Well, sometimes there’s another step missing just before the Bullshit: “Use the small, narrow findings to inform a greater narrative beyond the data’s scope”
I love how all the comments in this thread are like “yeah but it is bullshit tho!”
Well I’d like to think I’m not! I wanted to point to an actually dubious thing where we might call into question a study, so we could still respect the work being done while validating the importance of keeping standards in research.
You’re right though that it’s disappointing how many responses seem to address only the flaws in modern science and not acknowledge the strength of the scientific process. I think a big part of it does come down to how scientific findings are interpreted and reported to the public, and even further an all-too-human misunderstanding of epistemic limitations. Our cultures should spend more time educating people about the limits of knowledge and fact, how they are constrained by other flawed systems, etc. That would be a half-decent start, if we could only fix the entire reporting problem too.
Thank you for pointing this out.
Spot the Brit?
Not sure which other countries have 3y bachelor’s degrees and will let you do a PhD without a master’s degree and also have 3y doctorate degreesWhere do you need a Masters to attain a PhD? Honest question, I just never heard of it before.
My wife attained her MD/PhD from the University of Chicago/Pritzker and does not have a Masters. She’s on the MD/PhD committee for her university and they do not require anything other than a BS in the field of study.
With that said, it probably isn’t much of a stretch to just get a Masters in the way to a PhD.
Me? I’m depriving some poor village of its idiot. I have a BS and that’s it.
In the EU it’s usually like that. 3 years for a bachelor’s, 2 years for a master’s, only then you can start pursuing a phd.
I graduated in 2005, and back then we had a different system, where I did a single 5 year program for a computer science degree (engineering), that today is the equivalent of a master’s (diplom engineer). I could have continued to go for a dedicated master’s, another 2 years, but I got lazy.
All of continental europe?
I get that this is the Internet.
But how about this one time, we all converse as adults.
How does that sound?
An adult response would have been:
“Virtually all European universities require a Masters to attain a PhD.”
This is Lemmy and not Reddit after all.
Definitely depends on the field. Most “humanities” studies require a masters first, although for that reason many PhD programs include the step of getting your masters so it can all be done as a single track. So still a standard ~6 year program but you get both, masters after the first 3 and then PhD after 3 more. I’ve only ever run with folks in humanities I’m realizing, so I didn’t even realize there were PhDs you could get without a masters
6 semester for a Bachelor’s degree is pretty common…
Yes and that addresses only one of the three parts of my statement
The only bullshit I see is the 3 years for a PhD. How the hell did you pull that off;)
Sometimes it is bullshit.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/02/scientists-aghast-at-bizarre-ai-rat-with-huge-genitals-in-peer-reviewed-article/Like callouscomic said, sometimes academics are incentivised to churn out bullshit
A better example is the Stanford prison experiment. Guy purposely put cruel bullies as the “guards” and more submissive participants as the “prisoners” to sway the study preemptively. Not to mention all the funky things people do with collected data. This isn’t to say that when somebody with no expertise in a field doesn’t understand a study that that study is bs tho, and I’ll admit this is a fine line to walk as many pseudoscientists and crackpot theorists are created this way.
The worst part is when that guy’s right.
Yup. They forgot that sometimes what’s actually happening in that one line is-
- Go to School for a Bachelor’s Degree
- Get 10 years working experience in specific field
- Watch researcher whose never stepped outside of a lab make assertion counter to real life.
- Call Shenanigans
- Watch the findings go nowhere
Yeap, that sounds like my reviewers :(
To be fair, journal articles and scientific research in general have gotten to be pretty bullshit. Haven’t they studied this and proven the vast majority of published journal papers probably shouldn’t have been?
A couple easily Google examples of discussion regarding scientific publications likely being bullshit.
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
Surge in number of ‘extremely productive’ authors concerns scientists
Too much academic research is being published
More than 10,000 research papers were retracted in 2023 — a new record
Whistleblowers flagged 300 scientific papers for retraction. Many journals ghosted them
Top 10 most highly cited retracted papers
And on and on. Publish or perish and general shitty culture in academia is why I quit phd and took my masters and left.
I saw a clip on how kids out of uni don’t believe anything not peer reviewed; even intuitive observations in nature that otherwise undocumented or site specific observations that went against the grain.
Science is a way of thinking and observing, rather than papers, but papers are a good way to refine your thinking
guy on lemmy “this was already obvious, why don’t they try studying something actually useful”
This, but to some degree, unironically. If studies aren’t reproducible (or deemed worthy of reproduction) then there’s definitely a disconnect between the folks handing out research assignments and the folks engineering applicable solutions to scientific problems.
That goes two ways. You could be a guy who successfully formulates a mathematical model to support the existence of Neutrinos and face a funding board that has no interest in building a LHC. That’s arguably a problem of malinvestment within the scientific community. Or you could be a guy who successfully formulates a mathematical model for a new kind of mouse trap that’s 10% less efficient than traditional mouse traps. That’s more of a university research assignment problem. Or you could have a researcher who claims he’s the only one who can do a particular thing, because he’s got the magic touch. If the research is unfalsifiable by design, that’s an entirely new kind of problem.
i think you bring up valid instances where this is fair.
but i think i’m speaking to the very obvious and important ones that are worthy of reproduction. like i’ve seen articles be like “these corporations are responsible for 99% of climate change” or something
and the comments will be like “duh we knew that”
which true, but not empirically. being able to cite data from actual research from professionals is so valuable and far better than anecdotes or guesses. edit: and also informs meaningful policy.
that said, is there some way for a layperson like me to identify when research is not deemed worthy of reproduction? or is it a lost cause
And next on Fox News, we will hear from the experts both sides of the issue, the researchers and the internet jackass.
“the jackass researchers and the internet expert”
Lol had the same experiance with a guy called stamets . He didn’t believe i was a psychologist because “i wrote like a teenager” like english isn’t my first language bruh i am tring here alright just cut me some slack . And then the mod went and deleted my post because i was “harrasing” people to be fair to the mod i was but so was they like i bet the stamet kid could never speak my first language like i speak english .
Cool, so what’s your point? Why would they assume you’re anything but another “guy on the Internet”? For what it’s worth, i have a hard time believing you’re a medical professional too
My point being this is what the meme being about 🤦 and frankly i don’t care what you think i shared my experience because this is lemmy and that is what it is for.
Okay but setting aside the details of the truth about language, having a degree should not give you or anyone carte blanche (definition: “complete freedom to act as one wishes or thinks best”) to harass strangers on the internet. I know nothing of the incident you referred to, only what you said here. Also btw I did not down-vote you.
Regardless of whether a mod is a literal child or not, that is the “role” that they have stepped up to fulfill - to be a curator of whatever community, or instance, or whatever - and should that not deserve at least a modicum of respect? i.e., if you stepped up to fulfill that role for your own community, wouldn’t you want people to respect you in turn? From your words, you obviously do, so why not offer it preemptively?
Especially as a psychologist: you better than most people know that you get what you give, especially when dealing with children.
They likely were saying that the truth of whether you were a psychologist or not was irrelevant, what matters was you breaking the rules of that community - b/c at some point, if truth is functionally indistinguishable from a lie, then does it matter, practically speaking?
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this food for thought:-).
Hmm i have thought about it and asked tge mod to give stamet a similar warning too but he just ghosted me
Guy on internet: “this study is flawed in the following ways [proceeds to list shit they thought of in 25 seconds that may in no way matter, but since they thought of it, it totally disqualifies any and all science which may not agree with the armchair brain farts]”
Hasn’t read the article methods but still decided to comment: cOrReLaTiOn dOeSn’t eQuAl cAuSaTiOn
Correlation doesn’t imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing ‘look over there’.
Three years for a PhD? Must be a Brit or combined degree. Average is almost six at the moment.
