Wanted: scientific immune system to identify weak studies getting lots of attention
www.emilkirkegaard.com
In the interest of keeping the scientific enterprise towards finding truth, it is important to reduce the impact of problematic studies in the scientific literature. Studies can be problematic in many ways (e.g. lacks a control for genetic confounding in social science), but one relatively simple problem to automatically identify is low precision due to small sample size. Since such studies are too imprecise to really tell us much about reality, they should be given quite little attention. Unfortunately, something like the opposite might be true, with small studies with flashy results being given worldwide media attention.
Wanted: scientific immune system to identify weak studies getting lots of attention
Wanted: scientific immune system to identify…
Wanted: scientific immune system to identify weak studies getting lots of attention
In the interest of keeping the scientific enterprise towards finding truth, it is important to reduce the impact of problematic studies in the scientific literature. Studies can be problematic in many ways (e.g. lacks a control for genetic confounding in social science), but one relatively simple problem to automatically identify is low precision due to small sample size. Since such studies are too imprecise to really tell us much about reality, they should be given quite little attention. Unfortunately, something like the opposite might be true, with small studies with flashy results being given worldwide media attention.