http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/sep/23/bad-science-ben-goldacre"...
Let me explain why this behaviour is a problem. Nobody reading The Biologist, or its press release, could possibly have known that the evidence presented was deliberately incomplete. That is, in my opinion, an act of deceit by the journal: but it also illustrates one of the most important principles in science, and one of the most bafflingly recent to emerge.
Here is the paradox. In science, we design every individual experiment as cleanly as possible. In a trial comparing two pills, for example, we make sure that participants don't know which pill they're getting, so that their expectations don't change the symptoms they report. We design experiments carefully like this to exclude bias: to isolate individual factors, and ensure that the findings we get really do reflect the thing we're trying to measure.
But individual experiments are not the end of the story. There is a second, crucial process in science, which is synthesising that evidence together to create a coherent picture.
...
What does that have to do with Aric Sigman, the Society of Biologists, and their journal, The Biologist? Well, this article was not a systematic review, the cleanest form of research summary, and it was not presented as one. But it also wasn't a reasonable summary of the research literature, and that wasn't just a function of Sigman's unconscious desire to make a case: it was entirely deliberate. A deliberately incomplete view of the literature, as I hope I've explained, isn't a neutral or marginal failure. It is exactly as bad as a deliberately flawed experiment, and to present it to readers without warning is bizarre.
..."------------------------------------
Just an interesting FYI.
:hi:
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
