Is redoing scientific research the best way to find truth? [Until a better method is found, Yes] Others call that quest futile, saying it’s difficult — if not impossible — to redo a study exactly, especially when working with highly variable subjects, such as people, animals or cells. Repeating published work wastes time and money, the critics say, and it does nothing to advance knowledge. They’d prefer to see questions approached with a variety of different methods. It’s the general patterns and basic principles — the reproducibility of a finding, not the precise replication of a specific experiment — that really matter. Much of the controversy has centered on the types of statistical analyses used in most scientific studies, and hardly anyone disputes that the math is a major tripping point. An influential 2005 paper looking at the statistical weakness of scientific studies generated much of the self-reflection taking place within the medical community over the last decade. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/ While those issues still exist, especially as more complex analyses are applied to big data studies, there remain deeper problems that may be harder to fix.
Posted on: Sun, 25 Jan 2015 13:54:39 +0000
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