Bad Science Research Articles

The Inherent Drawbacks of the Pressure to Publish in Health Sciences: Good or Bad Science.

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in the number of scientific publications- it is the era of "hunting the article". This commentary discusses the drawbacks of the pressure to publish that certainly contribute to the 'dark side' of science. In fact, health science career progression greatly relies on the number of scientific publications a researcher has, and in many cases these may be more valorized than the health services provided. Of course, scientific publications help to develop the skills of health care professionals, but as Einstein highlighted " not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts".

Public Health, Embodied History, and Social Justice: Looking Forward.

This essay was delivered as a commencement address at the University of California-Berkeley School of Public Health on May 17, 2015. Reflecting on events spanning from 1990 to 1999 to 2015, when I gave my first, second, and third commencement talks at the school, I discuss four notable features of our present era and offer five insights for ensuring that health equity be the guiding star to orient us all. The four notable features are: (1) growing recognition of the planetary emergency of global climate change; (2) almost daily headlines about armed conflicts and atrocities; (3) growing public awareness of and debate about epic levels of income and wealth inequalities; and (4) growing activism about police killings and, more broadly, "Black Lives Matter." The five insights are: (1) public health is a public good, not a commodity; (2) the "tragedy of the commons" is a canard; the lack of a common good is what ails us; (3) good science is not enough, and bad science is harmful; (4) good evidence--however vital--is not enough to change the world; and (5) history is vital, because we live our history, embodied. Our goal: a just and sustainable world in which we and every being on this planet may truly thrive.

The Judeo-Christian-Islamic Heritage: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives ed. by Richard C. Taylor and Irfan A. Omar (review)

Reviewed by: The Judeo-Christian-Islamic Heritage: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives ed. by Richard C. Taylor and Irfan A. Omar Charles H. Manekin Richard C. Taylor and Irfan A. Omar, editors. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic Heritage: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2012. Pp. 339. Paper, $29.00. A more apt title for this collection would be “Islamic Philosophy and Theology and Their Impact” since most of the essays deal with Muslim thinkers. The Jewish heritage is [End Page 544] represented by one essay, which discusses some examples of Arabic philosophy in Jewish writings (James Robinson), and the scholastic heritage by two essays, which treat topics in Aquinas and Albert the Great, with reference to Averroes and Avicenna (Barnardo Carlos Bazán and Jorg A. Tellkamp). Still, there is enough to support the claim that the essays collectively highlight common ground, if not collaboration, between the Abrahamic “religious and philosophical traditions.” The essays are consistently of a high quality, but this review will single out a few of interest to readers of this journal. A theme that runs through several of the contributions is the mutual influence of religion and philosophy. After discussing Averroes’s conception of the religious law (sharī’a) peculiar to the philosophers, Taylor examines the continuity between this law and the religious beliefs of the non-philosophers, claiming that in his theological writings Averroes seeks to replace kalaām (Muslim dialectical theology) with his own ‘Almohad kalām,’ understood as “dialectical religious reasoning founding views essential to the formation of a successful religious basis for Muslim political society” (281). One may question whether the use of “dialectical religious reasoning” by an Almohad philosopher is sufficient to label a method ‘kalām.’ After all, Averroes rejects both the method and doctrines of kalām as bad science that muddies up religion. He claims that what scripture requires of the believer are the basic theological truths discovered by philosophy, but in a rudimentary form, to be explained with informal proofs rather than strict demonstrations or technical premises. This suggests that Averroes’s theological writings may be used confidently, if cautiously, as a source for his philosophical views. The late Michael Marmura reads Avicenna’s formulation of his more theologically problematic doctrines as anticipating subsequent charges of heresy. For example, although the world emanates from God necessarily, Avicenna adds that it is not the natural necessity of the light proceeding from its source; although God knows particulars in their universal aspect, Avicenna cites the Quranic verse that “not even the weight of an atom escapes his notice”; although there is no return of the soul to the body, he cites the opinion of “some scholars” that souls experience something akin to physical pain and pleasure. Whether Avicenna merely wished to forestall criticisms with these formulations, or whether he was religiously or philosophically committed to them, is not clear from the essay. Avicenna’s “floating man” argument for the soul’s awareness of its existence and its distinctness from the body, which is mentioned in a fourteenth-century Hebrew encyclopedia (Robinson) is the subject of two essays that remove the argument from its psychological context. Aminrazavi proposes a mystical interpretation in which the soul’s self-awareness implies awareness of God, since this self-awareness is awareness of existence in its pure sense, that is, God. Deborah Black offers an intriguing suggestion that the soul’s self-awareness could have been developed by Avicenna as an individuating factor for humans, but he actually describes my understanding of myself as the understanding of “a definition to which is conjoined an inseparable accident” (270), which implies a bundle theory of individuation. This bundle theory underlies Avicenna’s famous claim that God knows particulars “in a universal way,” that is, as a collection of essential and non-essential universals. Even heavenly bodies that are unique instantiations of their species are still known qua their properties that, in principle, admit of multiple instances. Black appears to accept the traditional criticism that knowledge of particulars “in a universal way” is not sufficiently robust either as knowledge of particulars, or as grounds for anything more than a limited providence. When Avicenna claims that “not...

Tainted: how philosophy of science can expose bad science

Chapter 1: Speaking Truth to Power: Uncovering Flawed Methods, Protecting Lives and Welfare Section 1: Conceptual and Logical Analysis Chapter 2: Discovering Dump Dangers: Unearthing Hazards in Hydrogeology Chapter 3: Hormesis Harms: The Emperor Has No Biochemistry Clothes Chapter 4: Trading Lives for Money: Compensating Wage Differentials in Economics Section 2: Heuristic Analysis and Developing Hypotheses Chapter 5: Learning from Analogy: Extrapolating from Animal Data in Toxicology Chapter 6: Conjectures and Conflict: A Thought Experiment in Physics Chapter 7: Being a Disease Detective: Discovering Causes in Epidemiology Chapter 8: Why Statistics Is Slippery: Easy Algorithms Fail in Biology Section 3: Methodological Analysis and Justifying Hypotheses Chapter 9: Releasing Radioactivity: Hypothesis-Prediction in Hydrogeology Chapter 10: Protecting Florida Panthers: Historical-Comparativist Methods in Zoology Chapter 11: Cracking Case Studies: Why They Work in Sciences Such As Ecology Chapter 12: Uncovering Cover-up: Inference to the Best Explanation in Medicine Section 4: Values Analysis and Scientific Uncertainty Chapter 13: Value Judgments Can Kill: Expected-Utility Rules in Decision Theory Chapter 14: Understanding Uncertainty: False Negatives in Quantitative Risk Analysis Chapter 15: Where We Go from Here: Making Philosophy of Science Practical

A Racist Little Hat: The MSG Debate and American Culture

Stop for a moment and ask yourself what you know about monosodium glutamate. If you’re anything like most Americans, your thoughts on the subject are probably simple: MSG is an artificial flavoring most often used with Chinese food, which should be avoided because it’s bad for you and gives you headaches. If this is your thinking, you’re not alone. For the past fifty years, this has been the conventional American understanding of MSG. But times change.
 Recently, a vocal movement has sprung up that advocates for an end to the stigma surrounding MSG, as detailed in a Buzzfeed article by John Mahoney titled, “The Notorious MSG’s Unlikely Formula For Success.” Mahoney suggests that a new cultural context is emerging, spearheaded by a group of celebrity chefs who take the iconoclastic position that we should reintroduce MSG to our palates. They argue that beyond the merits of its delicious savory flavor, referred to as “umami,” society’s trepidations about the ingredient are based on research born out of stark racism and bad science which have perpetuated a myth about MSG’s toxicity [1]. But the old guard isn’t going quietly, and just as vocal as the pro-MSG camp are those who fear a change to the status quo.

Fish tales: Combating fake science in popular media

What role should scientist play in correcting bad science, fake science, and pseudoscience presented in popular media? Here, we present a case study based on fake documentaries and discuss effective social media strategies for scientists who want to engage with the public on issues of bad science, pseudoscience, and fake science. We identify two tracks that scientists can use to maximize the broad dissemination of corrective and educational content: that of an audience builder or an expert resource. Finally, we suggests that scientists familiarize themselves with common sources of misinformation within their field, so that they can be better able to respond quickly when factually inaccurate content begins to spread.

Handbook for Survival—Saving Lives During Radiation Release and Other Disasters

This short book (145 pages) is the culmination of Dr. Brodsky’s 65 year career devoted to good science in radiation safety and really caring for the welfare of workers and the public. The book is a condensed version of his 2011 book Actions for Survival –Saving Lives in the Immediate Hours After Release of Radioactive or Other Toxic Agents, MJR Publications, Baltimore, MD 373 pages. In these books Dr. Brodsky has taken on the daunting task of presenting defensible science for safety in words that are understandable to persons without scientific training. During his career he constantly challenged those who abused science for their own agenda. He describes how he has confronted antinuclear activists, other scientists, and the heads of government agencies in a lifelong endeavor to correct bad science and the results of misunderstandings about radiation.

Good fences make for good neighbors but bad science: a review of what improves Bayesian reasoning and why.

Bayesian reasoning, defined here as the updating of a posterior probability following new information, has historically been problematic for humans. Classic psychology experiments have tested human Bayesian reasoning through the use of word problems and have evaluated each participant’s performance against the normatively correct answer provided by Bayes’ theorem. The standard finding is of generally poor performance. Over the past two decades, though, progress has been made on how to improve Bayesian reasoning. Most notably, research has demonstrated that the use of frequencies in a natural sampling framework—as opposed to single-event probabilities—can improve participants’ Bayesian estimates. Furthermore, pictorial aids and certain individual difference factors also can play significant roles in Bayesian reasoning success. The mechanics of how to build tasks which show these improvements is not under much debate. The explanations for why naturally sampled frequencies and pictures help Bayesian reasoning remain hotly contested, however, with many researchers falling into ingrained “camps” organized around two dominant theoretical perspectives. The present paper evaluates the merits of these theoretical perspectives, including the weight of empirical evidence, theoretical coherence, and predictive power. By these criteria, the ecological rationality approach is clearly better than the heuristics and biases view. Progress in the study of Bayesian reasoning will depend on continued research that honestly, vigorously, and consistently engages across these different theoretical accounts rather than staying “siloed” within one particular perspective. The process of science requires an understanding of competing points of view, with the ultimate goal being integration.

Breaking bad science I Think You'll Find It's a Bit More Complicated Than That Ben Goldacre Fourth Estate, 2014. 496 pp.

A physician's quest to expose the many misuses of science in the media

Dumping Daubert, Popping Popper and Falsifying Falsifiability: A Re-Assessment of First Principles

The Daubert mantra demands that judges, acting as gatekeepers, prevent para, pseudo or bad science from infiltrating the courtroom. To do so, the Judges must first determine what is ‘science’ and what is ‘good science.’ It is submitted that Daubert is deeply polluted with the notions of Karl Popper who sets ‘falsifiability’ and ‘falsification’ as the demarcation line for that determination. This philosophy has intractably infected case law, leading to bad decisions immortalized as stare decisis, and an unworkable system of decision-making which negatively impacts litigant expectations. Among other problems is the intolerance of Popper’s system for multiple causation, a key component of toxic tort law. Thus, the objective of this work is to sanitize the gatekeeping mindset from the philosophy of Popper, the first step in creating a new gatekeeping paradigm. I first show that Popper’s philosophy derived from and is applicable only to the world of quantum physics and is irrelevant to the science of the courtroom: biology, chemistry and Newtonian physics. Next, I falsify Popper’s ‘falsifiability’ using scientific examples; to my knowledge the first attempt to use this approach in a systematic fashion. Third, I demonstrate, both by scientific and legal example that Popper’s falsification system is inapt for forensic use. Finally, with the assistance of works of the philosopher Paul Hoyningen-Huene and the scientist George Gore, I recraft the definitions of ‘science’ and ‘good science’ highlighting the importance of verifiability and performance of verified experiments that produce valid and reliable results.

Book Review of Good Science, Bad Science, Pseudoscience, and Just Plain Bunk: How to Tell the Difference

Book Review of <i>Good Science, Bad Science, Pseudoscience, and Just Plain Bunk: How to Tell the Difference</i>

Book Review: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science behind 12-step Programs and the Rehab Industry

Book Review: The Sober Truth: Debunking the Bad Science behind 12-step Programs and the Rehab Industry

Happiness Research: A Review of Critiques

AbstractIn the short decades since the introduction of positive psychology instigated broader interdisciplinary research, interest in happiness has been growing in academia, the media and public policy. Numerous critiques of these developments have been forwarded from a variety of theoretical and disciplinary traditions. This article discusses three such criticisms: the culture‐bound and normative character of happiness, ‘bad science’ and scientism, and diminished subjectivity and individualisation. It is argued that criticism, particularly internal criticism, evidences the maturity of the field. However, the depth of some critiques may also indicate that interest in happiness is bound with broader cultural preoccupations and is likely to be superseded.

Political orientations do not cancel out, and politics is not about truth.

Duarte et al. propose that divergent political biases cancel each other out such that increasing political diversity will improve scientific validity. We argue that this idea is misguided. Their recommendations for improving political diversity in academia bear the danger of imposing political interests on science. Scientific scrutiny and criticism are the only viable remedies for bad science.

Contesting epistemic authority: Conspiracy theories on the boundaries of science.

Conspiracy theories are immensely popular today, yet in the social sciences they are often dismissed as "irrational," "bad science," or "religious belief." In this study, we take a cultural sociological approach and argue that this persistent disqualification is a form of "boundary work" that obscures rather than clarifies how and why conspiracy theorists challenge the epistemic authority of science. Based on a qualitative study of the Dutch conspiracy milieu, we distinguish three critiques that are motivated by encounters with scientific experts in everyday life: the alleged dogmatism of modern science, the intimate relation of scientific knowledge production with vested interests, and the exclusion of lay knowledge by scientific experts forming a global "power elite." Given their critique that resonates with social scientific understandings of science, it is concluded that conspiracy theorists compete with (social) scientists in complex battles for epistemic authority in a broader field of knowledge contestation.

Mind as a dimension &amp; compassion as a relationship issue

In the following paper it is argued that within a mistaken materialistic western scientific paradigm, mind is incorrectly reduced to brain. Such bad science means that compassion, along with many other phenomena relating to the domain of mind, tends to be measured in a depersonalised and objectified way. This objectification of compassion renders it almost impossible to design care services that will promote and sustain empathic connections between caregivers and recipients of care. This is simply because of a failure to recognise that compassion is a dynamic and interactional product of relationship within a live human context. A more psychologically-minded framework is proposed that honours mind as a dimension of the universe alongside time and space. Within this framework it becomes much easier to recognise and honour the universal psychological needs of the human condition. Within this approach the language of poetry and art is shown to be more relevant to compassion than the language of traditional western science. It also follows from this that it is of the utmost importance to recognise the powerful relational impact on carers of the caring role. If we want true care to be provided, we must also take care of the minds of those whom we expect to give care and attention to others.

The Countercultural Potential of Citizen Science

What is the countercultural potential of citizen science? As a participant in the wider citizen science movement, I can attest that contemporary citizen science initiatives rarely characterise themselves as countercultural. Rather, the goal of most citizen science projects is to be seen as producing orthodox scientific knowledge: the ethos is respectability rather than rebellion (NERC). I will suggest instead that there are resonances with the counterculture that emerged in the 1960s, most visibly through an emphasis on participatory experimentation and the principles of environmental sustainability and social justice. This will be illustrated by example, through two citizen science projects that have a commitment to combining social values with scientific practice. I will then describe the explicitly countercultural organisation, Science for the People, which arose from within the scientific community itself, out of opposition to the Vietnam War. Methodological and conceptual weaknesses in the authoritative model of science are explored, suggesting that there is an opportunity for citizen science to become anti-hegemonic by challenging the hegemony of science itself. This reformulation will be expressed through Deleuze and Guattari's notion of nomadic science, the means through which citizen science could become countercultural.

C.S.I. Bulls#!t: The National Academy of Sciences, Melendedez-Diaz v. Massachusetts, and Future Challenges to Forensic Science and Forensic Evidence,

Good law depends on good science. The February 18, 2009, National Academy of Sciences report, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward (“NAS Report”), reveals that, for the most part, forensic science is bad science. The NAS Report also suggests that when confronted with forensic science, most courts make bad law.

C.S.I. Bulls#!T: The National Academy of Sciences, Melendedez-Diaz V. Massachusetts, and Future Challenges to Forensic Science and Forensic Evidence

Good law depends on good science. The February 18, 2009, National Academy of Sciences report, Strengthening Forensic Science in the United States: A Path Forward (“NAS Report”), reveals that, for the most part, forensic science is bad science. The NAS Report also suggests that when confronted with forensic science, most courts make bad law.

Review of Your Child Does Not Have Bipolar Disorder: How Bad Science and Good Public Relations Created the Diagnosis, by Stuart L. Kaplan

Journal of Child and Adolescent PsychopharmacologyVol. 24, No. 8 Book ReviewReview of Your Child Does Not Have Bipolar Disorder: How Bad Science and Good Public Relations Created the Diagnosis, by Stuart L. KaplanLauren SpringLauren SpringSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:20 Oct 2014https://doi.org/10.1089/cap.2014.24112AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB ToolsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmail View articleFiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 24Issue 8Oct 2014 InformationCopyright 2014, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc.To cite this article:Lauren Spring.Review of Your Child Does Not Have Bipolar Disorder: How Bad Science and Good Public Relations Created the Diagnosis, by Stuart L. Kaplan.Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychopharmacology.Oct 2014.468-470.http://doi.org/10.1089/cap.2014.24112Published in Volume: 24 Issue 8: October 20, 2014Online Ahead of Print:October 6, 2014PDF download