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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday December 23 2018, @03:55PM   Printer-friendly
from the Science-Interpretation-Guide dept.

https://www.bmj.com/content/363/bmj.k5094

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2018/12/22/679083038/researchers-show-parachutes-dont-work-but-there-s-a-catch

A study has been done, and the surprising result is that parachutes are no more effective than a backpack in preventing injuries when jumping out of an airplane.

It's "common sense" that parachutes work, so it has been a neglected field of science. This surprising and counter-intuitive result is an excellent example of the importance of doing science.

... or maybe it's a perfect example of how top-line study headlines can be mis-representative, especially when portrayed by the mass-media, and how understanding study scope and methodology is important.


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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 23 2018, @09:27PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 23 2018, @09:27PM (#777903)

    As always, the problem is capitalism. Capitalist "science" (p-hacking [xkcd.com], small sample size, extrapolation errors [xkcd.com], look at the recent artificial sweetener study with a good sample size but questionably throwing all kinds of different zero-calorie sweeteners [was stevia even studied?] into one amorphous group and now we gotta wonder if the study was funded by the sugar lobby, etc) is not science. However, I think that the study in TFA is a lighthearted way of poking fun at the serious problems capitalism causes for honest science.

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  • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 23 2018, @09:31PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 23 2018, @09:31PM (#777907)

    Lol, no this is rampant amongst government run science. In fact its rise coincided with the rise of government funded science after WWII. I think its more just an issue of giving too many people PhDs, so the gatekeeping methods failed.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 23 2018, @10:56PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 23 2018, @10:56PM (#777941)

      Ah, the good ol' days when biology was done without any statistics and was mostly qualitative.
      Yes, the days before DNA was discovered to encode genetic information were clearly superior and we have learned nothing of value since./sarcasm

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 23 2018, @11:15PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 23 2018, @11:15PM (#777944)

        Sorry but you are clearly unfamiliar with the literature. And being "quantitative" isnt about statisitics, its about coming up with a precise prediction. Eg, if the krebs cycle is correct, then molecule x should be found in ratio z to molecule y.

        Statistics can be used to check how good the fit is, but that really isnt that much better than just eyeballing the results and comparing to competing predictions. The main use is to give an illusion of rigour when testing a strawman hypothesis no one actually believes, so Id say wed be better off without stats altogether at this point honestly.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @12:29AM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @12:29AM (#777961)

        Or look at this, laws of neural growth from Ramon y Cajal in ~1900. Only today do we have the computational power to simulate the growth, and it works.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 25 2018, @06:23AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday December 25 2018, @06:23AM (#778275) Journal

    As always, the problem is capitalism.

    I wonder how long it'll take for people to get a clue [soylentnews.org]?

    I love witnessing this echo chamber of people who can't figure out that the government doing something isnt capitalism. Its like nothing is wrong about what you are saying except you are applying the wrong label since you were somehow taught the wrong definition.

    Capitalist "science" (p-hacking [xkcd.com], small sample size, extrapolation errors [xkcd.com], look at the recent artificial sweetener study with a good sample size but questionably throwing all kinds of different zero-calorie sweeteners [was stevia even studied?] into one amorphous group and now we gotta wonder if the study was funded by the sugar lobby, etc) is not science.

    And all that paid for with government dollars. It's not capitalism when the public pays for it, people.