John Ioannidis is on a roll. Ioannidis is a professor at Stanford School of Medicine who does a number of things - one of which is to expose what is wrong with current approaches to publishing science. In particular he enjoys finding methodological weaknesses and flaky statistics. He is the author of the excellent Why Most Published Research Findings Are False (HERE).
Recently Ioannidis published a paper called Why Science Is Not Necessarily Self-Correcting HERE. The asbtract of this paper begins "The ability to self-correct is considered a hallmark of science. However, self-correction does not always happen to scientific evidence by default". He goes on to describe a speculative future of science on Planet F345...
"Planet F345 in the Andromeda galaxy is inhabited by a highly intelligent humanoid species very similar to Homo sapiens sapiens.
Here is the situation of science in the year 3045268 in that planet.
Although there is considerable growth and diversity
of scientific fields, the lion’s share of the
research enterprise is conducted in a relatively limited number of very
popular
fields, each one of that attracting the efforts of
tens of thousands of investigators and including hundreds of thousands
of papers. Based on what we know from other
civilizations in other galaxies, the majority of these fields are null
fields—that
is, fields where empirically it has been shown that
there are very few or even no genuine nonnull effects to be discovered,
thus whatever claims for discovery are made are
mostly just the result of random error, bias, or both. The produced
discoveries
are just estimating the net bias operating in each
of these null fields. Examples of such null fields are nutribogus
epidemiology,
pompompomics, social psychojunkology, and all the
multifarious disciplines of brown cockroach research—brown cockroaches
are
considered to provide adequate models that can be
readily extended to humanoids. Unfortunately, F345 scientists do not
know
that these are null fields and don’t even suspect
that they are wasting their effort and their lives in these scientific
bubbles.
Young investigators are taught early on
that the only thing that matters is making new discoveries and finding
statistically
significant results at all cost. In a typical
research team at any prestigious university in F345, dozens of pre-docs
and
post-docs sit day and night in front of their
powerful computers in a common hall perpetually data dredging through
huge databases.
Whoever gets an extraordinary enough omega value (a
number derived from some sort of statistical selection process) runs to
the office of the senior investigator and proposes
to write and submit a manuscript. The senior investigator gets all these
glaring results and then allows only the
manuscripts with the most extravagant results to move forward. The most
prestigious
journals do the same. Funding agencies do the same.
Universities are practically run by financial officers that know
nothing
about science (and couldn’t care less about it),
but are strong at maximizing financial gains. University presidents,
provosts,
and deans are mostly puppets good enough only for
commencement speeches and other boring ceremonies and for making
enthusiastic
statements about new discoveries of that sort made
at their institutions. Most of the financial officers of research
institutions
are recruited after successful careers as real
estate agents, managers in supermarket chains, or employees in other
corporate
structures where they have proven that they can cut
cost and make more money for their companies. Researchers advance if
they
make more extreme, extravagant claims and thus
publish extravagant results, which get more funding even though almost
all
of them are wrong.
No one is interested in replicating
anything in F345. Replication is considered a despicable exercise
suitable only for idiots
capable only of me-too mimicking, and it is
definitely not serious science. The members of the royal and national
academies
of science are those who are most successful and
prolific in the process of producing wrong results. Several types of
research
are conducted by industry, and in some fields such
as clinical medicine this is almost always the case. The main motive is
again to get extravagant results, so as to license
new medical treatments, tests, and other technology and make more money,
even though these treatments don’t really work.
Studies are designed in a way so as to make sure that they will produce
results
with good enough omega values or at least allow
some manipulation to produce nice-looking omega values.
Simple citizens are bombarded from the
mass media on a daily basis with announcements about new discoveries,
although no serious
discovery has been made in F345 for many years now.
Critical thinking and questioning is generally discredited in most
countries
in F345. At some point, the free markets destroyed
the countries with democratic constitutions and freedom of thought,
because
it was felt that free and critical thinking was a
nuisance. As a result, for example, the highest salaries for scientists
and the most sophisticated research infrastructure
are to be found in totalitarian countries with lack of freedom of speech
or huge social inequalities—one of the most common
being gender inequalities against men (e.g., men cannot drive a car and
when they appear in public their whole body,
including their head, must be covered with a heavy pink cloth). Science
is flourishing
where free thinking and critical questioning are
rigorously restricted, since free thinking and critical questioning
(including
of course efforts for replicating claimed
discoveries) are considered anathema for good science in F345."
Of course if science on Earth was performed today like it is on F345 it would be both depressing and very difficult to accurately discern the difference between real-science and psuedo-science.
Image of Andromeda from HERE
