You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

ZoltanBerrigomo comments on Scientific studies and trust - Less Wrong Discussion

5 Post author: NancyLebovitz 07 August 2015 04:44PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (9)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: ZoltanBerrigomo 07 August 2015 05:50:03PM *  6 points [-]

I think the lumping of various disciplines into "science" is unhelpful in this context. It is reasonable to trust the results of the last round of experiments at the LHC far more than the occasional psychology paper that makes the news.

I've not seen this distinction made as starkly as I think it really needs to be made -- there is a lot of difference between physics and chemistry, where one can usually design experiments to test hypotheses; to geology and atmospheric science, where one mostly fits models to data that happens to be available; to psychology, where the results of experiments seem to be very inconsistent and publication bias is a major cause of false research results.

Comment author: telomerase 08 August 2015 11:24:02PM 1 point [-]

...and then on to any specific field which has political uses, where "publication bias" can reach Lysenko levels ;)

So just never studfy psychology and you won't go crazy. It all works out...