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123 reviews for:
Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science
Stuart Ritchie
4.33 AVERAGE
123 reviews for:
Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science
Stuart Ritchie
4.33 AVERAGE
reflective
medium-paced
In my review of Superior last year, I mentioned wanting to find a more general book that discussed issues with science which could be incorporated into grad school curriculum to educate scientists about the field of science. I picked up this book to see if it would work. In short, it does.
Science Fictions goes through the various issues with the scientific field, focusing on meta-scientific studies.
The book has a lot of good going for it. It is easily approachable by non-experts because the author explains common academic jargon, such as impact factor and tenure. The breadth of issues discussed is broad and touches on multiple fields (though mostly medical, economics and social science). The examples chosen were widely relevant (such as the flawed autism-vaccine study), funny, and back up the theses. One pet peeve of mine is when writing overemphasizes the institution of scientists. This book does not do that, which reduces bias in assessing science.
I would have liked to see the last part on solutions more fleshed out. The author didn’t seem to fully evaluate the academic landscape (e.g., there wasn't mention of how to overcome the negative impact of publishing an article claiming someone's work is incorrect). The solution section seemed tacked onto the end as an afterthought. I would not hand this to the National Science Foundation and ask them to implement it without additional ideas and analysis.
Overall, the book is a good introduction to what is wrong with science, and I think a science grad program concerned with having graduates knowledgeable about scientific issues should have this (or something similar) included in their curriculum.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I had exactly the feeling described in the afterword when reading this: What study can I still trust after all this cheating, tweaking and outright lying? Staying informed and not falling for exciting but untrue news seems really a lot of work. I already distrust a lot of the "a new study has shown" news and try to read up on the actual science behind it if I can. Looks like even that isn't enough, sadly.
I hope preprinting and Open Science are here to stay, and I'm a little glad I didn't go into biology after all. I wouldn't have had fun with all the elbowing for the few jobs there it seems.
I hope preprinting and Open Science are here to stay, and I'm a little glad I didn't go into biology after all. I wouldn't have had fun with all the elbowing for the few jobs there it seems.
informative
reflective
medium-paced
Important, engaging and fun to read. Recommend to anyone doing or consuming research. Will be looking to integrate into my teaching.
Nobel Laureate Economist Daniel Kahneman, in his work targeted to public audience 'Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011)' talks about the certainty of Priming effects through citing various psychological studies and thereby claimed certain stimulus can be produced without conscious guidance or intention and that which can be patterned. It was one of the widely read popular bestsellers in the genre but things of uncertainty were likely after a few years when the studies he cited were failed to replicate or published with inadequate data. He even acknowledged that the fact that he was wrong about his certainty. What happened here?
"The books we’ve just discussed were by professors at Stanford, Yale and Berkeley, respectively. If even top-ranking scientists don’t mind exaggerating the evidence, why should anyone else?"
Following Kahneman, we have similar claimed by NASA, pop science books like Why We Sleep, studies of austerity, mediterranean diets, publication biases and issues of hacking p-values, cherry picking, salami slicing, self citations, self plagiarism, creating ghost citations and review from ghost peers, coercive citations from accepting journals.
Most of the people who's already in the field would know most of the replication crises discussed in the book but I guess mostly their guides would have calmed them down that it's okay to not being able to replicate scientific study due human error among other factors. It's a conditioning that's been practiced contradictory of the objectives set by the founding figures of scientific publishing community like Boyle.
Afterall the practitioners of science in the end has the susceptibility of becoming more of an organized cult working for their incentives of various kinds from academic survival, personal fame and status to achieve the bureaucratic standards forgetting the basic tenets of what scientific research is all about.
The last book I read was a work of a Wittgenstein student showcasing how Social Science was massacred by Social Scientists (Sociologists, Social Psychologists, Economists, Political Scientists to name a few..) where as this one does the same in the Natural Sciences.
But rather not going philosophical, it's limited to how science is practiced today than what science actually is. Maybe there are no better methods to understanding the world but as Winch said it's better to stay vigil and question 'the extra scientific pretensions' of scientific communities which creates its own norms and beliefs in its culture of practicing Science.
Science Fictions: The Epidemic of Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science (2020) ~ Stuart Ritchie
"The books we’ve just discussed were by professors at Stanford, Yale and Berkeley, respectively. If even top-ranking scientists don’t mind exaggerating the evidence, why should anyone else?"
Following Kahneman, we have similar claimed by NASA, pop science books like Why We Sleep, studies of austerity, mediterranean diets, publication biases and issues of hacking p-values, cherry picking, salami slicing, self citations, self plagiarism, creating ghost citations and review from ghost peers, coercive citations from accepting journals.
Most of the people who's already in the field would know most of the replication crises discussed in the book but I guess mostly their guides would have calmed them down that it's okay to not being able to replicate scientific study due human error among other factors. It's a conditioning that's been practiced contradictory of the objectives set by the founding figures of scientific publishing community like Boyle.
Afterall the practitioners of science in the end has the susceptibility of becoming more of an organized cult working for their incentives of various kinds from academic survival, personal fame and status to achieve the bureaucratic standards forgetting the basic tenets of what scientific research is all about.
The last book I read was a work of a Wittgenstein student showcasing how Social Science was massacred by Social Scientists (Sociologists, Social Psychologists, Economists, Political Scientists to name a few..) where as this one does the same in the Natural Sciences.
But rather not going philosophical, it's limited to how science is practiced today than what science actually is. Maybe there are no better methods to understanding the world but as Winch said it's better to stay vigil and question 'the extra scientific pretensions' of scientific communities which creates its own norms and beliefs in its culture of practicing Science.
Science Fictions: The Epidemic of Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science (2020) ~ Stuart Ritchie
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
really interesting
I'm surprised I haven't thought about this book more during the month it's been since I've read it. I guess if you're picking this book up, you're probably already expecting exactly what it's going to tell you. Maybe you can just skip it and know that you're right, and you can't trust any of these fucking people. But I did appreciate the extra granularity on why I can't trust, what I shouldn't trust, how I can gain trust, and what people are doing to restore trust to the scientific community.