Rik de Kort writes: This morning I stumbled across a very interesting blog post, dissecting some drama related to a non-replicating paper in computer science land. The question the paper tries to answer is whether some programming languages are more error prone than others. For a paper in computer science I would expect all their […]
Archive of posts filed under the Miscellaneous Science category.
“Day science” and “Night science” are the same thing—if done right!
Chetan Chawla writes: This paper will interest you, in defense of data mining. Isn’t this similar to the exploration Wasnik was encouraging in his infamous blog post? The article, by Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher, is called, “A hypothesis is a liability,” and it appeared in the journal Genome Biology. I took a look and […]
Here’s a question for the historians of science out there: How modern is the idea of a scientific “anomaly”?
Occasional blog commenter Raghu recommended Les Insulaires by Pascal Garnier. My French isn’t so good but dammit I’m gonna read this one all the way through. We’ll see if I finish it by the time this post appears in September . . . Anyway, I was talking with someone about my difficulties with foreign languages, […]
Rethinking Rob Kass’ recent talk on science in a less statistics-centric way.
Reflection on a recent post on a talk by Rob Kass’ has lead me to write this post. I liked the talk very much and found it informative. Perhaps especially for it’s call to clearly distinguish abstract models from brute force reality. I believe that is a very important point that has often been lost […]
Their findings don’t replicate, but they refuse to admit they might’ve messed up. (We’ve seen this movie before.)
Ricardo Vieira writes: I have been reading the replication efforts by the datacolada team (in particular Leif Nelson and Joe Simmons). You have already mentioned some of their work here and here. They have just published the #7 installation of the series, and I felt it was a good time to summarize the results for […]
Theorizing, thought experiments, fake-data simulation
I think of theorizing as like thought experiments or, in statistics, fake-data simulation: A way of exploring the implications of one’s ideas, essentially a form of deductive reasoning. Arguably, much of fiction serves this purpose too, of mapping out the implications of existing postulates, and, conversely, revealing implicit postulates or assumptions that drive our thinking.
Some thoughts inspired by Lee Cronbach (1975), “Beyond the two disciplines of scientific psychology”
I happened to come across this article today. It’s hardly obscure—it has over 3000 citations, according to Google scholar—but it was new to me. It’s a wonderful article. You should read it right away. OK, click on the above link and read the article. Done? OK, then read on.
Don’t say your data “reveal quantum nature of human judgments.” Be precise and say your data are “consistent with a quantum-inspired model of survey responses.” Yes, then your paper might not appear in PNAS, but you’ll feel better about yourself in the morning.
This one came up in a blog comment by Carlos; it’s an article from PNAS (yeah, I know) called “Context effects produced by question orders reveal quantum nature of human judgments.” From the abstract: In recent years, quantum probability theory has been used to explain a range of seemingly irrational human decision-making behaviors. The quantum […]
The flashy crooks get the headlines, but the bigger problem is everyday routine bad science done by non-crooks
In the immortal words of Michael Kinsley, the real scandal isn’t what’s illegal, the scandal is what’s legal. I was reminded of this principle after seeing this news article about the discredited Surgisphere doctor (see here for background). The news article was fine—it’s good to learn these things—but, as with pizzagate, evilicious, and other science […]
“No one is going to force you to write badly. In the long run, you won’t even be rewarded for it. But, unfortunately, it is true that they’ll often let you get away with it.”
Basbøll says it well. Relatedly, see here. Writing is hard.
Can the science community help journalists avoid science hype? It won’t be easy.
tl;dr: Selection bias. The public letter Michael Eisen and Rob Tibshirani write: Researchers have responded to the challenge of the coronavirus with a commitment to speed and cooperation, featuring the rapid sharing of preliminary findings through “preprints,” scientific manuscripts that have not yet undergone formal peer review. . . . But the open dissemination of […]
Children’s Variety Seeking in Food Choices
Margaret Echelbarger et al. write: Across three studies, we examine the variety selections of 329 children (4–9 years of age) and 81 adults in the food domain. In studies 1 and 2, we find that, like adults, children prefer to diversify their selections given no established preference for one item over another. In study 3, […]
“Time Travel in the Brain”
Natalie Biderman and Daphna Shohamy wrote this science article for kids. Here’s the abstract: Do you believe in time travel? Every time we remember something from the past or imagine something that will happen in the future, we engage in mental time travel. Scientists discovered that, whether we mentally travel back into the past or […]
MIT’s science magazine misrepresents critics of Stanford study
I’m disappointed. MIT can and should do better. I know MIT is not perfect—even setting aside Jeffrey Epstein and the Media Lab more generally, it’s just an institution, and all institutions have flaws. But they should be able to run a competent science magazine, for chrissake. Scene 1 Last month, I received the following query […]
bla bla bla PEER REVIEW bla bla bla
OK, I’ve been saying this over the phone to a bunch of journalists during the past month so I might as well share it with all of you . . . 1. The peers . . . The problem with peer review is the peers. Who are “the peers” of four M.D.’s writing up an […]
What are the best scientific papers ever written?
When I say “best,” I mean coolest, funnest to read, most thought-provoking, etc. Not necessarily the most path-breaking. For example, did Andrew Wiles write a paper with the proof of Fermat’s last theorem? If so, I can’t imagine this would be readable. So, sure, it’s a great accomplishment but it’s not what I’m talking about. […]
Statistical Workflow and the Fractal Nature of Scientific Revolutions (my talk this Wed at the Santa Fe Institute)
Wed 3 June 2020 at 12:15pm U.S. Mountain time: Statistical Workflow and the Fractal Nature of Scientific Revolutions How would an A.I. do statistics? Fitting a model is the easy part. The other steps of workflow—model building, checking, and revision—are not so clearly algorithmic. It could be fruitful to simultaneously think about automated inference and […]
This one’s for the Lancet editorial board: A trolley problem for our times (involving a plate of delicious cookies and a steaming pile of poop)
A trolley problem for our times OK, I couldn’t quite frame this one as a trolley problem—maybe those of you who are more philosophically adept than I am can do this—so I set it up as a cookie problem? Here it is: Suppose someone was to knock on your office door and use some mix […]
The turtles stop here. Why we meta-science: a meta-meta-science manifesto
All those postscripts in the previous post . . . this sort of explanation of why I’m writing about the scientific process, it comes up a lot. I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about the research process, rather than just doing research. And all too often I often find myself taking time […]
“The Moral Economy of Science”
In our discussion of Lorraine Daston’s “How Probabilities Came to Be Objective and Subjective,” commenter John Richters points to Daston’s 1995 article, “The Moral Economy of Science,” which is super-interesting and also something I’d never heard of before. I should really read the whole damn article and comment on everything in it, but for now […]