Wednesday, February 27, 2013

The Thing About Research Studies..

Reposted From January 12, 2012


Red wine-heart research slammed with fraud charges
More than 100 acts of data fabrication and falsification

I never bought into this one in the first place. This, like most research studies, will skewer positive results for whoever is paying for them.

How many of these studies have to be ginned up and found to be false before people figure out a large number of them are simply bull?

There has been entirely too many vested interests research studies for the heart, transportation planning, urban planning, fracking, pharmaceutical and countless of others. After a few years, many of these are found to be hogwash.

Face it, if some university receives a couple of million dollar$ for research, the results better work out for the donor OR no more studies for you guys. It always looks good to have a creditable university tag on it. Some universities have come to depend on their research departments for funding. No pressure there, right?

This doesn't mean we have to blow off research. What it does mean is we have to look at who's paying for it?. What would they stand to gain? Then temper confidence in the results based on these. Far too many times media only publicizes results, not who's funding them.

This is where government grants do a much better job, rather then allowing pharmaceutical firms, oil drillers and so forth to payoff fund scientific research.

I trust private for-profit corporations funding research about as much as I'd trust students grading their own exams. There's just too much an incentive to cheat when million$ of dollars could be at stake. I'd no sooner hand over keys to the hen house to a fox, then trust these kind of private industry research grants.A Quick Google Search Of Research Fraud Over The Last Year

1 comment:

  1. Actually it just means that you need to look at a a variety of peer-reviewed studies on the same subject. If a bunch of studies confirm the same finding and the correlation holds when the study is replicated many times, it's probably true. If a headline touts some finding that seems outrageous and it's only based on one study, it might be crap and you should wait to see if others replicate the same results. There's no reason to be dismissive of social science or economics or natural science research *in general*.

    ReplyDelete

All comments are under moderation. Meaning pending approval. If comments are disrespectful or do not address this specific topic they will not be published