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This latest result is "pretty damning," says University of Maryland, College Park, cognitive scientist Michael Dougherty, who was not involved with the research. "Citation counts have long been treated as a proxy for research quality," he says, so the finding that less reliable research is cited more points to a "fundamental problem" with how such work is evaluated.
[...] University of California, San Diego, economists Marta Serra-Garcia and Uri Gneezy were interested in whether catchy research ideas would get more attention than mundane ones, even if they were less likely to be true. So they gathered data on 80 papers from three different projects that had tried to replicate important social science findings, with varying levels of success.
Citation counts on Google Scholar were significantly higher for the papers that failed to replicate, they report today in Science Advances, with an average boost of 16 extra citations per year. That's a big number, Serra-Garcia and Gneezy say—papers in high-impact journals in the same time period amassed a total of about 40 citations per year on average.
And when the researchers examined citations in papers published after the landmark replication projects, they found that the papers rarely acknowledged the failure to replicate, mentioning it only 12% of the time.
Well, nobody likes a Debbie Downer, do they?
Journal Reference:
Marta Serra-Garcia, Uri Gneezy. Nonreplicable publications are cited more than replicable ones [open], Science Advances (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abd1705)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Socrastotle on Thursday July 01 2021, @01:42PM (17 children)
In the past when the media said something, you could generally take it with some reasonable degree of assurance that it was very likely to be true. In the worst case it was generally just misleading.
Now a days? There's a pretty good chance that it's not only misleading but completely fake. One of the most overt examples of this in recent times was the Officer during the January 6th riots/protests who was 'killed after a rioter smashed his head in with a fire extinguisher.' It turns out he was unharmed during the protests/riots, and died of completely natural causes (stroke from a preexisting blood clot) long after all the riots/protests were over. And so people increasingly only believe news that confirms their own biases, because they *want* to believe it - with relatively little regard to what they genuinely and objectively think the chances of it being true are.
Why did the media start acting this way? Because hyperbole and sensationalism sells, and lies sell even better.
- "Scientists discover star with unusual pattern of dimming." = 3 clicks
- "Scientists discover proof aliens are building giant Dyson Sphere, and they're close." = 3,000,000 clicks.
We've always had crap like the latter in things like the National Enquirer, but people just shrugged because the paper had long since destroyed any reputation it had. Now a days previously reputable papers have swapped to the exact same nonsense, but the frequently political / bias confirming angle of it all (alongside the fact that these papers used to be "real") is making people slow to accept what's happened. Somebody repeating crop circles each week is a bit different than somebody repeating everything you want to be true (but probably, deep down enough, know isn't) every week.
And I think the same is increasingly becoming true of science. Social Psychology in particular has a 25% [wikipedia.org] replication rate. If you take anything stated in a paper related to social psychology (which is the domain of racism, systemic bias, social interactions, social interactions with regards to sexuality, etc) and simply assume the exact opposite of what it says - then you'd be vastly more informed than somebody who takes the "research" at face value. But because people *want* to believe what's said, they're slow to accept what's happened.
And this is going to send confidence and trust in science plummeting to levels proportional to those of the media. In other news, America now has the least trusted [ox.ac.uk] media in the developed world. And our science isn't far behind if this doesn't change.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 01 2021, @02:23PM (9 children)
You are assuming people won't believe what they are being fed. When in fact, people are believing it. The News Paper or News Channel said it, so they believe it. Survey's say the media trust is low in the US. That isn't stopping people from believing what they are being told. Just look at the state of US Society and how divided it is on almost everything. People are not thinking for themselves, and they aren't accepting people who think for themselves. Believe the Social Science news reports, and if you don't you are wrong. Weird situation we are in.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Socrastotle on Thursday July 01 2021, @03:06PM (1 child)
Ah! But again I think you're not considering the order of causality here. Somebody does not become right wing because they stumbled onto and started reading Breitbart. Instead people with right wing tendencies seek out Breitbart and then believe what they read because they *want* it to be true. And similarly, somebody does not become left wing because they picked up a copy of the NYTimes and started reading it. Instead people with left wing tendencies seek out the NYTimes and then believe what they are told because they *want* it to be true. If you swapped the ideological narrative of both sites, yet kept the same respective quality (or lack thereof) of truthfulness, their readers would most certainly suddenly stop believing what they were told. Because it would not be what they *want* to be true.
And so people are thinking for themselves, on at least a basic level. They choose what they want to be true, and then seek out information to confirm that view. If their news sources of choice stop confirming that view? No problem they just move to the next one that does. In the age of the internet, they are limitless.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 01 2021, @06:42PM
I used to believe that, but I'm no longer sure. The Trump presidency stands as empirical evidence of that. There are literally too many instances to count, but the big one which got me was how quickly "Lock Her Up" disappeared when Trump said a word about not wanting to pursue that anymore. And remember how much of the Republican Party was "Never Trump"ers, but how quickly that changed?
As another example, consider the Democrat's (and the "left") opinion of Russia. It want from "why can't we all get along, this isn't the cold war anymore" to "you don't understand, they are a major threat to our democracy." Likewise, the Republican's (and the "right") quickly went to "you can never trust a Russian" to "ehh, Putin isn't such a bad guy."
My current theory is that people establish their affiliation with something (be it an idea, a group, or what have you), and then that defines them. If that group changes, then most people go along with that change. If The Party announced "the cacao ration has been raised from 10 grams to 8 grams," sure, some would question it... but I think a lot more would cheer the party for doing such a great job.
(Which is why it is all the more important for Benjamins of the world to not just be cynical asses and to actually do something to help the situation... to mix fictional metaphores.)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 01 2021, @03:07PM (6 children)
My favorite is when you point out to someone a particular claim is completely false with documentation, sometimes even a retraction. Yet they repeat the lie even if they don't completely believe it because somehow it makes them feel good. Example lie: Donald Trump suggested people inject themselves with bleach for coronavirus. What moron could've ever believed Trump would say this in the first place?
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 01 2021, @03:20PM (5 children)
The morons who believe their own eyes and ears over the words of a liar?
Here, try for yourself. [youtube.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Thursday July 01 2021, @03:37PM (4 children)
To state the obvious, he isn't suggesting people inject themselves except through a very perverse reading of the words. You are exactly confirming GP's point.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday July 01 2021, @04:33PM (3 children)
He said doctors should try injecting people with bleach. Is that supposed to make it less stupid?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Socrastotle on Thursday July 01 2021, @05:33PM
No, he said that disinfectant has the ability to completely destroy the virus in the realm of 1 minute and it'd be interesting to see if doctors could find a way to inject it or somehow use it for a "cleaning."
Consider, for instance, antibiotics. Part of the reason the uptake was so slow (it took more than a decade) on penicillin, the first antibiotic, is because it's extracted directly from the penicillium mold. You know that bluish green fungus that forms of rotting food? That is (or at least may contain) penicillium molds, which can be harmful to you in a number of ways if directly exposed. The idea of isolating that and then injecting it just because it seemed to destroy some bacteria in a petri dish is, to say the least, counter-intuitive, and so the discoverer had substantial difficulty simply getting people to accept what he claimed - which would ultimately revolutionize healthcare and the entire world.
It's like saying in that case that Fleming was suggesting people toss some mold into a blender and inject. That's just being intentionally obtuse, at best - and, again, rather emphasizing the above posters points.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 01 2021, @05:35PM
You do see the question mark at the end, dont you?
(Score: 4, Touché) by PiMuNu on Friday July 02 2021, @07:33AM
No, he is asking for research into using bleach or equivalent stuff to kill coronavirus. It clearly is a stupid idea, but that is irrelevant.
You have *twice* deliberately misinterpreted what Trump said to make a political point, which confirms exactly what the GGP said - i.e. people don't look at evidence, they would far rather confirm their own political bias.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday July 01 2021, @03:53PM (4 children)
In the past, the media was motivated to provide real news. Some strange thing called Journalism. Who, what, when, where, why, how.
And some editorial opinion, which could be misleading.
Ownership of a news outlet could bias its coverage to be a bit misleading.
Yet the facts were true. They even had offices of factual verification.
Now, the media has become entertainment. Or infotainment. And the news outlet's owners have no shame about their news infotainment being heavily biased. To such an extreme that in 2013 when the Snowden story broke, CNN didn't even make a pretense of objectivity, there simply couldn't possibly be any other POV than the government's view.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday July 01 2021, @04:21PM (3 children)
What past are you all living in? The past where the Yellow press pushed the U.S. into the Spanish American War? The past where Northern and Southern ideals were so strongly reinforced that a civil war broke out? Or the past where Walter Cronkite read the news to you and because he hadn't made a total self contradictory ass of himself for his employer, you trusted him?
The past I remember most clearly is the one where our local news programs would read editorials in line with their political views and present them very professionally, very convincingly, and then a week or six later let some local kook on for 1/3 the time to present an "opposing viewpoint" by someone who clearly doesn't do this for a living, probably wrote their own copy, probably dropped out of high school after failing English too many times, stumbles over their words, and has makeup that makes them look like a carnival clown who slept in late before going on camera.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Friday July 02 2021, @03:59PM (2 children)
One can only speak for themselves, but I am speaking of times I described in a post below. [soylentnews.org] I rarely recall the media in 'the golden age' going so nutters over political stuff. There is always some degree of implicit bias based on what is covered and what isn't covered, but now a days when you look at the front page even of formerly reputable papers like the NYTimes, it's scarcely different from what used to be relegated to things like post-debate 'spin rooms'. The Fox News model of bias + coverage has not only become the rule, but has become intensely magnified. There seems to be little to nothing left in the way of remotely impartial coverage.
Of course I have to also consider the possibility that it's a product of [relative] youth. I only began to be somewhat politically aware around the Iraq War and, lo and behold, from my perspective the complete deterioration of the media also began at just about the same time. Of course there are many things that make me suspect this is not the case. This [brookings.edu] article from Bob Kaiser (who had a 50 year career during the 'golden era' of the Washington Post working his way up to managing editor), suggests as much from an individual with a rather radically different perspective and age. And the case he make as an insider directly match the observations I have seen from the outside.
In any case, I've no delusions of the past of our media being ideal. But I do believe it was orders of magnitude better than its state today which seems designed entirely to generate clicks. And the problem with this is that impartial reporting doesn't generate clicks. Hyperbole, sensationalism, exploiting emotions, appealing to biases, even indeed even lying to generate even more sordid tales - those sort of things generate clicks. At least until they don't. When people begin appreciating that most of all modern media is little different than the "National Enquirers" that we grew up with, the show will be over.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday July 21 2021, @02:06PM (1 child)
As compared to the Cronkite days, I agree. But deeper in the past I think bias + coverage + more bias was quite common, particularly in the print media when not everyone could read and they got bias from the people who did the reading for them plus the people who paid for the printing and distribution.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Wednesday July 21 2021, @03:00PM
I also get the exact same impression:
That quote [uchicago.edu] was from Thomas Jefferson, 1807. And there were countless other similar sentiments from various founding fathers and other great thinkers of the times. I used to believe these sentiments were part rhetorical, part metaphor. But now we're entering into an era where what he said, even taken completely at face value, is not even especially hyperbolic.
So in many ways I think our current era, as crazy as seems things is not really new. Rather we "all" (being the majority of humans born in the last 50-60 years in the developed world), basically just grew in a sort of mini-utopia that was little more than a bubble in time. And so as that bubble pops it kind of feels like we're heading towards some unprecedented insanity. But no, it's quite precedented. What isn't precedented is how nice we had things for some time.
This also even applies if you go much further back. Reading the writings of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Aurelius, and so on - it feels very much as if they are describing the world we now live in. "The Republic" in particular is practically a transcription of the happenings of the day.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 01 2021, @06:33PM (1 child)
Really, now?
Just how far into the past shall we find this utopia of honest journalism?
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Friday July 02 2021, @05:40AM
In general I'm referring to times much more recent. The media started to rapidly deteriorate with the advent of the internet. There's a phenomenal article about this by Robert Kaiser, The Bad News About the News [brookings.edu]. Kaiser worked at the Washington Post for 50 years, seeing it from its peak as a reputable paper to its more recent collapse. I could not recommend that article more highly, and I don't think I can do it justice with cliff notes.
And so I suspect ultimately that the hey day of the media, perhaps some time between 1960 - 1990, give or take some years either way, was likely an anomaly in time. And so our modern media has become much more similar to the media Jefferson was familiar with where in an effort to move a rag (or in this case, generate), they will say anything and everything - regardless of its truthfulness. Yet because times prior to the that golden age of media feel like they may as well have been a millennia ago, we perceive the media in terms of its current abysmal state, and only have what we know came before to contrast it against.
It's quite remarkable that the NYTimes went from, in 1971, publishing the Pentagon Papers [wikipedia.org] to, just 30 years later, publishing outright intelligence agency propaganda such as "Irrefutable and Undeniable [nytimes.com] where they unabashedly tried to sell a war, built on fabrications and lies, to the American people. And it's only been downhill from there. The contrast makes the decline all the more overt.