On the Nature of Things | Forum

noddy wrote:i wonder how much of this is just rose coloured glasses and abstract vagaries becoming doctrinal truths over time - the latter is a constant source of dissonance to me.

"science" in the abstract, over decades or even centuries is a self correcting and truth finding system but in the specific, right here right now, is as human as any other activity with politics and ego and whatnot.

Importance Every year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) inspects several hundred clinical sites performing biomedical research on human participants and occasionally finds evidence of substantial departures from good clinical practice and research misconduct. However, the FDA has no systematic method of communicating these findings to the scientific community, leaving open the possibility that research misconduct detected by a government agency goes unremarked in the peer-reviewed literature.

Objectives To identify published clinical trials in which an FDA inspection found significant evidence of objectionable conditions or practices, to describe violations, and to determine whether the violations are mentioned in the peer-reviewed literature.

Design and Setting Cross-sectional analysis of publicly available documents, dated from January 1, 1998, to September 30, 2013, describing FDA inspections of clinical trial sites in which significant evidence of objectionable conditions or practices was found.

Main Outcomes and Measures For each inspection document that could be linked to a specific published clinical trial, the main measure was a yes/no determination of whether there was mention in the peer-reviewed literature of problems the FDA had identified.

Results Fifty-seven published clinical trials were identified for which an FDA inspection of a trial site had found significant evidence of 1 or more of the following problems: falsification or submission of false information, 22 trials (39%); problems with adverse events reporting, 14 trials (25%); protocol violations, 42 trials (74%); inadequate or inaccurate recordkeeping, 35 trials (61%); failure to protect the safety of patients and/or issues with oversight or informed consent, 30 trials (53%); and violations not otherwise categorized, 20 trials (35%). Only 3 of the 78 publications (4%) that resulted from trials in which the FDA found significant violations mentioned the objectionable conditions or practices found during the inspection. No corrections, retractions, expressions of concern, or other comments acknowledging the key issues identified by the inspection were subsequently published.

Conclusions and Relevance When the FDA finds significant departures from good clinical practice, those findings are seldom reflected in the peer-reviewed literature, even when there is evidence of data fabrication or other forms of research misconduct.

Azrael wrote:Does the FDA announce or publish something when they find bad practices?

Nonc Hilaire wrote:New scientific study determines there are too many new scientific studies:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.01881v1.pdf

Publish positive results or die. As a consequence, failed experiments get repeated all the time, because nobody else knew they failed and there is a high level of incentives to lie or at least overstate success. The root-cause, IMO, is the bean-counters that allocate funding. They do not understand that Science is exploration, that mostly it will fail and that well-documented failure is just as important as success and does not in any way reflect negatively on the scientists involved. But the bean-counters only want to see "success", and by that they make it much, much harder to obtain.

noddy wrote:

Nonc Hilaire wrote:New scientific study determines there are too many new scientific studies:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.01881v1.pdf

came across the slashdot reportage of this http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/03 ... ic-studies

the comments at slashdot are usually highly ignorable but the following one amused me.

Publish positive results or die. As a consequence, failed experiments get repeated all the time, because nobody else knew they failed and there is a high level of incentives to lie or at least overstate success. The root-cause, IMO, is the bean-counters that allocate funding. They do not understand that Science is exploration, that mostly it will fail and that well-documented failure is just as important as success and does not in any way reflect negatively on the scientists involved. But the bean-counters only want to see "success", and by that they make it much, much harder to obtain.

noddy wrote:i think the argument was that documenting the failures is important so that others can be aware that something has been tried and failed before choosing to do that experiment themselves.

noddy wrote:i think the argument was that documenting the failures is important so that others can be aware that something has been tried and failed before choosing to do that experiment themselves.

At the heart of the disagreements are conflicting philosophies over the march’s purpose. In one corner are those who assert that the event should solely promote science itself: funding, evidence-based policies, and international partnerships.

In another are those who argue that the march should also bring attention to broader challenges scientists face, including issues of racial diversity in science, women’s equality, and immigration policy.

Simple Minded wrote:

noddy wrote:i think the argument was that documenting the failures is important so that others can be aware that something has been tried and failed before choosing to do that experiment themselves.

noddy,

There is a hell of an business opportunity here for some sort of social media or website. People could document all the stupid things they did, said, or believed in before reality dope slapped the hell out of them and they finally "got it!"

Charge $0.25 for each post that documents the lesson one learned the hard way, and if the post is approved by the Wise and Experienced Board of Certified Intellectuals, one gets a virtual doctorate degree. After earning 10 virtual doctorates (V.Ph.D.) one may be appointed to the Experienced Board of Certified Intellectuals, and you could charge annual membership dues since it is a Professional organization.

I wouId suggest the name "DON'T BE AN IDEEUT!" Or maybe "BEEN THERE, DONE THAT!"

"I used to believe in AGW until I got a job working outside for a year and found out the world is not air-conditioned."

"I did not believe that electrons could move faster than falling water until I peed on an electric fence."

My liberal friends sometimes ask me why I don’t devote more of my science journalism to the sins of the Right. It’s fine to expose pseudoscience on the left, they say, but why aren’t you an equal-opportunity debunker? Why not write about conservatives’ threat to science?

My friends don’t like my answer: because there isn’t much to write about. Conservatives just don’t have that much impact on science. I know that sounds strange to Democrats who decry Republican creationists and call themselves the “party of science.” But I’ve done my homework. I’ve read the Left’s indictments, including Chris Mooney’s bestseller, The Republican War on Science. I finished it with the same question about this war that I had at the outset: Where are the casualties?

Nonc Hilaire wrote:UofC system declares Emperor Elsevier has no clothes.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/02 ... s-and-open

Colonel Sun wrote:The Bulwark | Why I don't "Believe" in "Science"

Nonc Hilaire wrote: ↑Tue Mar 17, 2015 5:05 am

noddy wrote:

Nonc Hilaire wrote:New scientific study determines there are too many new scientific studies:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.01881v1.pdf

came across the slashdot reportage of this http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/03 ... ic-studies

the comments at slashdot are usually highly ignorable but the following one amused me.

Publish positive results or die. As a consequence, failed experiments get repeated all the time, because nobody else knew they failed and there is a high level of incentives to lie or at least overstate success. The root-cause, IMO, is the bean-counters that allocate funding. They do not understand that Science is exploration, that mostly it will fail and that well-documented failure is just as important as success and does not in any way reflect negatively on the scientists involved. But the bean-counters only want to see "success", and by that they make it much, much harder to obtain.

That's just wrong. Lack of evidence is not "just as important as" finding evidence.

If you create a good enough airport—the cargo will come.

Colonel Sun wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2019 4:17 pm

Nonc Hilaire wrote: ↑Tue Mar 17, 2015 5:05 am

noddy wrote:

Nonc Hilaire wrote:New scientific study determines there are too many new scientific studies:

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1503.01881v1.pdf

came across the slashdot reportage of this http://science.slashdot.org/story/15/03 ... ic-studies

the comments at slashdot are usually highly ignorable but the following one amused me.

Publish positive results or die. As a consequence, failed experiments get repeated all the time, because nobody else knew they failed and there is a high level of incentives to lie or at least overstate success. The root-cause, IMO, is the bean-counters that allocate funding. They do not understand that Science is exploration, that mostly it will fail and that well-documented failure is just as important as success and does not in any way reflect negatively on the scientists involved. But the bean-counters only want to see "success", and by that they make it much, much harder to obtain.

That's just wrong. Lack of evidence is not "just as important as" finding evidence.

Actually, it is.

crashtech66 wrote: ↑Tue Sep 03, 2019 11:57 pm Can it not be broken down to the simple process of elimination? Once you know a particular hypothesis is wrong, you make note of it and move to the next one. Negative results are integral to the scientific method as I comprehend it.