Signs of the Times
Link
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick reports on a new study that he says should "shake the foundations of medical research" but laments that it almost certainly won't. In the year 2000, the US National Heart Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) insisted that all researchers register their "primary aim" and then later their "primary outcome" with clinicaltrials.gov. This one small change in the way medical studies were reported transformed the "success" rates in peer reviewed papers. Before 2000, fully 57% of studies found the success they said they were testing for, but after that, their success rate fell to to a dismal 8%. When people didn't have to declare what their aim was, they could fish through their results to find some positive, perhaps tangential association, and report that as if they had been investigating that effect all along. The negative results became invisible. If a diet, drug or treatment showed no benefit at all, or turned up bad results, nobody had to know. The world of peer reviewed climate research: like a universe of dark matter It's not like climate science suffers from unpublished "negative results" — no, it's more like it's built on them: like all the model runs that ran off the ranch and disappeared, and the hot spot that never went missing, but keeps being "found". The infamous Pause in the Climate barely existed until a forest of explanations for it appeared. Then there are the strange missing proxies — like the tree rings from the last 30 years. Did no one look, have all the trees gone, or were those awkward results dropped down the memory hole? Or is it because when someone did, the proxy turns out to be useless like the Sheep Mountain hockey-stick tree rings did?
via IFTTT
“Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses.” - Plato
Seeking Truth in a World of Propaganda. Links do not necessarily indicate agreement with stories or perspectives.