quote:Because science isn't about something being true or not true: that's a humanities graduate parody. It's about the error bar, statistical significance, it's about how reliable and valid the experiment was, it's about coming to a verdict, about a hypothesis, on the back of lots of bits of evidence.
Yes. Yes. Oh dear God yes.
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Oh, and the friggin' Stanford Prision Experiment was a failure. It had neither reliability nor validity. Using it to explain Abu Ghraib and coupling it with the well established Milgram experiment was untenable.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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I thought that was a pretty good way to sum up many, many of the conversations we have had here at Hatrack, particulariy the ones about science.
Posts: 15082 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote: So how do the media work around their inability to deliver scientific evidence? They use authority figures, the very antithesis of what science is about, as if they were priests, or politicians, or parent figures. "Scientists today said ... scientists revealed ... scientists warned." And if they want balance, you'll get two scientists disagreeing, although with no explanation of why (an approach at its most dangerous with the myth that scientists were "divided" over the safety of MMR). One scientist will "reveal" something, and then another will "challenge" it.
Well, gee - perhaps the discriminating American public ought to read one or two scientific journals that publish scientific research, rather than relying on science lay-persons - aka, journalists - hmmm?
Posts: 20 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
Are you kidding, Tigger? That's too much like work. The average member of the American public wants everything spoon-fed to them.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Hey Tigger, does advice concerning toxic waste on a federal transfer of property to your community sound familiar? Or the bouncy Chesapeake bridge?
Posts: 8501 | Registered: Jul 2001
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