To what extent, today, does “trust science” mean no more than “sign on to whatever an increasingly clueless elite thinks?” Worth asking.
Peer review
Mixing science with politics is like mixing mustard and ice cream
So far so good, Marcelo Gleiser, until we got to the part about “often giving equal weight to the opinion of the vast majority of scientists and to the opinion of a small contrarian group,” … There’s actually nothing unusual about the “small contrarian group” being right.
At Mind Matters News: Jonathan Bartlett: Will the Sokal hoaxes worsen the academic echo chamber?
There’s nothing wrong per se with mainstream thinking — it probably became mainstream for good reasons. However, when only mainstream thinking is allowed, this leads to insularity and an echo chamber mentality.
Retraction Watch co-founder on the lab leak theory re COVID
Ivan Oransky: Many in the media, as well as some scientists, quickly labeled it a conspiracy theory, designed to shift focus away from the missteps of their own countries. But, like everyone else involved in the discussions about the lab leak theory, scientists have something at stake: If SARS-CoV-2 did escape from a lab, it could further shake trust in research, and threaten funding…
Sokal hoaxes: The straw could be coming out of the stuffed shirts
Re the hoax paper that just took in Higher Education Quarterly:
According to Jonathan Bartlett, you could be the lucky sharpwit who spots the next one!
Reflections on the original Sokal hoax
It’s one thing for scientists to want to go Woke, if they do. It’s another thing to expect the same status when facts, as well as truth, are forever negotiable.
Canadian journal pleads: Make science skepticism great again
At C2C Journal: After several years of meticulously documented research, in 2020 the seven-member team, including Raby and Roche, published a comprehensive refutation of the “Crazy Nemo” thesis in the prestigious science journal Nature. Some of the team went further and requested various international funding bodies investigate Munday and Dixson for academic misconduct since their work contained statistical anomalies generally associated with data fraud. “There are irregularities in the data that need to be investigated,” states Roche firmly.
Jonathan Bartlett: Are Sokal hoaxes really helping reform science?
In Bartlett’s view, serious problems exist in today’s journals but the hoaxers seem so certain of their view that they don’t approach demonstrating it in a scientific way.
Latest Sokal Hoax is a beaut
Look on the bright side. At least the money we spend supporting “higher education” is paying for entertainment. And, if you have got a subscription, get a screen shot while you can.
Surprise! Cue Shock! Study finds “bias” in biomedical journals
The rest of the news release goes on to minimize the problem and soften the blow — not the usual approach in media (for good reason). Lost somewhere in the snow: “Some of these authors, the researchers said, are also on the editorial boards of the journals.”
Isn’t cheating in science journals just part of survival of the fittest?
David Coppedge: Nature believes that evolutionary arms races emerge from time to time, like bees against wasps, butterflies against birds, or moths against bats. Those symbioses are not right or wrong. They just are. Why are not predatory journals examples of the same phenomenon?
Springer Nature retracts 44 “utter nonsense” papers
As we’ve noted earlier, it’s getting to the point where “Trust the science!” is sounding more ridiculous all the time. It’s like saying “Trust the mountains” or “Trust milk.” It’s not a rational response to a lot of what we face just now.
From the world of “Trust the science… ”
Reform is nearly impossible if the incentive structure remains as it is — rewarding publication in and of itself. On the other hand, nothing stays the same forever and growing public cynicism might provide a spur to reform.
Canceled exoplanets prof Dorian Abbot at the Wall Street Journal
The thing is, in 2017, it was ultra-progressive places like Evergreen where the liberal biology teachers could be run off campus. Now it’s MIT, folks… Either Woke goes or science does. But bureaucrats find it easier to cater to Woke than to resist. The more bureaucrats there are, the less university there will be.
Free index to world’s research papers a boon to vast literature searches
At Nature: “In a project that could unlock the world’s research papers for easier computerized analysis, an American technologist has released online a gigantic index of the words and short phrases contained in more than 100 million journal articles — including many paywalled papers.”