Academic papers are often cherry picked to support our prevailing views. We need to be careful to acknowledge the complexities of many issues explored by science.
‘This finding, like this stock image, is uncredible!’
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Scientific discoveries have moulded modern society. But the reliability of scientific results have recently been called into question. How will scientists solve this problem?
The BICEP2 telescope at twilight at the South Pole. The supporting data for the inflation of the universe have also gone off into the sunset.
Steffen Richter, Harvard University
Last March, the BICEP2 collaboration announced that they had used a microwave telescope at the South Pole to detect primordial gravitational waves. These tiny ripples in spacetime would be the first proof…
There’s science going on here, no test tubes or lab coats necessary.
USA Today Sports / Reuters
Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman gets called a lot of things. He calls himself the greatest cornerback in the NFL (and Seattle fans tend to agree). Sportswriters and some other players call…
Look beyond tinfoil hats – the most dangerous pseudoscience comes from scientists.
B Rosen/Flickr
Scientists should study pseudoscience – see what the pseudoscientists are up to and perhaps (for a laugh) try a few pseudostudies themselves. Critically, scientists must learn what really distinguishes…
China: “No, thanks. We don’t want a Nobel peace prize.”
andreasl
“China is at the forefront of medicine and hi-tech and computing.” So said UK Chancellor George Osborne, who recently visited the country. Global tests for 15-year-olds show the youth of Shanghai are comfortably…
Bankers aim to maximise profits. Scientists aim to understand reality. But Mike Peacey of the University of Bristol suggests, based on a new model he has just published in Nature, that both professionals…
Scientists are often untrained in methods to make their research replicable.
Pulpolux !!!
Over the past few years, there has been a growing awareness that many experimentally established “facts” don’t seem to hold up to repeated investigation. This was highlighted in a 2010 article in the New…
We are used to thinking in probabilities: will it be stormy enough to need an umbrella?
Luis Martins
In the lead up to the release next month of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Fifth Assessment Report we are exploring concepts of confidence and certainty in climate science. You…
Sometimes a piece of the puzzle won’t fit, but overall the picture is coming together.
Dave Ginsberg
In the lead up to the release next month of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Fifth Assessment Report we are exploring concepts of confidence and certainty in climate science. The…
Maybe humans aren’t causing climate change, and maybe penguins choose not to fly.
Antarctica Bound/Flickr
In the lead up to the release next month of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC’s) Fifth Assessment Report we are exploring concepts of confidence and certainty in climate science – beginning…
Now, no cheating: why doesn’t Australia have its own Office for Research Integrity?
Nat20_Film
David Vaux, WEHI (Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research)
Science is knowledge gained from reproducible observations or experiments. Yet in a commentary in Nature in May last year, researchers from biotechnology company Amgen reported that the findings in 90…
How many times do we have to try before we are able to repeat those results?
Queen's University
Scientific fraud has raised its ugly head once more. In a note to chemists in the journal Organic Letters, Amos Smith, the editor-in-chief, has announced that an analysis of data submitted to the journal…
Research showing no effect on antisocial behaviour after playing violent videogames (such as Call of Duty: Black Ops) should not be discounted.
hmomoy
The debate over the impact of playing violent videogames on aggressive attitudes and behaviour is a long and heated one. Based on my research, I would argue the link is not as straightforward as A + B…
The role of unconscious influences on behaviour has long been a contentious issue in psychology.
ssri
What roles do unconscious influences play on your behaviour and decision-making? The answer might not be as simple as you think. Imagine I showed you a list of words one by one on a computer screen and…
Would an “open science” approach lead to less academic fraud? It’s possible.
jintae kim's photography
Fraud. It’s an ugly word, an arresting word. As with “cheating” it comes loaded with negative connotations, but can potentially lead to far greater penalties and consequences. And yet fraud in science…
Everyone likes to stand out from the crowd, but sometimes ignoring the consensus goes too far.
James Cridland
In a sense, there is no such thing as climate change denial. No one denies that climate changes (in fact, the most common climate myth is the argument that past climate change is evidence that current…
We thought we knew the radius of the proton to within 0.8%. Perhaps not.
Ludie Cochrane/Flickr
Striving for agreement between theory and experiment and pushing the boundaries of precision are important parts of the scientific process. With each step in this process we move closer to enlightenment…
Consumers of research should not be satisfied with statements that “X is effective”, or “Y has an effect”.
Gwenae l Piaser
Empirical science needs data. But all data are subject to random variation, and random variation obscures patterns in data. So statistical methods are used to make inferences about the true patterns or…
When it comes to the crunch, the null hypothesis is the only one being tested.
Pimthida
At the heart of the scientific method is the process of hypothesis testing. Given an observable phenomenon in the world, a scientist will construct a hypothesis which seeks to explain that phenomenon…
Professor of Management & Organizations; Professor of Environment & Sustainability; Professor of Sustainable Enterprise at the Ross School of Business and School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan