Snake oil science

What Hacker News says

1. bjcubsfanJun 2010
   These methods for how acupuncture may work seem to be reaching, especially for something that has been shown to be no more effective than a placebo. Some better reading on acupuncture may be this great book that I read: http://www.amazon.com/Snake-Oil-Science-Complementary-Altern... Also you can check out the links at this great website: http://sciencebasedmedicine.org/reference/acupuncture/
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2. tokenadultMay 2010
   To reiterate: I am not critiquing Norvig's article, I am critiquing your argument.

   To reiterate: any time I post the Norvig article here on HN, it is because I see a popular press report on something that appears to be a scientific finding, without any affirmative showing that proper science was done to reach that finding. As a reader in the general public, it is not my job to do unpaid scientific research to refute purported scientific findings, but rather my friendly suggestion to my fellow readers that they check whether a claim is put forth on the basis of verifiable research conducted by proper protocols. I presume that if a press release were issued by your lab for reading by the general public, it would link to a peer-reviewed professional journal where the research either has been published or is about to be published. Any time a Hacker News thread brings up a research finding, and someone says, "Here is the link to the published article," I upvote that, because we can all do with more experience here in reading more scientific journal articles about more subjects. (It's regrettable, by the way, that there are still so many journal articles behind paywalls. I currently have access to a JSTOR subscription; if I did not, I would have much less access to scientific literature online.)

   It appears that you and I agree that scientific research should be conducted according to certain well established methods. You are certainly more learned than I in the specifics of statistics, as I have observed when lurking in other threads. But the thread in which you first caught my notice for decrying my frequent posting of the link to the Norvig article on reading research

   http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html

   caught my eye because I thought it reflected a rather odd misunderstanding of my reason for posting the link. I post not to dissuade readers from taking scientific findings seriously, but precisely the contrary, to persuade readers to distinguish genuine science from publicity-seeking by press release.

   I think it is in your very first post on HN that you asked a question about corruption in certain unnamed places. I have lived in other countries, so it doesn't surprise me to find out that some government officials are more persuaded by bribes than by scientific research. More generally, even before I had lived overseas, I had studied enough history and enough psychology (besides the philosophy of science I mentioned above) to be aware that human beings respond to incentives to disregard truth for personal advantage. I am especially careful here on HN to encourage readers to check sources and facts before believing the latest purported scientific finding, because examples abound

   http://www.amazon.com/Voodoo-Science-Road-Foolishness-Fraud/...

   http://www.amazon.com/Snake-Oil-Science-Complementary-Altern...

   of persons who make false claims (sometimes because of sincere self-delusion, and other times for more despicable reasons) that purport to be scientific claims.

   If a claim comes along that is warranted by careful research, the research findings should be published somewhere--every science researcher has plenty of incentive to publish--and it would be enough, after I post the link to Peter Norvig's article, for someone else to post "Here's a link to the published study, for all of us to check." I like to learn more about science. I like for everyone to learn more about GENUINE science.

   P.S. If we search all up and down this now quite lengthy thread, no one has offered even a scintilla of evidence for the proposition "a mere 40 percent of gifted children will complete an undergraduate degree." I am sure, noting that even most of the anecdotes of academic failure during high school in this thread relate going on to undergraduate study, that that statement is factually incorrect for the United States for any time since the Baby Boom. I attended high school with several bright learners who were turned off by high school and had poor grades in high school and who in several cases dropped out of high school. But all of my bright high school friends, without any exception, and even though they were not from wealthy backgrounds, gained undergraduate degrees within a few years of leaving high school. The burden of proof is on the unnamed "researcher" who made the implausible claim.

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