Economic studies allow to somehow explain what happened.
But what will can not be explained.
Because it is impossible to repeat and reproduce real life.
Scientists are trained to be critical. Thus, what are the financial costs to be critical towards the work of other people?
A statical rule: If more than 1000 people claim they spotted an 'UFO', the probability that one out of 1000 claims is real, and therefore true, is scientifically acceptable?
If critical science is the acceptable rule, implying that specialists 'question' the work from other specialists, does this implies that science practice in general is far from perfect?
If we think of industry, not following the research results may convert the industry outdated and noncompetitive.
Dear Marcel,
It very much depends on the article. Sometimes it is more costly to believe the results as further analysis show that the results are either biased or are not reproducible.
Please read the attached article from nature. Here are an excerpt:
"To mitigate some of the risks of such investments ultimately being wasted, most pharmaceutical companies run in-house target validation programmes. However, validation projects that were started in our company based on exciting published data have often resulted in disillusionment when key data could not be reproduced.
"An unspoken rule among early-stage venture capital firms that “at least 50% of published studies, even those in top-tier academic journals, can't be repeated with the same conclusions by an industrial lab” has been recently reported (see Further information) and discussed"
http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v10/n9/full/nrd3439-c1.html
Dear Behrouz: Just a couple sentences taken from that interesting article
Believe it or not: Surprisingly, even publications in prestigious journals or from several independent groups did not ensure reproducibility. Indeed, our analysis revealed that the reproducibility of published data did not significantly correlate with journal impact factors, the number of publications on the respective target or the number of independent groups that authored the publications.
Lack of reproducibility often occurs in wildlife studies where standardization of protocols becomes more complicated, e.g. when responses of organisms will depend on unique local environmental conditions and environments express spatiotemporal variation. E.g. what you find in year 1 is not necessarily found in year 2, which is an argument for long-term studies
Economic studies allow to somehow explain what happened.
But what will can not be explained.
Because it is impossible to repeat and reproduce real life.
Dear Marcel,
One of my biggest difficulties reporting my findings was not to use the word perfect, even though evidences told me that what I saw was just "perfect". So, fortunately science is not perfect and reality is in constant changing. What is important today or true may not be in a second any more. Ending in your good style: "Is not that so?"
The answer depends on how close to my own research interests the publication subject is. If it's a strongly related thing to my own subject(s) I might even get offended personally - and I will shout "Don't give MY field a bad name, you bastards!". But if the subject is homeopathy, then I couldn't care less. :-)
"Economy" presumes - industrial production. But the way from laboratory-scale synthesis to industrial production usually often/usually is different and very long.
To evaluate the cost of this way is very important before to start moving from laboratory-scale results -through the pilot project and only then to industral production.
One can safe a lot of funds foreseeing all (most) of difficulties to be faced to on his travel from the seemingly promising results published in the research Article - to the final industrially processed product.
The above often happens in practice.
Regards, Leonid
Perhaps many industrial products have been made available too early given that research is often starting to look at health or environmental consequences once the products have been commercialized (e.g. house cleaners, herbicides, pharmaceutical chemicals, heavy metals, ....)? E.g. Scientists (often) do not believe that product X is good for humans or the environment of humans therefore requiring expensive research to check this?
There is always some charge or luck and/or randomness. In other words, there is never a complete certainty about - say, the impact of a publication. Neither from the side of the author(s), nor from the side of the "readers".
Ideally yes: Marcel's question is quite reasonable. That is the (hidden) aim of any author. However, it doe snot always work - hélas!
Marcel, you mean, like the nonsensical hype about the wonderful benefits of statin drugs, even for those who don't need them? I'm always skeptical about studies funded by those with conflicts of interest.
http://www.fda.gov/ForConsumers/ConsumerUpdates/ucm293330.htm
In matters of health and nutrition especially, I would be amazed if people haven't become supremely cynical. Coffee is bad, coffee is good. Carbohydrates are bad, carbs are good. Cholesterol LDL must be below 100, maybe not so much. Blood pressure must be below ... the level keeps dropping every year. Butter is bad, eat margarine; no margarine is bad, eat butter. Sugar is bad, use substitutes; no substitutes are bad, use sugar. Eat a balanced diet; no balanced diets are bad, eat diets much more biased toward fruits and vegetables. Eat lots of fruit, no lots of fruit is bad, better go with lots of vegetables. No, vegetables are bad, eat lots of protein. Vitamin C is good, vitamin C is bad. Vitamin E is good, vitamin E is bad. Vitamin D is good ... let's just wait another year or two and see how that story changes.
A little less on the cynical side, I do notice in my own work that it's common for people to quote a document or study, but to miss the fine print, such as exceptions or operating constraints. That might go under the subject line "a little knowledge can be dangerous."
That's why science and engineering are such great professions. To work in these fields, you MUST be skeptical. Question everything, including your boss.
It is often stated that the most recent publication is always closer to the Truth, or not?
History tells us that the most recent publications are not closer to the Truth, but they are published anyway.
Believing or not believing the publication of someone else/own: does it depend on who gathered the data in the absence of co-authors?
No, it does not! People might be wrong without consciously knowing that, right?
I just have access to some written lines without working on the problem, right or wrong? What is the difference between a prion and a protein given that all proteins result from DNA-related copies, and a molecule with function A cannot be inside another molecule with function B?
Patience is indeed a virtue, which justifies long-term studies!
You mean with 'misaligned' that they are acting on 'wrong' places in the physical body therefore disturbing the natural functioning of the organism?
If I remember well, it was a 'protein' produced by another living being A but remaining functional in living being B? How can it replicate in living being B?
If results might change every year because of uncontrolled factors, like weather, you need more than one year of study, right? If team A works during year A, and team B works during year B, can differences in results between team A and team B be adequately interpreted?
What are the uncontrolled factors in so-called standardized laboratory experiments? Are they more controlled or less biased than field experiments? E.g. people are used for medical tests without truly knowing the physical characteristics of those people, perhaps influencing the results to be published?
Perhaps people that agree to join those medical tests (e.g. they lack financial support) have biased phenotypes or biased biological profiles?
Hi Lawrence,
You changed topics to provoke an additional half dozen of questions, not me!
If the outcome of science practice would be 100% predictable, would science exist?
I could simply state a hypothesis, people would say you are right, and then we stop testing the hypothesis, right?
There is apparently more recent work on prions
http://www.pnas.org/content/95/23/13363.full?ref=SaglikAlani.Com%3Fref=Sawos.Org
Numerous attempts to disprove the prion hypothesis over the past 15 years have failed. Such studies have tried unsuccessfully to separate scrapie infectivity from protein and more specifically from PrPSc. No preparations of purified prions containing less than one PrPSc molecule per ID50 unit have been reported (99), and no replication of prions in PrP-deficient (Prnp0/0) mice was found (100–104).
Copurification of PrP 27–30 and scrapie infectivity demands that the physicochemical properties as well as antigenicity of these two entities be similar (105) (Table 2). The results of a wide array of inactivation experiments demonstrated the similarities in the properties of PrP 27–30 and scrapie infectivity (61,106–109). To explain these findings in terms of the virus hypothesis, it is necessary to postulate either a virus that has a coat protein which is highly homologous with PrP or a virus that binds tightly to PrPSc. In either case, the PrP-like coat protein or the PrPSc/virus complex must display properties indistinguishable from PrPSc alone. With each species that the putative virus invades, it must incorporate a new PrP sequence during replication.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S009286740500156X
I just have access to some written lines without working on the problem....
What about commissions/panels judging scientific programs proposed for financial support (obviously it cannot be colleagues working on the same topic because of potential conflicts of interest?)?
Is there any evidence that bacteria/viruses can cause the appearance of misfolded proteins in other biological systems?
http://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/protein-misfolding-and-degenerative-diseases-14434929
Dear All, quite good description of such cost was done in this paper: http://www.labtimes.org/labtimes/issues/lt2012/lt03/lt_2012_03_40_44.pdf
My best wishes.
A selected part from Tarak's suggested publication: To obtain funding, a job, promotion or tenure, researchers need a strong publication record, often including a first-authored high-impact publication. Journal editors, reviewers and grant-review committees often look for a scientific finding that is simple, clear and complete – a ‘perfect’ story. It is therefore tempting for investigators to submit selected data sets for publication, or even to massage data to fit the underlying hypothesis. But there are no perfect stories in biology. Journals and grant reviewers must allow for the presentation of imperfect stories, and recognize and reward reproducible results, so that scientists feel less pressure to tell an impossibly perfect story to advance their careers.”
Thanks for the reference(s)
Lawrence: The underlying mechanisms creating associations between bacteria/viruses and prions?
Mycobacterium then decrease in vertebrate body condition causing disease then decrease in molecular chaperones (proteins correcting errors in other proteins) then increase in unfolded proteins called prions, for instance?
Or
Mycobacterium then decrease in vertebrate body condition then decrease in molecular chaperones (proteins correcting errors in other proteins) then increase in unfolded proteins called prions causing disease, for instance?
Or
.....
Is the definition of evidence individual-specific anyway, e.g. determined by the individual-specific education environment or individual-specific mental states?
Evidence reflects the degree of consensus, independent from the truth? Consequently, what was defined as evidence today will not be considered evidence tomorrow?
How do you know that organized medicine refuses to believe this? Perhaps they do not take it into account because of logistic constraints, e.g. they do not have the specialized techniques in every medical laboratory to identify it rapidly?
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/222664-medication
Do you think that Chrohn's disease disappears after a treatment with antibiotics?
The right antibiotics, at just the right dose, and at just the right time might be individual-specific? So how to treat individuals when you do not truly know the individual characteristics or the relevant individual characteristics?
I don't see the useful link with guinea pigs given that the physiological environment surrounding the contaminated tissues in guinea pigs differ from that of humans. If individual specific cell tissues can be developed in laboratory conditions, tests could be conducted to obtain the right dose, but then again there is the physiology surrounding the tissues that are difficult to simulate in laboratory conditions, e.g. physiology that changes the characteristics of the antibiotics (e.g. dose) after treatment?
To what extent do the molecules of antibiotics resist chemical environments created by physiology?
The right antibiotics, at just the right dose, and at just the right time might be individual-specific? How to handle this with a long treatment given the dynamics of the internal biology of an individual, e.g. physiology?
Perhaps mental state is important accepting that the immune system can handle it, and immune systems are more efficient when stress is lower?
http://www.brightsideofcrohns.com/2009/06/meditation-and-crohns-disease.html
As we know, many physical conditions are aggravated by stress, anxiety and worry. Digestive tract ailments are even more sensitive to these mental states. In addition, suffering with a chronic illness can wreak havoc on our thoughts and emotions. We can begin to start falling into unhealthy and unrealistic thoughts such as worrying that we will never feel better, fearing the unknown future, and even sinking into a woe-is-me pattern. In addition, we can sometimes lose focus on what's positive in our lives- our blessings, and sometime we might not notice that we are taking out our frustrations and fears on those around us- maybe being critical, snippy or jealous. Practising meditation can help us increase our awareness of our own thoughts and behaviour at any given moment, and train ourselves to think logically and positively. We can also help ourselves to avoid thinking about our illness constantly- and to be aware of all the beauty and joy around us.
Meditation is used by millions of people around the world. Us westerners are late to the realization of what a powerful tool it can be. Even science has begun quantifying proof of the benefits of meditation. Practise your meditation regularly for the best results, and be patient with yourself. Just like learning piano, it will take time to see results- but it's more than worth it!
And it is cheap!
What would be the underlying mechanism(s) linking mental state to physiology/immunity to health status after controlling for food intake? Who knows?
Dear Marcel:
What if the results are unbelievable? It is a matter of risk. The thing is that "belief" means risk already. You should be wary of all matters you must decide just on "belief"...
Best regards, Lilliana
Dear Marcel:
What if the results are unbelievable? It is a matter of risk. The thing is that "belief" means risk already. You should be wary of all matters you must decide just on "belief"...
Best regards, Lilliana
Dear Marcel, you are raising 2 issues: a) a possibility not to believe scientific article, b) estimation of individual cost of not doing it.
I will start from far away. In the childhood we were all taught to believe a teacher and to never doubt. Some students did - and got good grades. In fact, with a good teacher there were typically few reasons to doubt in this knowledge of school program in school. But in some countries the program (especially in history) changed a lot in recent years - I mean after political changes of 1990s in FSU and Eastern Europe. It is a point to doubt not only in a publication, but in the knowledge given at school. And it is very costly for students not to trust.
Now, should I believe in publication in my subject? It is easy to believe always (less critical work for mind), and one does it before finds a case that he cannot accept without critics. In some sciences (mathematics and physics) one can simply check calculations - and there is rarely a misprint. In other sciences one can have no access to raw data to check, and statistical information can sometimes be manipulated.
In social sciences not all non-contradictory material is published (so we may not know about it; but RG gives an option to put papers online to become known). And some published material may be ideologically biased (for example, based on assumptions that you do not trust), so a thinking scientist can be critical.
Being critical involves a cost. What to trust, if you cannot trust all? Some people still trust if probability of false article is low.
http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/2002/04.18/09-tummo.html
Meditation and experiments and medical approaches
A thinking scientist can be both critical and open-minded
Cheers
Sometimes, believing in the results of a paper, e.g. on economics, can have disastrous consequences. For example the methods of calculating the risk of a bond. On the other hand if a paper proposes an effective treatment of e.g. cancer and you do not believe it, then this will have negative effects on society. The question is not well possed and have many answers.
Psychologists/Psychiatrists cannot read thoughts and scan brains without/with devices, right?
What if the study indicated above would be replicated with more modern techniques?
How important is the environment in how the patients/subjects would reply to the questions/gestures of the mental doctors (Psychology, Psychiatry), e.g. the patients/subjects replying questions at home versus in a standardized professional office, during a sunny versus a rainy day, in the morning versus the evening....
I presume the patients/subjects are able to perceive subtle gestures in the persons that ask questions?
Perhaps people that go to psychiatrists just wish to talk to somebody willing to listen? Who takes the initiative to visit a psychiatrist will determine the profile of the subjects considered to be mentally ill either because of self-judgement or the judgement of relatives or generalist doctors not considered to be specialists in the field of Psychiatry?
People without symptoms cannot be mentally ill versus people with symptoms can be mentally healthy?
The problem is not to verbally provide a judgement. The real problem starts when patients/subjects have to take medicals to hide the problem, perhaps based on bad judgement?
Antituberculous activities of antidepressants: This is called a discovery without knowing the underlying mechanisms involved? E.g. lowering conscious mental stress therefore changing behaviour therefore improving health status?
The chicken (e.g. mental state, disease) or the egg (e.g. disease, mental state) problem: who was first? By the way, there are many, many, many different kinds of chicken and many, many, many different types of egg, right?
Evolutionary thinking? The egg would come first when it was not produced by a chicken (e.g. a reptile), but that because of a mutation the egg contained a chicken?
Do medical treatments take evolutionary-evolved mechanisms into account? E.g. why would a brain become sick in so-called natural settings in ancestors?
Is a reptile an elephant?
http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/pdf/S0169-5347(98)01341-X.pdf
To employ the comparative method a trustworthy phylogeny for the groups of interest is necessary. It has been accepted at least since the 1960s that birds and other reptiles form a monophyletic group, with birds and crocodilians representing the most recently derived clade within that group. Oviparity is the most common and broadly distributed reproductive mode found in the reptiles and birds, and must therefore be considered the ancestral character state for the entire group (see Fig. 1). Eggs, therefore, clearly came before chickens.
Is evolution gradual, or not? E.g. Crocodile/reptile A evolved into crocodile/reptile B, crocodile/reptile B evolved into crocodile/reptile C, etc...... and then offspring of offspring of offspring of crocodile/reptile X+1 ended up into become a bird-like creature, and then bird-like creature A evolved into bird-like creature B, bird-like creature B evolved into bird-like creature C, etc..... then offspring of offspring of offspring of bird-like creature X+1 ended up into a bird.... etc. etc. etc...
What are the arguments? I do not understand your reasoning, who is not gradual
The cost in uncalculable, it is not easy to put the cost of unbelieve in a publication. And with the increasing number of publications in all speciallity, it is more easy to find publications of this type.
Dear Marcel,
Regarding your original question, here you are a kind of answer:
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Is_the_Semmelweis_reflex_the_worst_obstacle_of_scientific_progress
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semmelweis_reflex
The costs are the life of women died because of ignorance and arrogance of many physicians in that time.
What about chimps and aids and feelings?
http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/chimpanzees-found-making-sex-toys
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/101220-chimpanzees-play-nature-nurture-science-animals-evolution/
Mycobacterium and aids: 150.000 results in Google Scholar (0.09 s)
What is cause and what is consequence?
Good luck!
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Linguistics
- Composition Studies
- Publication