Yeah, I see a lot of people (especially on HN) bemoaning any science that isn't a controlled double blind experiment with a large sample size. But exploratory science is just as important as the science that proves things. Otherwise we wouldn't know which hypotheses are useful/interesting to test.

▲ GuB-42 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The problem is more about how it is reported to the public. Science is ugly, but when a discovery is announced to the public, a high level of confidence is expected, and journalists certainly act like there is. Kind of like you are not supposed to ship untested development versions of software to customers.

But sometimes, some of the ugly science gets out of the lab a bit too soon, and it usually doesn't end well. Usually people get their hopes up, and when it doesn't live up to the hype, people get confused.

It really stood out during the covid pandemic. We didn't have time to wait for the long trials we normally expect, waiting could mean thousands of deaths, and we had to make do with uncertainty. That's how we got all sorts of conflicting information and policies that changed all the time. The virus spread by contact, no, it is airborne, masks, no masks, hydroxycholoroquine, no, that's bullshit, etc... that sort of thing. That's the kind of thing that usually don't get publicized outside of scientific papers, but the circumstances made it so that everyone got to see that, including science deniers unfortunately.

Edit: Still, I really enjoyed the LK99 saga (the supposed room temperature superconductor). It was overhyped, and it it came to its expected conclusion (it isn't), however, it sparked widespread interest in semiconductors and plenty of replication attempts.

	▲	godelski 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		`> The problem is more about how it is reported to the public.` Yes and no. From scientific communicators there's a lot of slop and it's getting worse. Even places like Nature and Scientific American are making unacceptable mistakes (a famous one being the quantum machine learning black hole BS that Quanta published) But I frequently see those HN comments on ArXiv links. That's not a science communication issue. Those are papers. That's researcher to researcher communication. It's open, but not written for the public. People will argue it should be, but then where does researcher to researcher communication happen? You really want that behind closed doors? There is a certain arrogance that plays a role. Small sample size? There's a good chance it's a paper arguing for the community to study at a larger scale. You're not going to start out by recruiting a million people to figure out if an effect might even exist. Yet I see those papers routinely scoffed at. They're scientifically sound but laughing at them is as big of an error as treating them like absolute truth, just erring in the opposite direction. People really do not understand how science works and they get extremely upset if you suggest otherwise. As if not understanding something that they haven't spent decades studying implies they're dumb. Scientists don't expect non scientists to understand how science works. There's a reason you're only a junior scientist after getting an entire PhD. You can be smart and not understand tons of stuff. I got a PhD and I'll happily say I'll look like a bumbling idiots even outside my niche, in my own domain! I think we're just got to stop trying to prove how smart we are before we're all dumb as shit. We're just kinda not dumb at some things, and that's perfectly okay. Learning is the interesting part. And it's extra ironic the Less Wrong crowd doesn't take those words to heart because that's what it's all about. We're all wrong. It's not about being right, it's about being less wrong

▲ harshreality 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are they bemoaning that science is being done, or are they bemoaning that the experimental results have not yet reached high enough confidence to justify the conclusions being suggested?

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JumpCrisscross 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Are they bemoaning that science is being done

The reflexive "in mice" comments seem to be bemoaning how science is done.

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cwillu 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

As someone who has made several comments consisting entirely of “…in mice.”, let me assure you that the reflex only kicks in after reading the paper and noticing that the experimental subjects were exclusively mice.

The problem is not mice experiments on arxiv, the problem is posting those papers for broader dissemenation to the public, with titles suggesting to the public that cancer has been cured, without prominently pointing out that the experiments were not about cancer in humans.

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JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> problem is posting those papers for broader dissemenation to the public, with titles suggesting to the public that cancer has been cured

Fair enough. I'm thinking of cases where a good study that isn't turned into PR slop is dismissed because it was done in mice. Which is fine for most people. But not great if we're treating real science that way.

	▲	cwillu 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Dismissing good science is entirely the correct decision when the good science isn't ready for broad dissemination to the audience which it is being presented to.

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dyauspitr 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I disagree. I think people understand studies have to begin in mice. It’s what the GP said. You can’t release those studies because there’s not a high enough confidence rate in what most people are interested in ie how it effect humans.

	▲	JumpCrisscross 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> You can’t release those studies because there’s not a high enough confidence rate in what most people are interested in ie how it effect humans This is science by ignoramus. It isn't how science works, at least not when it works at its best. Someone advocating for censoring science because it might be misread is not on the side of science.

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cap11235 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

More Doctors Smoke Camels!™

▲ dyauspitr 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It depends, especially coming from fields like psychology. You can prove anything with a small enough group. A lot of those just end up adding a lot of noise and reduce the reliability of the entire field in general. It just ends up with people getting conflicting information every other week and then they just tune out.

▲ potsandpans 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Like anything else, it's easier to complain about the legitimacy of something and nitpick it to death than it is to do the actual thing.

Most people on HN aren't scientists, even if they fancy themselves as such.