Replicability and Scientific Practices

A few times in the past I have posted links to free issues of scholarly journals. Well, I've got another one. This is the November issue of Perspectives from the Association of Psychological Science. The reason this issue has been posted for free is because all articles within discuss scientific practices, especially replicability. Considering the arguments that have been had on here regarding the legitimacy of science I figured this would be a good jumping off point for some interesting discussions.

Special Section on Replicability in Psychological Science: A Crisis of Confidence?

If it ain't double blind, it ain't science.

double-blind experiment - an experimental procedure in which neither the subjects of the experiment nor the persons administering the experiment know the critical aspects of the experiment; "a double-blind procedure is used to guard against both experimenter bias and placebo effects"

Almost no science experimentation is done double blind today. What is just as bad is the verbiage that describes what most so called experiments, have found. It often disagrees with the data but no one seems to care and they accept the bias of the writer as fact.

Why do you trust any authority today? If you do, then that makes you dumb but that was the intent from the beginning.

There was a time when a science write up was solely about science. Or was there. At school one must realize that the whole point of school is to get good grades. One must be aware of and be prepared to massage the teacher's particular bias. (Ego)

At university it is much the same. I think though, the bias gets a lot worse. (Big Ego)

Then you start work and very quickly discover that science write ups in big peoples world are all about obtaining or maintaining grant monies. The bias required now is huge, the Egos fantastic and basically, at this stage, suck it up and play the game or get out and teach.

Whatever you do be aware that when you make that break through in science you will not get rich. Some one else, a body corporate, will take both the credit and the wealth that the break through brings.

Now, who invented the compact disk. Altogether now ...... PHILLIPS.

P

Originally posted by rollsthepaul
If it ain't double blind, it ain't science.

double-blind experiment - an experimental procedure in which neither the subjects of the experiment nor the persons administering the experiment know the critical aspects of the experiment; "a double-blind procedure is used to guard against both experimenter bias and placebo effects"

Almost no science experimentation is done double blind today. What is just as bad is the verbiage that describes what most so called experiments, have found. It often disagrees with the data but no one seems to care and they accept the bias of the writer as fact.

Why do you trust any authority today? If you do, then that makes you dumb but that was the intent from the beginning.

Double blind trialling applies only to a very small subset of scientific experimentation. As a chemist myself, it would be wholly unsafe for me to work with chemicals without knowing what I was handling. The same can be said for most areas of biology as well as physics and their interdisciplinary hybrids. We of course don't have to worry about psychosomatic influences in our experiments and the data that we might gather is very easily open for debate when published.

The only real experiments that require double blind testing are those of a clinical nature, meaning those studies that are testing pharmacokinetics, efficacy and safety of new drugs and therapeutic methods. Such studies would generally not be considered statistically sound if the trials were not double blind and while I'm sure non-double blind experimentation still exists, I'm sure that the majority of clinical trials are.