Link: If you don't already read Bad Science

Manfred

So there's this blog called Bad Science, consisting mostly of the articles that medical doctor Ben Goldacre writes for the Guardian. It's about pseudoscience, medicine and medical research. And also awesome.

The recent article was a wonderful bit of emotional whiplash, and is about as subject I think is useful to keep in mind when contemplating research. But really, I recommend reading everything.

http://www.badscience.net/2011/05/existential-angst-about-the-bigger-picture/

Also, the second-most-recent article, which should appeal to LW-types:

http://www.badscience.net/2011/05/we-should-so-blatantly-do-more-randomised-trials-on-policy/

The recent article was a wonderful bit of emotional whiplash, and is about as subject I think is useful to keep in mind when contemplating research. But really, I recommend reading everything.

http://www.badscience.net/2011/05/existential-angst-about-the-bigger-picture/

Also, the second-most-recent article, which should appeal to LW-types:

http://www.badscience.net/2011/05/we-should-so-blatantly-do-more-randomised-trials-on-policy/

I think using randomized trials to search for successful policies is more likely to happen in China than in the United States. Large chunks of Chinese policy are not up for discussion, let alone experimentation, but their authoritarian leaders are mostly engineers and can just mandate policy.

I've been seeing this meme a lot lately, that the PRC leadership are engineers. It seems to be used in an implicit sense of 'they are practically scientists, and will be cool & rational & open to broader application of the scientific method (whatever their other failings), and we can generally expect rational actions of them'.

This bothers me.

There's the obvious point that even if they are rational actors, they may share few of our values and their rationality be a bad thing from our point of view; it's a common interpretation of the Party that it

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Link: If you don't already read Bad Science

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Link: If you don't already read Bad Science

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