information on this topic: http://wke.lt/w/s/z0wmO The Preregistration Challenge: https://cos.io/prereg/ Resources used in the making of this video: Why Most Published Research Findings Are False: http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124 Trouble at the Lab: http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble Science isn't broken: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/#part1 Visual effects by Gustavo Rosa
The most shocking thing to me in this video was the fact that some journals would blindly refuse replication studies.
I don't think this is a huge deal. You can publish with another journal in the field. (Unless the actually don't publish anything that's ever been done before even in another journal.)
@Krane Because the "common cold" is an entire family of pathogens that mutate quickly. There is no way to cure common cold and it makes no sense to develop a cure for a specific pathogen since next year it's going to be different.
If someone found a magical cure that could stop all the pathogens, that person would win a Nobel in medicine and the pharmaceutical company that manages to patent it would make billions by selling it. Just like it happens with insulin.
@Pocket Calculator You missed the point by a mile. Its not about the science involved with fining a a cure for the common cold, its about control of that science or any cure regarding curing mankind in lieu of maximizing profit. It about greed and control and monopolizing an industry.
@Pocket Calculator If you think the passage was about the science of a cure for the common cold then you missed its meaning by a mile. Its not about a cure, its about the greed of businesses and corporations that hold back progress due to profit and greed.
Additionally, there are all types of advancements in science and technology that mankind could have today if not for corporation controlling progress and what and when things get released to maximize their profit. Please no more straw man arguments. They are so transparent.
@Gadi K What could be done is a sort of note on the original paper that could be added afterwards that lists successful or unsuccessful replications of the study.
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of truth"
- Stephen Hawking
I've seen a variant of this attributed to Voltaire.
as a counterpoint, this quote has the illusion of truth about it. I like it!
I remember seeing one like this attributed to Benjamin Franklin. Long story short, quoting individuals on the internet doesn't really seem too productive if you ask me. The idea should stand on its own and not hinge on someone seen as intelligent having said it. Then again, what do I know? I'm just Elon Musk.
@Daniel Hohle the authenticity doesn't matter, just the meaning behind it
“The belief that science proceeds from observation to theory is still so widely and so firmly held that my denial of it is often met with incredulity. Observation is always selective. It needs a chosen object, a definite task, an interest, a point of view, a problem. And its description presupposes a descriptive language, with property words; it presupposes similarity and classification, which in their turn presuppose interests, points of view, and problems
(Karl Popper)
we should open up a journal for replication studies only
With full time staff who never take any compromised funding.
Sadly these incorrect published studies cause people to distrust all of science entirely.
@Matthew Vaughan First, "peer review" has always existed; all it is, is asking someone else for a second opinion. Drop the mystique, replication is where it's at, not peer review. Second, humanity never could have survived, let alone prospered, for as long as it did if all of its beliefs were wrong. Long before the scientific age was even dreamed of, people were able to build pyramids which last to this day. Did they do that with 100% wrong beliefs?
David Brown I wouldn’t say bricklaying requires any theoretical belief about the natural world & primitive agriculture was the scientific method as a baby, but apart from that, yeah Egyptians were pretty much wrong about everything. Humans survived (barely) because of instinct. Most creatures survive without belief systems at all, never mind them being true
@Matthew Vaughan "I wouldn’t say bricklaying requires any theoretical belief about the natural world"
So you're already down to minimizing Wonders of the World to try to prove a point, but Christ man, the pyramids aren't even made of brick. They're made of huge stones, each weighing several tons. These stones had to be cut and moved using precise and advanced mathematics (i.e. trigonometry without a calculator, which is a "theoretical belief about the natural world") so that they could fit together without mortar (again, unlike bricks). The pyramids are marvels of engineering that we couldn't replicate today without modern equipment. And speaking of ancient Egypt, embalming was also accomplished without 100% failure from 100% wrong beliefs.
"primitive agriculture was the scientific method as a baby"
I'm not sure what your point is here, but I accept this premise. And by this standard, then "baby science" has always existed, at least into prehistory. And baby science doesn't produce 100% wrong beliefs, does it? In fact, even if we strictly limit it to agriculture (even though there is no reason to do so, as it could just as easily apply to any activity involving trial and error), the relative success of crops over time disproves your "100% wrong beliefs" claim. Baby science working properly is more reliable than mature science done wrong (i.e. in a non-replicable manner, as is the subject of the video).
David Brown No, baby science produces slightly less than 100%. And it keeps refining to apparently 60%. Point was, humans without science rely on bias, fallacy & superstition to make predictions about the natural world, and everything we think not derived from science is at best inaccurate
@Matthew Vaughan "No, baby science produces slightly less than 100%. And it keeps refining to apparently 60%."
Are you getting that 60% number from the unreplicated studies? And if so, wouldn't that indicate that we are doing baby science NOW?
"Point was, humans without science rely on bias, fallacy & superstition to make predictions about the natural world, and everything we think not derived from science is at best inaccurate"
Bias, fallacy & superstition alone did not build the pre-scientific world. Much was created through trial and error, which is basically the same thing science does, just in a more refined way. Architecture, agriculture, sanitation, astronomy, mathematics (which allows GREATLY accurate predictions of the natural world to be made, e.g. Mayan calendar), even machines were developed and functional prior to the scientific method. Try to tell Archimedes that he's operating on bias, fallacy & superstition. But the real point that I am making is that if we don't do science correctly, which means getting replicable results, then our choices are not informed any better than those choices made before formalized science, except that we can fall back on knowledge that was attained when we WERE doing science properly.
For people freaking out in the comments: we don't need to change the scientific method, we need to change the publication strategies that incentive scientific behavior.
a proofs that vast majority of research are wrong, see Vitamin D research now they are backing up and it is measurable thing, see coconut oil for decades they say it is very bad , due to 50s experiments on Rats feeding them exclusively coc. oil, of course they will have cholesterol high on just one food made of oil, no one question that research for decades!! But since 10 years ago they changed and said it is actually healthy. How can they do such a huge error feeding rats only oil and extrapolating on human!
Egg, was good, then bad, now it is good up to 6 per week... yes there are many variables but they had decades and decades of time, and thousands of research.. if they make mistakes on that what about smaller factors or psychological research, it must be trashed research in human psychology. They are just happy with Pavlov dog as golden story to tell.. supplement pills is just commercial and pure marketing research pure lies.. not to mention media stats and research and hype about danger of certain religion, or race... pure lies.
@splitdog homee got notfied, but you must meant to answer another person
The Expertise of Experts - https://youtu.be/J8nk7GrB-zs
The Authoritarian View of Knowledge: Peer Review - https://youtu.be/zR38CtjD__o
The students know. Change the college system which forces students to obey in order to graduate. You will be filtered out of the system if you try to correct this.
Well, people certainly need to FREAK OUT about changing the publication strategies that incentive scientific behavior.
Publish or perish ... and quality goes to the drains
@Thermal Ions Well, certainly, there are millions of theses out there, all required for the PhD. No way around that. Most of them are garbage.
@Kenny Phillips I would say around 95% of them are garbage
It has been estimated that it takes $5 million in funding to make a Ph.D in a STEM field. The research community has been corrupted from the base.
money is the root of all evil
Have you seen the price of scientific journals? Corruption always follows the gold.
“Consider the pentaquark...”
From now on I shall.
HAHAHAH
When there's a high correlation between the content of my bladder and the Pacific ocean, I empty my P value.
🤣🤣🤣
Get out
Some people make fun of greek philosophers because some of their ideas are nothing but thoughts and speculation. Wait for the future perhaps they will make fun of us in the future for being biased
@asumazilla Wrong maths is the history of math. Used to be we didn't think zero was a number. We didn't even have a symbol for it. Even mathematicians keep insisting on starting to count at 1.. While it is clearly wrong.
Math keeps getting expanded. Why? To solve problems we didn't know existed yet but also to fix loose ends. I learned in school you cannot have the square root of a negative number. We could easily prove that, looking at all numbers we knew about.. But it turned out to be wrong math... And up to the 16th century this was true, but we also had some loose ends (indicative of the wrong math). The solution to this small loose ends, that weren't in the public eye, turned out to be a whole new branch of math using complex numbers. Same used to be true for negative numbers. And the same is going on today. Complex numbers were handy in electrics, quaternions turned out to be useful to describe General Relativity, who knew? Math is self-consistent by nature, but not self-contained and it is not and never will be complete. That's how misleading math can be. Also doing experiments in Math is solving problems by induction also we can run models on computers. It does exist. The whole point of this clip is that we have wrong expectations of science, because we have so little knowledge of it's limits. And this is across the board, so even maths..
@Mr. Observant Well, no. That's a very simplistic way of viewing matters that happens to be completely wrong.
MusaM8
“Philosophy is more prone to bias”
Not if it uses inductive and deductive logic unlike the “Scientists” in this incidence who used seductive and economic logic. “Science” is just hot air without a “philosophy” of care and actually presupposes logic.
The presumptions and pretentions of science have already been brutally exposed by the myth of Marxism as science, exposes "science" as a methodological approach lacking in true purpose. To provide purpose evolutionary biologists have pronounced on subjects beyond their scope. Equally, it is transparent to all but the most prejudiced academics, that Darwinism/Neo-Darwinism has outlived any usefulness in understanding why human beings inhabit the earth. The fact is science is just a word an adjective to describe the methodological approach found in all subjects such as mathematics, linguistics, philosophy and logic. “Science” seems to lack less integrity than philosophy and logic at the moment. What a surprise!!
All the best to you.
An engineer with a masters in nuclear engineering, a mathematician with PhDs in both theoretical and applied mathematics, and a recent graduate with a bachelors in statistics are all applying for a job at a highly classified ballistics laboratory. Having even been given the opportunity to interview for the job meant that each candidate was amply qualified, so the interviewers ask each the simple question, "what's one third plus two thirds?"
The engineer quickly, and quite smugly calls out, "ONE! How did you people get assigned to interview me!?"
The mathematician's eyes get wide, and he takes a page of paper to prove to the interviewers that the answer is both .999... and one without saying a word.
The statistician carefully looks around the room, locks the door, closes the blinds, cups his hands around his mouth, and whispers as quietly as he can, "what do you want it to be?"
Who got the job?
I have to amend my last comment and say: In mathematical terms, 1.999 repeating is 2. This can be proven using math, of course, just like any other math proof. I think the deeper issue here is that we are up against infinity and our hardware is not setup for that kind of fraction. So, it is a limitation of the way we represent numbers that gives us this quirk. HOWEVER, math is still widely abused by abusive and ignorant individuals.
@Bobby Fisher Clever comment.
@Bobby Fisher I saw a video by Mathologer where he did 2 or 3 proofs that showed that .999 repeating was equal to 1. Let me know what you find cause this is such a brain tease. Also, do you think we invent math as we go or discover it, or both?
I don't trust any science built upon probabilities. I am with David Hume when he said that 'all knowledge degenerates into probability'!
Outstanding video. It wasn't until I really started getting into research at MSc level that I began to realise so much of the research I was appraising was deeply flawed. At undergrad, I assumed that it was ME who was flawed every time I saw a glaring error. At that level, you don't have the confidence to criticise the work of experienced researchers.
industry influence is everywhere unfortunately. Climate science in an example of that. It's sad because you grow up learning to trust others. Now it seems so confused that we are starting to rely in religion, faith, miths, and so on. In Italy the misinformation campaign is tragic 😷
An undergraduate whom I knew, spent months trying to replicate a chemical synthesis that had been published in a journal. He failed repeatedly. Finally he contacted the authors. They told him that there was a typographical error in the article: the concentration of one chemical was listed as being 10 times higher than it was supposed to be. With that correction, his synthesis worked on the first attempt.
Kevin Byrne Does this mean that scientific journals don’t publish errata?
@Kimberley Downing -- The errata often don't appear until months after the original article. And the errata are often buried. It would also be helpful if authors checked the galleys.
One of the best pieces of advice out there is "assume everybody is an idiot, including yourself"
When something is published it's proof that someone with the ability to publish things decided to publish that thing.
Statistics show that 83.17% of research stats are false. (Including this one, of course.)
jjjmail
“Of course”??? A 16.83% chance is significant. “Probably” would have been a wiser word choice, probably.
thats fucktup
Its all about politics, never about truth.
P values of 0.05 are a joke.
Look, I'm going to sound biased, and that's because I am.
This is a much bigger problem in fields like Psychology than in fields like Physics. The emphasis on constant publication and on positive results is still a massive problem. Researcher bias is still a massive problem (although still, not as much as in Psych/Sociology). The existence of tenure helps a little since researchers become able to research whatever they want rather than what the system wants.
But we aren't claiming world-changing discoveries with P=.05. Derek brushed right past this like he was afraid of sounding biased but I'll repeat: 5 sigma is a 1 in 3 million chance of getting a false positive purely by chance. Every physicist "knew" the Higgs had been discovered years before we finally announced it and started celebrating. But we still waited for 5 sigma.
I did some research with one of my Psych professors in my freshman year. She was actually quite careful outside of the fact that her sample sizes were pathetic. We went to a convention where we saw several dozen researchers presenting the results of their studies, and it was the most masturbatory display I could have imagined. There were some decent scientists there, no doubt, but the majority of them were making claims too grandiose for their P-values and sample sizes, confusing correlation with causation, and most of all failing to isolate variables. If a freshman is noticing glaring problems in your research method, your research method sucks.
The next year I had a Physics prof. who had a friend of mine and his grad students run an experiment 40,000 times. There is no comparison. We need a lot more rigor in the soft sciences than we have right now. Mostly because science. (But also because they're making us all look bad...)
Pounce Baratheon Well fields like psychology or sociology do have a huge inherent disadvantage:
It's practically impossible to get large enough sample sizes. You can't start interviewing millions of people, and that would be needed to get even close to beta standards on significance.
A gas has in the order of 10^23 particles, that makes statistics so overwhelmingly strong it almost becomes deterministic and you can safely fly airplanes. Having one or 2 objects and predicting their behaviour is easy too. The problem is when you get in between both extremes and you have too much data to use deterministic methods but too little to make the standard deviation extremely small. Social sciences are stuck in that area. It's inherently impossible for them to reach the same level of rigour as physics.
I thought you were supposed to use p=0.005.
Psychology still comes 2nd after Physics with regards to reproducibility. Might be based on a lot of behaviorist work and classics, but nevertheless, it's still a relatively good value.
If I go to McDonald’s and they give me a burger with rotten meat, then it doesn’t matter WHY the meat is rotten - I’m still not going back. In the same way, if an area of research finds it difficult to obtain smaller p-values because of the complexity of the subject matter, then that doesn’t make the p-values more acceptable. If anything, it delegitimizes what you’re doing in a completely quantifiable way.
Obviously, statistical analysis isn’t the only means of reaching a conclusion, but you get the point. “It’s hard!” isn’t a valid counter-argument.
What constitutes "worthy of publication"?
True?
Sort of true?
Maybe true?
Your guess is as good as mine?
Maybe not true?
Not sure?
Not true?
Define true.
That's a question for a philosopher
Read the conclusion of the open science collaboration on reproducibility in psychology, I think it's nice
It's not about truth, it's about proper method
I refer you to the definition of a scientific theory: "A scientific theory is an explanation of an aspect of the natural world that can be repeatedly tested and verified in accordance with the scientific method, using accepted protocols of observation, measurement, and evaluation of results" - Wikipedia.
Option 3: maybe true.
Nothing in science is 'true'. The best you can get is that a theory is as accurate as we can currently determine. A 'fact' is something that is maybe true, admittedly very likely to be true (certainly greater than 50% chance), but still a maybe given our current understanding.
I suppose a 'rumour' is on the other end of the 'maybe' spectrum XD A rumour may be true, anywhere between 0%-99% chance to be true, but it still could be true given our current understanding.
'Truth.' This ain't the road to Bethlehem. We're looking for predictive capability
True. I read a paper based on 2, yes 2, human subjects. Howled with laughter. Dr. Van Nagakawara (OSU) wrote a paper for the DOT&FAA where he admitted his protocol was flawed and threw in unnecessary facts for we who knew them. Yet it became the Headline:
SCIENTISTS SAY FLYING SAFE FOR ELDERLY & GLAUCOMICS
NO, it's not. Pilots have a glaucoma rate 5-7X the general population. There are good researchers out there, and they will often tell that their paper is bunk.
The xkcd "Jelly Beans" comic deserves a mention. I'm so glad it became popular because it illustrates the whole issue so well, and in just one frame. It should be required reading for the whole world!
From first hand experience I know that a lot of researchers (especially in the social sciences or similar) don't even care about research quality. They just want to get their masters or phd done and then leave academia or are profs that don't care anymore about anything and just want a long publication list. They produce tons of useless papers that have no real research but many citations.
this is sad but true
Wait you can get your Masters or PhD done with shitty research?
Perverse incentives...
148% of people don't really understand statistics.
@WarpRulez You mean median.
@Simen Thys You were right about the median. But I wondered if average can be applied to IQ. I read that wikipedia article and was surprised to see it is based on a normal distribution and the mean is assigned as 100. I was assuming it is a non linear scale. The article further says it is an ordinal scale.
Aelipse
“Many sources say that 148% of the people don’t really understand statistics”
So that would be 48% when you do the math, or x1.48 of the population in question? Or is it 52%?? Aaaaaaah, math is hard. Being hard is even harder.
You clearly don't.
That's what happens when money is involved
We don't have this problem in theoretical math though
Yeah. In theoretical math someone just writes a proof and it takes years for someone else to realize the proof was fundamentally flawed.
Srdjan Trifunovic - No, you don't. You only work with tautologies. So what could possibly go wrong? Axioms, rules and procedures. No real world, no hidden variables, to interfere with your extrapolations.
@Vir Quisque Vir Well, I'm pretty sure that's not how it works. Anyway, there are other stuff that are much more difficult, like not being able to check things experimentally
Indeed, P-values are not used in maths. Instead mathematicians are working out the consequences of prior knowledge.
This is an awesome explanation and it's going to be really fun reading everyone commenting with their confirmation bias while I read their comment with my own biases that I have about what biases they have
Oh sweet brain, such complex things
Exactly why I went into the comment section of this one. Lovely.
This is gold. It is like playing 4D chess with your own brain. With every agreement and disagreement with your own intuitions, you fall into the trap of asking the perpetual questions of "what if my bias is the bias showing me others' bias, and what if that itself is some bias or error in judgement I fail to consider." This becomes too much and can throw people (myself) off, into a spiral of extrapolating truth. I suppose the remedy of bias is not only itself recognizing bias,but is perhaps the understanding of updating beliefs based on a consistent or more reliable framework such as Bayesian Thinking. So, I do think beginning with investigating biases and attempting nuance by finding multiple sides to research or a thought, is a starting point. It is tiring playing mental chess and questioning yourself, however, it does sometimes provide some insight is getting closer to truth. It also makes it easier to detach ideas when new information is presented. Well, that is my mental state. It might be a bias of its own :). If we are emotionally invested in an idea, consciously or subconsciously, we tend to be more inelastic to new and valid evidence that doesn't support our intuitions. These are just my observations and of course, given valid criticism, I shall update them. :)
Apparently we need replication studies journal!
So many biases, you've only scratched the surface here.
"As flawed as our science may be, it is far away more reliable than any other way of knowing that we have"
people need to understand this
People need to understand that "knowing" is not a reliable claim, just a belief.
Nicolas Samanez
“As flawed as our science may be, it is far away more reliable than any other way of knowing that we have”
What other ways of “knowing” do we have? and why is “science” more reliable than these other ways of knowing? What do you mean by “Science” because science is just a word an adjective to describe the methodological approach found in all subjects such as mathematics, logic, philosophy, linguistics etc. If something helps you to “know” then it must contain some kind of methodological approach a (science) that reveals a truth/statement contained in logic. logic is actually presupposed by science so who decides what ways of knowing are “scientific” (are methodological or contain value). Equally, without a priori knowledge, logic and more importantly a “philosophy” of care, could science be promoting elitism, nihilism and this lack of integrity. The evidence suggests that some aspects of “science” have become pretentious as it’s proponents make claims way beyond its reach. This is why prominent “scientists” have been on the receiving end of eminent secular philosophers such as Mary Midgeley. Midgeley made puncturing “scientific” pretension into an art form, highlighting the presumption of Francis Crick for claiming consciousness can be explained purely by brain cells, physicist Lawrence Krauss for claiming only “science” can solve philosophical problems, and, famously, Richard Dawkins for the “idea” that a gene could be “selfish”. Mary Midgeleys way of “knowing” seemed to be more “scientific” in these incidences. All the best.
This kind of trust in science and verified research (in spite of almost zero meta-research) sounds nice in theory, but once you convince the masses to think this way - which they do - it becomes just a delusion for them, further promoting the idea that stuff is self-evident just because it's what everyone does. As a simple test, try to quantify the suffering caused by the old, by now refuted, anti-cholesterol studies, and the "lack" of low-carb studies, used as a proof of it being dangerous because there are no "long term studies". This is slowly becoming a generic excuse for everything, as people believe that everything can be tested and validated, and that it's irresponsible to follow any evidence-based data. Once there are any conflicting studies that can't be completely proven or disproven - such that two doctors will give you completely opposite opinions - you are in a totally new territory, where existing science becomes counterproductive (Like vegans being more healthy, of course vs. fast food controls, but somehow nobody notices their autoimmune conditions, because after all, doctors don't even know what causes them - if doctors tell you there's nothing you could have done, you're foolish to think about nutrition, or let's say homeopathic or whatever, right?) Holistic approach itself isn't even proven.
With the complexity rapidly growing in basically all fields of our human civilization, I believe there's time to develop better metrics for the process of trust. If there's something that influences billions of people, and the research was done on mere few thousands of people (if not less), of course even with risky assumptions, all of the opposition needs some voice too, such that there's a space for discussion with quantifiable results. (Key words being opposition and space.) "End users of science" - the uneducated masses - need some alternative forms of judging facts, such that no-one can simply respond with "because science". And researchers also need a better feedback loop to clearly see all of the "valid" opposition that hasn't been formally contested yet. Lack of funding should be no excuse - after all, if thousands of people buy an expensive product that is being criticized for not being "proven to work", then their money is just wasted, even though every single one of the users could become a free sample for the researchers! But they won't if they believe that it's their "fight against the big pharma". Like come on, it's funny that they are actually right (because there are systematic issues caused by profit incentives of pharmacy), yet it ignores the bigger picture of research altogether. And once they go deep enough without being provided any alternative, it's no wonder desperate people stop trusting the process. We can't talk about science being "reliable" from the perspective of purity (like math) if there are obvious consequences for people who are disconnected from the larger flow... I hope this perspective motivates someone to take a different angle and seek some better solutions. Meta-research is a necessity for the future - with theories infinitely branching, it's a small world if you limit yourself to proven facts :P (Can you imagine how this relates to conspiracies, except the disproven ones of course?)
The scientific method may be. This p-value crap is just sophisticated divination. Tossing a coin is more reliable.
@George Doyle so true! Most science is not science at all, but rather, the opinions of scientists that have a vested interest in the views that they present. It cracks me up to hear that "Top Scientists say..." Who are these top scientists? "Why, they are the ones that agree with me, of course!"
"All I know is that I know nothing."
True! You Know Nothing, Jon Snow!
Just kidding! I couldn't resist the GOT reference....
Nicely summarized! I am a scientist (engineering) and reproducibility is a huge problem. I think there is a lack of throughout scientific method/experimental design teaching as well. I had to learn on my own about all the possible drawbacks (cognition bias etc) and I am still unsure I do everything correctly.
Another important source of error can be listed for experimental science: it is literally impossible to control all variable in the environment (where the experiment is conducted), apart for very expensive facilities (ultra-clean rooms, cyclotrons...). Which means that a simple change of weather, some new vibrations (new road nearby the building), a new type of equipment (it is impossible to compare data from different groups that own the same machine, they are never the same - mostly after time pass and parts need to be replaced)... will differ the data set. All in all, it should be possible to by-pass it, if you had infinite resources and time. But since we don't (and as you show, it is hard to publish both negative and reproduced results), most researchers try to do the minimum amount of experiments. Sometimes not even reproducing their own data (because it will not be the same at all!).
Well, all is not loss, as most of the time, a hypothesis is often quite robust to our errors, and that being aware of those errors can help reducing them.
You may be missing the difference between what are called pure sciences and what are called applied sciences. Applied sciences are not true science, i.e. they do not apply the scientific method to arrive at conclusions through data. Often they use trends, probabilities, criteria and statistics to allow for conclusions when the factors of experimentation cannot be controlled for. I think this video is really only trying to debunk these applied sciences as not producing scientifically supported facts. The experimental or 'hard' sciences should be exempt from this critique if I am not mistaken.
You make a great point though, one I have always maintained, but on that note I would say don't forget that science never attempts to assert it has 'proved' something through the acquisition of its data but rather simply has 'found cause to support certain conclusions over others'. The conclusion that certain well-tested hypothesis are debunked due to a margin of error in the data, such as might be produced by a variance in the machines or proximal road construction etc etc, is far less tenable than it being explained, or even written off as they most likely are, as the consequence of such events. But things like scientific laws are so constantly observed under their expected conditions that we have never observed instances which could cause us to conclude they were not laws of the universe. To all intents and purposes laws are 'proven' but tomorrow could reveal observations which entirely destroy those conclusions based on today's observations, thus science can't 'prove' anything because at best science only produces conclusions appropriate for today's observations.
To add to your critique though, one of the things I like to bring to the table is something I think which is missed by even most hard scientists today. That is, the current theories which account for current observations could actually be 'in-discernibly incorrect while entirely observably aligned with the measurable parts of the real universe'. That is, it is still entirely possible that our universal theories are actually only a model that can superimpose, without us noticing it doesn't do so entirely or actually, due to the possibility of our incapacity to measure or experience certain parts of the universe. We could be fooled into thinking our theories are more accurate than they are because there is no guarantee we can experience, measure or even comprehend the universe in its entirety but we would have to do so to think there is not a possibility of an an unnoticeable overlay.
Man, that is really surprising. That is something that is definitely taught in a chemistry degree track in Analytical Chemistry courses, the injection of personal bias, the bias towards measurements that end in even numbers or five, etc etc. the list goes on. Being as logic and mathematics based as engineering is I'm surprised to hear that. I'm sorry you had that experience, man.
Phuck Gewgle - No, of course we can't measure every possible variable in the universe. We don't know what they are. And we don't know what we don't know. There could be an infinite amount of unknown variables. All we can do is model the variables we do know about and give them the changing values as measured over time. A model is a simplified abstraction of one small part or aspect of the universe. Models are man made. We use models for the purpose of prediction and control. They are tools. They are not "truth" in any final, exclusive, complete sense. All models are provisional. As soon as a better model comes along, we will drop the old one or relegate it to certain approximations, parameters or purpose. For instance, the Apollo program brought men to the moon and back to earth using only Newtonian Mechanics, good enough, no need for Relativity or Quantum Mechanics. For different purposes, Newtonian Mechanics will not do as well as Relativity or Quantum Mechanics. And the beat goes on... Cheers!
I feel like everyone in the world needs to watch this video. There's so much crap out there an no one ever thinks past what they want to hear. This should help.
This should be a Ted Ed
Ted becomes pseudointellectual many times :D
Not all of their vids are bad, just some.
Everyone Bullz.... Politicians, Economists, Religious Leaders and Even Scientists - it's all about money !
Don’t encourage people to listen to these cunts.
@fatsquirrel75 yeah, someone posted a comment here using this to "disprove" climate change
Always check WHO AND HOW studies are conducted . Lots of skewed facts out there too
You should update the video. Pentaquarks are indeed real now.
@Balendula: Well, darn . . .
Weren't they always real? Or they are real just when we believe that they are real?
A downfall of using research papers for research...
TL-DR; Yes. Yes it is.
I work in one of the top 10 world research institution. I can attest this is true.
7:37 "The problem was those first scientists weren't blind to the data, they knew how the numbers were generated and what answer they expected to get..."
Could this also be attributed to radiometric dating? If the age of a sample has an expected age range before being tested wouldn't that influence the result?
Yep, of course it can.
Say your friend says they've given you 10 jelly beans and you decide to count them to be sure. Lets say you count a total of 3 times. The first time you count 10 jelly beans, then you count 9, and then you count 10 again. You're more likely to accept you miscounted once, instead of twice, because you were expecting 10 anyway and your friend wouldn't cheat you. However, it's entirely possible you miscounted twice and your friend only gave you 9 jelly beans by mistake etc.
There is so much money involve that it is very hard to believe 100% on results. Results are always bias
Scientists are biased. Even to the point of rejecting God and religión not based on studies but in blind faith. I am glad that is changing and that science is accepting the limitations and lies it endorses
What you reject physics? An scientific study is not equal to a proven fact. You can believe in ur god or gods but it is you with the blind faith. All ur conclusions are based on one book which origins are obscure.
Scientific truth is determined by the amount of avaible funding for a predetermined result.
A scientist who wasn't fired for his findings is highly likely to publish fake science.
@Wolfgang Demmel yup. Let's remember that science doesn't tell us anything, scientists do with their own bias
60% of the time.. it works everytime
Conclusion: Science, like all else today, is corrupt.
Even math? 😥
Well said. Corrupted by money.
This is why statistics should be a mandatory course for anyone studying science at university.
Knowing how to properly interpret data can be just as important as the data itself.
I'm salty that instead of being able to take a stats course I have to take a libed. I've taken calc I, II, multi, and linear/diffeq but still no probability.
@David Extremely complicated? Not really. It's basically just an "algorithm" you apply to your data set in order to decide on the correct way of analysis. I think especially for a biology student statistics courses are of major importance. I've had a total of 2 mandatory and 1 voluntary modules regarding statistics in my BSc. and I still read up carefully on how to properly analyze my data in my MSc.
Also the real scientific method and where it can apply should be mandatory. It should be at least tried before statistics are brought out.
An engineer with a masters in nuclear engineering, a mathematician with PhDs in both theoretical and applied mathematics, and a recent graduate with a bachelors in statistics are all applying for a job at a highly classified ballistics laboratory. Having even been given the opportunity to interview for the job meant that each candidate was amply qualified, so the interviewers ask each the simple question, "what's one third plus two thirds?"
The engineer quickly, and quite smugly calls out, "ONE! How did you people get assigned to interview me!?"
The mathematician's eyes get wide, and he takes a page of paper to prove to the interviewers that the answer is both .999... and one without saying a word.
The statistician carefully looks around the room, locks the door, closes the blinds, cups his hands around his mouth, and whispers as quietly as he can, "what do you want it to be?"
Copied from another comment below
"settled science"
Thank you for theses videos. We need more intelligent humans like you explaining how the world works in a straightforward way. Keep up the great work! It’s very meaningful.
Wait if most published research is wrong and there is published research to back it up then could that published research be wrong, falsifying it's claim? Well, to solve this paradox, you would simply have to remove all claims made by the research paper from reality for all considerations of the question. Therefore, assume that the paper is wrong. Then, the chances of it being wrong are whatever the chances would have been in the first place.
Create a table showing all of the possibilities:
wrong right
wrong - | -
right - | -
assume there is a 50% chance the paper is wrong is the paper is wrong, and a 95% chance the paper is wrong if it is right.
wrong right
wrong 50% | 95%
right 50% | 5%
Now, average all of the chance of the paper being right and all of the chances of the paper being wrong, and then normalize the results.
right: 50
wrong: 65
normalized: 43% / 57%
wait what did I just write down
It's not a paradox. Or am I taking you too seriously?
I have an hypothesis. I think getting in car accidents decreases your chances of dying from cancer
...but increases your chances of dying in a car accident.
@A-10 Thunderbolt II
THE AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY IS DELIBERATELY GIVING PEOPLE CANCER
@IAMDIMITRI CHERNOBLE. THERE IS RADIATION THERE.
That’s why we use 5 year survival/death percentage as a threshold vs raw percentage deaths.
MikeM8891 - If we have a World War and everyone dies, then the chance of you or anyone getting into a car accident drops to zero.
This is especially relevant today with Liquid Salem's tweets.
Yeah, I’m a smash player. Along with that I know many things that most don’t know about these communities. Melee isn’t part of the actual smash community and I’m not saying that because I don’t like them. I’m saying that based off of years of research.
The very fisrt day I started googling for how to write my first paper, this video appears. Good job. The more people know, the better the results may be!
That´s one reason why I stopped working in the life science research...so much hacking and twisting your results only to get them published to be worth funding. That´s not what research is about.
@Tristen Parsons Thanks and best of luck brother
I've already foreseen, you will post on a scientific discussion 1 year from now. Lol
Interesting. I am adding this video to my research courses. My students don't always understand why we need to be critical of research.
a proofs that vast majority of research are wrong, see Vitamin D research now they are backing up and it is measurable thing, see coconut oil for decades they say it is very bad , due to 50s experiments on Rats feeding them exclusively coc. oil, of course they will have high cholesterol level on just one food made of oil, no one question that research for decades!! But since 10 years ago they changed and said it is actually healthy. How can they do such a huge error feeding rats only oil and extrapolating on human!
Egg, was good, then bad, now it is good up to 6 per week... yes there are many variables but they had decades and decades of time, and thousands of research.. if they make mistakes on that what about smaller factors or psychological research, it must be trashed research in human psychology. They are just happy with Pavlov dog as golden story to tell.. supplement pills is just commercial and pure marketing research pure lies.. not to mention media stats and research and hype about danger of certain religion, or race... pure lies. eat with moderation period.
@Mike Vargathe, how do we name real scientists? The people that publish more "are" the best scientists (according to most evaluator commeetees). There is not easy solution.
The Expertise of Experts - https://youtu.be/J8nk7GrB-zs
The Authoritarian View of Knowledge: Peer Review - https://youtu.be/zR38CtjD__o
@Traplover I suppose, regardless of whatever type of research you have to be weary., even meta analyses: https://replicationindex.com/2019/08/11/the-black-box-of-meta-analysis-personality-change/
“I used the research to destroy the research.”
Vathorst - 2016-08-11
Research shows lots of research is actually wrong
spoopy
George Doyle - 2020-02-05
RichieHendrixx
Science lacks very little power and real world ideas if the results lack reliability, validity and rigour but are still published as “scientific fact”. Equally, this seriously undermines public confidence. Secular philosophers have been warning the scientific community about this for years but nobody’s listening because high profile scientists such as Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins scoff at mathematicians and logicians whilst declaring that “philosophy is dead”.
George Doyle - 2020-02-05
Grzegorz
I totally agree with you but can you put it in layman’s terms for the rest of the readers!!
pyropulse - 2020-02-17
well, we don't even need research to know this. If there is a p-value of 5, 1 in 20 studies are wrong. So out of thousands of studies, we already know a significant number have false positives. This doesn't mean they are all wrong, since a false positive could still be true, but a good chunk may therefore be wrong.
OjoRojo40 - 2020-02-27
@RichieHendrixx Lol........
OjoRojo40 - 2020-02-27
@Ludix147 That's totally capitalism my friend. We don't have any control on what how and when is produced.