"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> a écrit dans le message de 
news:4b1c2fe5$1@news.povray.org...
> I was thinking more the "New Kind of Science" self-publication or the Cold 
> Fusion publish-first-in-the-newspapers kind of avoidance-of-error.

Peer-reviewed journals about bogus science (homeopathy, chiropraxy...) do 
exist in the medical field. I just read one paper about an homeopathy trial, 
which ended positively but with the disclaimer "This study cannot be 
conclusive because there is no control group. Neither the physician, nor the 
patient was blinded."
It's just a matter of the peers setting the bar low enough.

G.

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On 12/06/09 12:42, Darren New wrote:
> Neeum Zawan wrote:
>> Having engaged in the peer review process, I don't have too strong
>> belief in its effectiveness. I haven't really thought of an
>> alternative, though.
>
> I think it's effective for ruling out the obviously-flawed experiments.
> Combine that with the requirement for repeatability and you get science.
> The repeatability is where the parapsychology falls down.

	But peer review doesn't demand repeatability. Well, OK - it should 
demand that the setup be described in a way that someone can repeat it, 
if that's what you mean.

	But I've seen no shortage experimental papers in good journals that 
simply don't give enough details for you to repeat it (e.g. key 
parameters are missing). I never measured it, but I suspect there's a 
positive correlation with such papers and the "fame" of their authors.

	The justification I've often been given is one of two: 1) The author 
doesn't want to give a way his secrets so that he can remain competitive 
in publishing papers (you may be shocked at how commonplace this is) 2) 
The author is thinking of starting a company and doesn't want to give 
trade secrets away.

	Essentially, peer review is only good if the peers are good and honest. 
I'm skeptical of that.

	Peer review can be a good first order filter, but let's not glorify. 
Enough junk routinely passes through. I suspect, though, that little of 
the junk survives over the long term, but I think enough "damage" is 
still done because of it.

PS - Also the case with computational papers, actually. Didn't mean to 
single out experimentalists.

-- 
Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright 
ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little 
sign of breaking down in the near future.

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Gilles Tran wrote:
> Peer-reviewed journals about bogus science (homeopathy, chiropraxy...) 
> do exist in the medical field.

Yep. I think that's what the original article was getting at.

I'm not saying peer review fixes things. I'm saying lack of peer review 
breaks things. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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Gilles Tran wrote:
> Peer-reviewed journals about bogus science (homeopathy, chiropraxy...) 
> do exist in the medical field. I just read one paper about an homeopathy 
> trial, which ended positively but with the disclaimer "This study cannot 
> be conclusive because there is no control group. Neither the physician, 
> nor the patient was blinded."

There's a book I happen to have an e-text version of, 'Fabulous Science' 
by John Waller, which begins "The great biologist Louis Pasteur 
suppressed 'awkward' data because it didn't support the case he was 
making.  Gregor Mendel, the supposed 'father of genetics', was no 
Mendelian.  Joseph Lister's famously clean hospital wards were actually 
notoriously dirty.  Alexander Fleming misled the world about his role in 
the discovery of penicillin.  And Einstein's general relativity was only 
'confirmed' in 1919 because an eminent British scientist ruthlessly 
massaged his figures."

I don't think we'd be where we are today if someone went back in time 
and introduced the notion of peer reviewed double-blind tests as an 
absolute necessity for accepting statements to, say, Aristotle.  Forget 
those who conveniently blame religion-in-general for holding us back a 
hundred years or so technologically--we'd be held back a thousand years 
or so if rigourous science had held sway instead.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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Neeum Zawan wrote:
>     But peer review doesn't demand repeatability. Well, OK - it should 
> demand that the setup be described in a way that someone can repeat it, 
> if that's what you mean.

That's what I meant, essentially.

>     Peer review can be a good first order filter, but let's not glorify. 

Definitely. I really think it's the repeatability that's *more* important. 
Sure there are lots of papers where you can't repeat the results, but I 
suspect the harder it is to repeat, the less fundamental the result is.

You'd really only need *one* repeatable *actual* ESP experiment to open up a 
whole new world of investigation. Bell's Inequality wouldn't be significant 
if you got different results each time you repeated it.  (Well, at least, it 
wouldn't be significant in any sense the same way.)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Human nature dictates that toothpaste tubes spend
   much longer being almost empty than almost full.

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On 7-12-2009 4:42, Darren New wrote:
> Neeum Zawan wrote:
>>     But peer review doesn't demand repeatability. Well, OK - it should 
>> demand that the setup be described in a way that someone can repeat 
>> it, if that's what you mean.
> 
> That's what I meant, essentially.
> 
>>     Peer review can be a good first order filter, but let's not glorify. 
> 
> Definitely. I really think it's the repeatability that's *more* 
> important. Sure there are lots of papers where you can't repeat the 
> results, but I suspect the harder it is to repeat, the less fundamental 
> the result is.

There are some things next to peer review that help honest reporting of 
data: you need to keep records of what you have done. Even if the paper 
does not give enough information (been guilty of that myself, but never 
intentionally), for a number of papers, someone from the editorial board 
(or someone on behalf of it) can come visit your lab to check the data 
afterwards. For every figure in the paper you have to be able to find 
the experiments it was based on and the raw data. If you publish data 
based on a clinical trial you also have had that trial registered 
somewhere *before* the inclusion of the first patient, including a full 
and reviewed protocol. (A couple of colleagues were at a seminar 
explaining all the procedures recently. One of the more interesting 
facts was that that registration procedure will cost about 40 kilogram 
of paper per site were the trial runs (a number apparently based on real 
life experience). So clearly the procedure is not optimal yet, but at 
least it will help reducing fraudulent trial reports)

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On 6-12-2009 23:27, Darren New wrote:
> andrel wrote:
>> On 6-12-2009 19:42, Darren New wrote:
>>> Neeum Zawan wrote:
>>>>     Having engaged in the peer review process, I don't have too 
>>>> strong belief in its effectiveness. I haven't really thought of an 
>>>> alternative, though.
>>>
>>> I think it's effective for ruling out the obviously-flawed 
>>> experiments. Combine that with the requirement for repeatability and 
>>> you get science.
>>
>> In my experience that is not always the case.
> 
> Fair enough.  Certainly *eventually* it will get overthrown, like after 
> the original discoverer has died. :-) 

That is why I am dead against people living significantly longer than we 
do now ;)

> Unlike certain other fields of 
> endeavor in which it is *better* to have unreproducible miracles and 
> ignore evidence in favor of faith than it is to look at evidence 
> presented by your peers.

in science there is of course always http://www.jir.com/

> I was thinking more the "New Kind of Science" self-publication or the 
> Cold Fusion publish-first-in-the-newspapers kind of avoidance-of-error.

I knew that.

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Tim Cook wrote:
> Forget 
> those who conveniently blame religion-in-general for holding us back a 
> hundred years or so technologically--we'd be held back a thousand years 
> or so if rigourous science had held sway instead.
> 
> -- 
> Tim Cook
> http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

Actually, I would suspect that, if you where at all correct, we would be 
right where we are now, or maybe a bit farther ahead. There is evidence 
that some "basics" of things like Babbage like devices where being built 
"by" Romans, but most where lost, or destroyed, since they ended up used 
mostly in temples, and later generations made a point to destroy 
anything they couldn't use for their own religion, including some of the 
temples. The problem isn't that religion held us back. The problem is, 
it tended to, and still does, arbitrarily declare certain things, 
"outside the scope of what the god(s) want", and fights to either slow 
down, halt, or outright destroy, those things. Its not just a case of 
someone fudging some numbers, or hiding an idea for a generation or so, 
or relatively "minor" stuff like that, its having to *rediscover* 
something, because the only record that anyone even may have known about 
it is an obscure reference in a book someone failed to burn, or a 
corroded mass of copper gears, at the bottom of the Mediterranean, which 
luckily for us, sank/fell overboard, so no one could destroy it.

There is a difference between "slowing" progress, and regressing it, 
which religions are prone to do.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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"andrel" <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
news:4B1### [at] hotmailcom...
> On 6-12-2009 23:27, Darren New wrote:
> > andrel wrote:

> > Fair enough.  Certainly *eventually* it will get overthrown, like after
> > the original discoverer has died. :-)

> That is why I am dead against people living significantly longer than we
> do now ;)

When people are living significantly longer than we do now, science will
have accomplished much of what it needs to.

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On 8-12-2009 2:15, somebody wrote:
> "andrel" <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
> news:4B1### [at] hotmailcom...
>> On 6-12-2009 23:27, Darren New wrote:
>>> andrel wrote:
> 
>>> Fair enough.  Certainly *eventually* it will get overthrown, like after
>>> the original discoverer has died. :-)
> 
>> That is why I am dead against people living significantly longer than we
>> do now ;)
> 
> When people are living significantly longer than we do now, science will
> have accomplished much of what it needs to.
> 

Interesting idea, but I don't think so.

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