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Nautilus has an interesting rundown on how scientific fraud happens and what could possibly be done to correct it written in comic book form. It's a fun little read and oh so true.
The book that it is based on, Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth, is worth reading as well.
Stuart Ritchie is a Lecturer in the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King's College London. His new book, Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth, explains the ideas in this comic, by Zach Weinersmith, in more detail, telling shocking stories of scientific error and misconduct. It also proposes an abundance of ideas for how to rescue science from its current malaise.
How many Soylentils here are in academia? Have you felt the pressure of "publish or perish"?
(Score: 2) by pdfernhout on Sunday August 02 2020, @12:50AM (3 children)
As I mentioned via quotes here: https://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science [pdfernhout.net]
But to amplify your point on education, see David Goodstein's essay "The Big Crunch" from the 1994:
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html [caltech.edu]
"I would like to propose a different and more illuminating metaphor for American science education. It is more like a mining and sorting operation, designed to cast aside most of the mass of common human debris, but at the same time to discover and rescue diamonds in the rough, that are capable of being cleaned and cut and polished into glittering gems, just like us, the existing scientists. It takes only a little reflection to see how much more this model accounts for than the pipeline does. It accounts for exponential growth, since it takes scientists to identify prospective scientists. It accounts for the very real problem that women and minorities are woefully underrepresented among the scientists, because it is hard for us, white, male scientists to perceive that once they are cleaned and cut and polished, they will look like us. It accounts for the fact that science education is for the most part a dreary business, a burden to student and teacher alike at all levels of American education, until the magic moment when a teacher recognizes a potential peer, at which point it becomes exhilarating and successful. Above all, it resolves the paradox of Scientific Elites and Scientific Illiterates. It explains why we have the best scientists and the most poorly educated students in the world. It is because our entire system of education is designed to produce precisely that result."
The biggest challenge of the 21st century: the irony of technologies of abundance used by scarcity-minded people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2020, @04:49AM
Lol go to any department anywhere now. 90% Chinese. Tell me your theory again?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Monday August 03 2020, @01:09PM
It's worse than that. We don't sieve through the debris for diamonds. No child left behind, rings a bell? This is actually the last thing you need to get a child interested in education. Because kids ain't dumb. They are the masters at minmaxing, minimal effort for maximal gains. As soon as they notice that they can't fail, no matter how much they slack and, worse, that they don't gain anything out of trying to overachieve, and they figure that out pretty quickly, this is what they will do. They will stop trying to achieve because, well, why bother? Add the common practice of "teaching to the test" to the mix, where any question the kid might have that has nothing to do with what will be on the test gets squashed and any inquisitive bone the kid might still have gets broken, to the point where the kids eventually see that they should not ask question. What's wanted from them is to scoop up the information, barf it onto the test, after which they may as well forget everything again.
This is our school system.
If you don't give a fuck about your kids' education, don't expect them to do so.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Monday August 03 2020, @03:12PM
>because it is hard for us, white, male scientists to perceive that once they are cleaned and cut and polished, they will look like us
bullshit of dazzling order of magnitude, I won me an internet because after trying to rationalise a reply I thought: who can come up with such a pyndaric flight of an explanation, it takes a lot of synaptic activity. Maybe a jew? and sure enough
>david goodstein
feel free to not believe me.
Account abandoned.