… that Diederik Stapel, a prominent Dutch social psychologist, was faking his results on dozens of experiments, the fallout was swift, brutal and global.
Science and Nature, the world’s top chroniclers of science, were forced to retract papers that had received wide popular attention, including one that seemed to link messiness with racism, because “disordered contexts (such as litter or a broken-up sidewalk and an abandoned bicycle) indeed promote stereotyping and discrimination.”
As a result, some of Prof. Stapel’s junior colleagues lost their entire publication output; Tilburg University launched a criminal fraud case; Prof. Stapel himself returned his PhD and sought mental health care; and the entire field of social psychology — in which human behaviour is statistically analyzed — fell under a pall of suspicion.
One of the great unanswered questions about the Stapel affair, however, is how he got away with such blatant number-fudging, especially in a discipline that claims to be chock full of intellectual safe-guards, from peer review to replication by competitive colleagues. How can proper science go so wrong?
The answer, according to a growing number of statistical skeptics, is that without release of raw data and methodology, this kind of research amounts to little more than “‘trust me’ science,” in which intentional fraud and unintentional bias remain hidden behind the numbers. Only the illusion of significance remains.
Good thing it’s not happening anywhere else.
“One of the great unanswered questions about the Stapel affair, however, is how he got away with such blatant number-fudging…”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!!!!!! One of the great unanswered… BWAHAHAHAAAA!!!!
That’s comedy GOLD!
That NP article is FANTASTIC. Thanks, Kate. Bookmarked right alongside E=MC2.
Fire. Them. All.
Climate Scientology
Because massive fear mongering based on scientific skullduggery means bigger research grants, a few more years of funded time enroute to a fat taxpayer funded pension and a few trips to Bali to act all important and smarty pants.
IMO, modern social science research has replaced astrology in the superstitious-nonsense-masquerading-as-science niche. Every daily newspaper and grocery line magazine is filled with articles based on this “trust me” research.
Climate science is the natural progression of this trend – it looks like real science but it’s not, it’s political science. At least astrologers did not demand government grants and a seat at the policy-making table.
Statistics is the whore. Ain’t that the truth. The expression “lies, damn lies, and statistics” came from somewhere. Almost every popular study reported in the press has alternate explanations. Simple correlations are used to create causal relationships that may not exist. I wish a study was done to determine to what effect who is paying the bills has on results.
What is interesting, is this:
The Climategate row broke in November when hundreds of *stolen* emails from the world-renowned Climate Research Unit in Norwich were posted online.
This of course is true, though it is to the benefit of the rest of the world.
Then there is this:
The United States was catapulted into a worldwide diplomatic crisis today, with the * leaking* to the Guardian and other international media of more than 250,000 classified cables from its embassies, many sent as recently as February this year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cable-leak-diplomacy-crisis
Can you spot the difference?
The gravity of these two examples does not even compare. One is simply a few “scientists” talking $hit, and the other is major event that touches on sensitivities of international relations, (not to say that it is a bad read).
How is it that the second paragraph does not qualify for stolen?
Of course, the answer is, it depends who does the stealing and who does the reporting.
Scar,
Sounds like you are refering to Junk Science, see
http://junkscience.com/
or
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/number%20watch.htm
I have been firmly convinced for some time, that this CO2 AGW has significantly inspired well founded skepticism in every discipline. This goes beyond lack of confidence in weather forecasts….and even into matters of medicine….many of us no longer trust our doctors like we once did.
We have caught ivory tower academics with what were impeccable credentials producing false science to support a political agenda….even in psychology.
We have found the anti-gun lobby deliberately commissioning credentialed academics, more than willing, to produce studies to support their agenda.
The watermelons delight in resurrecting Big Tobacco’s campaign to produce favorable science, but this same element has enthusiastically adopted the same methods…….
The information age has devolved into the age of lies and propaganda.
This pseudo-science criticism can be extended to conservation biology as well. Instead of following the rigour of the scientific method, these “scientists” jump from hypothesis (which all coincidentally maximize rent seeking opportunities, IE all problems are anthropogenic and only solvable with increased statism) to political implication with little in between other than hypothesis reinforcement rather than testing. Given the relationship between researchers and politicians, the only difference between this and crony capitalism is that the corruption is all internalized within the (self-reinforcing) public sector. Most of these “scientists” are unionized, further amplifying their proclivity for advancing the state as a prime directive.
“One of the great unanswered questions about the Stapel affair, however, is how he got away with such blatant number-fudging, especially in a discipline that claims to be chock full of intellectual safe-guards, from peer review to replication by competitive colleagues. How can proper science go so wrong?”
It’s very simple, psychology is not a hard science.
Pretty much everything that comes for the scientific community these says, causes, diarrhea, vomiting, headache, internal bleeding, thorough disgust, contempt and swelling of trigger finger.
“…many of us no longer trust our doctors like we once did.
They work for the government. He who pays the piper calls the tune…
fool me once, shame on me
fool me twice, just call me Liberal
The death of real science for Idol worship with Government approval. When you take moral or ethical restraints from human beings. Deny God or even reason, this was inevitable. Human nature asserts itself with no breaks.
Political agenda begins to trump truth.
“Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true. When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.”
I’ve been SUCH a fool.
Someone doing peer review only has the submitted paper to work from. If the raw data is fudged, the peer reviewer can only hope that his or her suspicions are aroused enough to reject the paper. But if the fudging is done well enough, the peer reviewer can not stop the fraud.
It always amazed how climate science, in its infancy, is used to present certainty in the chaotic global climate system. The “science” of it boils down to non-observed CO2 forcing of water vapour somehow causing warming when this has never ever happened in our geological history, except in lag.
IOW we’re supposed to turn the world over to Mo Strong statists because a model and the IPCC say so?
AGW milking was DOA from the beginning. The so-called science was also questionable and the warmist mudslinging resulted from the denier insistence on proper and verifiable methodology. Simple arrogance doesn’t explain the behaviour of Phil Jones et al.
The only “consensus” of AGW warming is two discrete parts of the same function: at one end agreement that global climate has warmed somewhat in the past few decades; and, IFF there’s significant and permanent warming (ie 4+ deg C) it could be catastrophic.
There is no consensus on anything between the two, just lukewarm acceptance of, well, it makes sense so let’s employ the precuationary principle.
Uh, no. Game, set, match, watermelons. European and US debt explosions have dried up the climate justice gravytrain. Global temperatures are more likely to fall than rise going forward. Credible new research is shedding even more doubt on AGW theory, which it still is and no, is not proven or even demonstrated, and certainly not observed.
The neo-enviromentals overplayed their hand with this CO2 crap. Metaphorically speaking, the Berlin Wall has fallen on them. They should have gone maintstream and stuck with air and water quality, but how would that screw capitalism and allow China to grow her emissions five fold climate criminal Canada’s total? Meanwhile China turns her country into a garbage dump while producing over 40% of the world’s wind turbines.
The gig is up. Light of day folks.
BTW, thank you Stephen Harper.
Here’s another example of bogus science, this time from the nukophobe community.
Fukushima radiation was detected in at least 15 states in the Lower 48 in the months after the disaster, mostly in the Western U.S. The federal Environmental Protection Agency has classified the amount of radiation reaching the U.S. from Fukushima as well below the levels needed to affect human health. No deaths have been officially attributed to Fukushima, in both the U.S. and Japan.
Those findings conflict with a new study released Tuesday in the December issue of International Journal of Health Services. It attributes an estimated 14,000 U.S. deaths to Fukushima.
The study said there was an estimated 4.5 percent increase in the number of deaths in the U.S. in the 14 weeks after the accident compared to the same period in 2010, compared to a 2.3 percent increase in the 14 weeks before. The study links the increase to Fukushima fallout.
But critics have questioned whether conclusions in the study can be supported by data, and say there isn’t a clear link between the deaths and increased radiation. The study was conducted by anti-nuclear activists Joseph Mangano and Janette Sherman.
Scientific American technology editor Michael Moyer called the study “flawed” in a blog post Tuesday, criticizing the authors for “sloppy, agenda-driven work.”
Kelley read the study Tuesday, and agreed it doesn’t include enough data to make the connection between Fukushima radiation and deaths in the U.S.
“It’s all innuendo,” he said. “There’s nothing backed up by fact.”
Does reading SDA make people smarter, or do smarter people read SDA?
WalterF at 7:00 PM
Yes.
sasquatch @ 12:40, exactly and North of 60’s example @ 4:06 is a prime example of that which sasquatch speaketh of.
The joy of computers. Garbage in equals garbage out equals hockey stick graphs you can turn into $ billions.