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NancyLebovitz comments on Why no archive of refuted research? - Less Wrong Discussion

25 Post author: Kaj_Sotala 26 August 2011 08:14AM

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Comment author: NancyLebovitz 26 August 2011 01:35:27PM 5 points [-]

An archive of refuted research is an excellent idea. It could have ratings which reflect degrees of refutation, just as Polifact has degrees of accuracy and inaccuracy. (Page down for an explanation of their Truth-O-Meter.)

Comment author: moridinamael 26 August 2011 02:49:31PM 1 point [-]

I feel this would be very necessary for the general idea of an archive of refuted research to be effective. I say this primarily because even in the science and engineering domain (with which I am more familiar, as opposed to medicine and the soft sciences) there are many degrees of possible wrongness. When a field is just opening up, it is inevitable and even okay for people to pulish things that are a bit wrong. We know that the Cosmological Constant isn't "right" but we don't call Einstein's original papers "refuted."

Someone may say, "That's fine, we will only put research that is meaningfully refutable in this archive," but then you invite endless argument about whether string theory is refutable, etc., not to mention providing a platform for researchers with vendettas and ulterior agendas to invalidate the research of rivals through sheer nitpicking and willful misrepresentation.

Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 27 August 2011 12:31:38PM 1 point [-]

Someone may say, "That's fine, we will only put research that is meaningfully refutable in this archive," but then you invite endless argument about whether string theory is refutable,

That's why I mostly just concentrated on medicine, where you can simply ask whether replication studies on "thing X helps people" manage to reproduce the original result or not. Yes, there's room for interpretation and disagreement even here, but hopefully less than for "is string theory refutable".