Political science and the replication crisis
- Thread starter Benson
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RainbowSingularity
Valued Senior Member
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creationism#Education_controversies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_and_evolution_in_public_education#United_States
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis#Political_repercussions
why would a business produce a product that no customer will buy ?
Benson
Registered Senior Member
The replication crisis is where you start to check scientific evidence, approx 50% is found to be wrong but people often use the date, pass it on as fact and caused the replication crisis.
RainbowSingularity
Valued Senior Member
like creationism
completely made up
no scientific fact at all
then put into schools and taught to children as science
... and this done by the same adults who control the narrative around how business operates and what public policy is enacted for things like climate change.
... or are you not talking about the usa ?
or do you mean medical research by pharmaceutical company's ?
Benson
Registered Senior Member
Erm, it's not made up, it's common knowledge in the psychology field. There are studies regarding this and even scientists have covered this problem. If you believe it's made up or not, you're welcome to that but you will end up behind the conversation.
Certainly with climate change, errors have been found but duplicated and quoted as fact. If, for example, if you wanted to find out if man made climate change is real or not, would you go out and do the measurements yourself, or, read scientific papers and take the data as gospel?
Climate change was just used as an example only, it's not on my agenda to get bogged down with that topic.
So, scientists have examined data and find that up to 50% have found to be wrong/contain errors. The problem is, people have copied and pasted the data to support their arguement/work.
So my question to this replication problem, has it materialised/appeared due to scientists tweaking their work to satisfy political agenda, certainly with reference to the funding side of things?
Let us imagine you put together a team that is going to peform as near to realtime research on the relationship between news stories and known facts. Two months in, you notice something striking, which is a sudden change in the general manner and method in some of the survey subjects bearing a severe and hauntingly mysterious relationship to your thesis.
So, yeah, it turns out one of your team leaked. To a survey subject.
"Well," he explains, "it just wouldn't be fair if they couldn't respond."
Actually, that's what debriefing is for. That's what explanations of methodology in the peer-reviewed paper would attend. What the leaker has just done is deliberately tamper with the survey sample in order to foul the result.
Turns out, he thinks you're too radical. That's why it would be unfair; if the thesis was correct, implications would favor something he personally disagrees with in a political context.
But this is social science, and involves politics, so there occurs, as if because nature abhors a vacuum, a bloc between a quarter and forty percent, who from the outset argue not simply that it is okay to foul the sample like that, but, furthermore, that it would be wrong to not advise the survey subjects so they will change their behavior in order to foul the result.
What I'm illustrating, here is that political science isn't like physics. Hydrogen, for instance, simply does not decide to fuck with researchers just for the lulzies. Variable response temperatures for two quantities of water describe one as containing salt, not any indication of the stategic preferences displayed by fifty cubic centimeters of water salt or fresh.
Consider the challenges of self-reporting surveys. I can recall a groundbreaking survey in the Nineties, from Chicago-NORC, about how mandatory drug testing was hurting everyone except the testing labs. It makes perfect sense, and has largely proven out over time, but the big question looming over it was the fact of a self-reporting survey about behavior both illegal and denigrating to memory, including questions about how much you went to work intoxicated, hung over, or otherwise, and how you thought you performed under the influence. It really was an amazing result.
Our neighbor, by contrast, asks about a "replication crisis" occurring in research that seeks to comprehend the goings-on in one of the most unstable and unreliable data pools we might examine. In a discipline where the key to comprehension is discovered by scrutinizing what is not explicitly untrue in order to discern the shape of what is absent from the presentation, "replication" has very specialized, obscure meanings.
It's political science; how much of it is undertaken according to its potential reliability and validity, compared to how much of it is a capital enterprise measuring its success by whether or not it affects people's behavior? The most reliable and replicable will be very basic behavioral economics. Everything else is pop-psy sorcery, and the only parts of that one might validate will, similarly, be somewhat basic.
As a general inquiry, questions of replication crisis echo longstanding societal doubts about the propriety of psychological arts pretty much everyone seems willing to pretend they know how to use, regardless of whether or not they "believe in" psychology.
sculptor
Valued Senior Member
A) paradigms
It seems that in all sciences, there is a tendency to fudge data toward the existing paradigm.
Challenging the paradigm can lead to ridicule, or in having one's work not accepted for publication.
eg: Monte Verde, poor Tom Dillehay was widely ridiculed for many years even though his team chose to go with a younger date than some of the materials suggested.
eg: V Gordon Childe and the urban revolution---roughly farming led to complex societies led to monumental architecture-- the paradigm lasted for over 50 years, and then ... gobekli tepe
B) And, then
We have people who will parrot claims made by others without bothering to check the data for themselves. Much like the Clovis first and V Gordon Childe traps, these people seem to think that science runs by consensus----If you can get enough damned fools to say the same thing, it must be true.
Showing work that challenges the consensus, or shows that the accepted work is incapable of replication then can lead back to A) above
The problem with fudging data to come closer to the consensus, is that unfudging the data can prove psychologically challenging.
RainbowSingularity
Valued Senior Member
publication for graduation
publication for assessment of knowledge & use of common terms
environmental comprehension
demographic of qualifying degree level psychology students
systematized process of accreditation management systems to garner idiosyncratic content culture
wernher von braun got to own nasa
(longitudinally nasa was sold as a sex slave to the Republican party to frame as a socialist organisation and then de-fund over decades to serve as a reason why government science fails)
who owns and runs all the survey companys and marketing companys ?
pensioner white male adulterers
who are their apprentices ? both-sides patriarchal apologists ready to sellout any social culture morality for a quick million dollars ?(to be fair the vast majority of humans would) ?
they just get to do it for a lot less than the million but have to keep doing it over and over again to make their own millions
like a wife beating junky crack-head
probably quite a nice person without the drug addiction, the behavioural addiction & the sadistic violence being played out.
underneath all that horrible wife and child beating drunken mind addling behaviour...
what if they wear a flash suit and speak politely ?
do people automatically assign a higher value of factual credibility ?
more so if they publish something talking about(Ego) how big their Cock is.
Remember the 90s ?
everyone running around with one hand on their cock and the other hand covered in cocaine and money
and that was the burgeoning of the womens liberation movement of todays teen age girls
are you going to accept that the tenets of moral ideology should be championed against a back drop or male patriarchal dictatorship normalising a culture value of secondary human value ?
(probably not, considering it has become widely accepted in modern 1st world countrys that now women are to be treated equal by law & social custom)
meanwhile the pop science magazines selling dick measuring tapes to post womens lib men going through penis (ego) size existential crisis need to define the business culture by supplying a product to the science.
you see enigma, i see culture
the gap between those whom study research as a life chosen to excel in for personal interest(be that professionally or unpaid) very rarely spend much time seeking other peoples surveys.
between the mid 80s to late 90s surveys were used to create false social narratives to align with corporate patriarchal capitalism(or in other countrys state sanctioned communism).
i say tomato
you say ... but how do they make all the sauce taste the same when i want something different.
no product
no money
the product is the piece of material that tells them what they want to hear
the process is backward in the usa
much like tin pot dictatorships but instead of a serial killer at the top
you have the greed of capitalism driving the absolute zero point of all morality
profit
if there were any doubt in the scientific community about what value real data has, it was the defunding of scientific government departments by the Republican Trump Presidency.
they effectively lined up some lowly jewish domestic helpers in the concentration camp and then shot them all in public for not calling monday a friday
what were you expecting from america ?
those asking for the research tell them what they want to hear
those white male adulterrer middle aged males are telling their apprentice cheaters what the product needs to be
then it is constructed.
the cost to gain real data is abhorrent to the desired result, as collecting real data is likely to give the wrong product and then they dont get paid.
again i ask you
what were you expecting from america ?
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Is the science biased, or the scientists? Because no one trusts the data just because it's been published. If the data can't be replicated, that's not a crisis, that's just science doing it's job. We should assume a study is flawed, not that it's true.
RainbowSingularity
Valued Senior Member
sub-narative
false science is the fault of the scientist regardless of who is producing it and even more so when it is politically defined...
it seems very bare faced, but im pretending not to notice
both-sides greed merchants want to sell scientific impartiality as a political ideology of both-side-ism to pay lip service to existing power structures.
defining it as a culture that is self normative and effectively quasi centric liberal
however... im also pretending not to notice that because having a discussion is better than no one talking at all.
...
regardless of 'any' pre-determined bent that some 'may at some stage' bring in to the initially innocently posed discussion.
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RainbowSingularity
Valued Senior Member
im coming back to read & respond to your post after my brain has had a nap
i had to read this a few times.
yes i understand , i have run head long into that precise problems many times over many years.
it has made me just about bang my head on my monitor.
it has also made me give up on researching some things as it appears there is 'what appears on the google surface as' deliberate omission & obfuscation about precise subject matter and statistical methodology.
deliberate
survey construction to deliberately hide specific topics or social data.
i have seen this many times
then
there is specific action to collect and then define the data into groups that cross purposes with basic function to present a pop-science reality TV narrative to a both sides impossible outcome paradigm
it is clearly deliberate
it seems to follow the social engineering methodology of telling the voter/customer what they want and then giving them several options to choose from
then inserting data that supports those processes as false fact data
this is then linked to surveys which are designed to simply collate data that delivers value sets to the questions rather than value data on the subject.
very dirty stuff
i stay well clear of it all mostly
once you cross match this with specificity of marketing company surveys which are specifically niche targeted to pander to a value set required to drive a specific outcome
it is not market survey
it is product design
there are one of 2 exceptions, however the most part is that marketing companys running such things are no different to effectively societal-cultural mercenary's
they deliver a product, not science. they use science to create the product
they dont care if they are painting over the fire escape sign for important social or political issues.
they will freely do so with no social moral conscience
kicking up a lot of click bait dust at the front door of most topics is pop-science which is simply a gateway to click bait advertising
just a platform to collect clicks for advertising money using specific topics and pop-science content to indoctrinate consumers into their advertisers product ranges.
they style the site as a culture toward a certain type of consumerism that feeds the click bait.
all very legal on the most part
like selling make-up to mid teen girls
perfectly harmless & Legal and morally ok by most social standards
but if that site was then giving sexual/medical advice(science) that holds narratives on womens reproductive rights and women equal rights ... being questionable both-sides debates, then it is (insert words)
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RainbowSingularity
Valued Senior Member
soo
here we are
asking the question about what ?
the dodgey miss information curated for pay-per-click ?
or the university science ?
you need to extract the political content and throw it in the bin
but that is very difficult when most companys are members of the republican party
it doesnt leave you with much since you disregarding all data collected by pay per type-result by marketing companys
survey companys who poll people "polling companys"
dont like to have data that is too different from all the others or they dont get contracts by the political partys.
producing products...
not producing science
leaving us asking a question
are we(you/who-ever) considering all the fake information and making a data set of that being included with high value university research ?
because if you are
then your a propaganda troll
plane n simple(knowingly or unknowingly) you are still creating a product that undermines the ability to gain quality data.
here we are
asking the question about what ?
the dodgey miss information curated for pay-per-click ?
or the university science ?
you need to extract the political content and throw it in the bin
but that is very difficult when most companys are members of the republican party
it doesnt leave you with much since you disregarding all data collected by pay per type-result by marketing companys
survey companys who poll people "polling companys"
dont like to have data that is too different from all the others or they dont get contracts by the political partys.
producing products...
not producing science
leaving us asking a question
are we(you/who-ever) considering all the fake information and making a data set of that being included with high value university research ?
because if you are
then your a propaganda troll
plane n simple(knowingly or unknowingly) you are still creating a product that undermines the ability to gain quality data.
RainbowSingularity
Valued Senior Member
we should all join in to do a test study on something posting in here
we simply add what we find to be closest to what the named subject is.
pick one thread author.
we simply add what we find to be closest to what the named subject is.
pick one thread author.
I see how this started now. Science discovers reliable knowledge which can conflict with a dishonest political agenda. Therefore, scientists must be attacked as politically motivated. Indeed, all truth telling is being attacked, including journalists and historians. There is a place for uncovering bias, but a biased motivation to do so is reprehensible.
The problem, critics say, is that human epidemiological studies often rely on gathering reams of sensitive information from thousands of individuals, such as their medical history and personal habits, along with exactly where they live and work. Those details are usually guarded by confidentiality agreements that bar researchers from sharing data that would allow an individual to be identified.
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/new-rule-could-force-epa-ignore-major-human-health-studies
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/04/new-rule-could-force-epa-ignore-major-human-health-studies
Fortunately
you can do both. (I actually have; it is instructive.)
Hanlon's Razor is quite accurate.
Not in the field of climate research. Not significantly, anyway.
Neither. I would not take my own ice cores or send up my own weather balloons, and I never take anything as "gospel" - not even Gospel.
I would keep reading the scientific papers, and keep track of the reasoning etc. over time, as the results come in and people analyze them.
I would also reality check what I could - for example, that the weather in my northern temperate zone region is changing more at night and in the winter than in the day and summer.
Physical reality seldom aligns with bias and error for very long. Bad reasoning usually falls apart under examination.
In the US the funding pressure in climate research, like the political pressure, has come from fossil fuel interests and the politicians they have corrupted - Exxon et al, the Koch brothers and their allies, the entire Republican Party, and a faction of Democrats, to shorthand the description.
It seems to have done some damage to individual researchers and agencies, crippled to some extent climate research efforts in general, created self-censorship and internal suppression within organizations like the IPCC, but does not seem to have reduced the replicability of the remaining raw data collection efforts. Yet.
Thing is, offshore drillers need solid weather info and the best predictions of the future weather they can get.
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No, I don't feel it's the dominant reason and may doubt that there could be a stable one standing out in the convergence of mulitple "causes".
The replication crisis stems from a variety of factors -- including publish or perish, skewering statistical practices and other procedures, and the incredible amount of outputted material which quality control is overwhelmed by.
It's not just due to sci-tech activity and its fruits becoming a fiery market commodity, businesses and other self-interests providing funding and oversight, the farming out of projects to discount research facilities, outrage and shaming threats of both today and the past prodding the human sciences to conform to academic (social-philosophy) ideological prescriptions and quarreling arrays of political expectations, and any religious slash traditional culture infiltrations.
Psychology still has some items of past studies that it professes confidence in.
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Yazata
Valued Senior Member
I'm inclined to think that the phrase "political science" is very close to an oxymoron.
Talking about everyone who is referred to as a 'scientist' and not just "political scientists", I'd say that the percentage typically depends on how abstract a science is and how closely tied it is to "hot button" social issues.
I don't think that we see a whole lot of political bias in mathematics or the molecular biology of photosynthesis. But in some fields, an unknown but large percentage of "research" is conducted so as to support conclusions that the 'researchers' seemingly already passionately believed in prior to beginning the 'research'.
The more moralized a research area is, the more inclined people are to not only disagree but to morally condemn those who disagree with them, and the worse it gets. When hiring and tenure decisions ride on having the proper opinions on various controversial topics, whole fields of study start to be biased.
It's a reason, not necessarily the reason.
There are other things happening, such as publish-or-perish metrics, where young researchers are judged on how many publications they have, so they just crank papers out even if a lot of it is bullshit. And there's an academic culture (probably more prevalent in the humanities than the sciences) in which one doesn't accrue reputation points for agreeing with one's predecessors, but rather for proposing a radical new theory that overturns everything that went before and gets everyone talking about you.