Current science; confirmation bias (Introduction)

by David Turell , Thursday, March 07, 2019, 01:06 (2088 days ago) @ David Turell

Definitely a real problem with lots of group think distorting scientific results:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/confirmation-bias-hurts-social-science-11551831789?mod=Mor...

"Humility can be hard to come by in professional research, which is why it’s worth noting the retraction last month of a major study on the social effects of attitudes toward sexuality. The journal Social Science & Medicine withdrew a 2014 analysis purporting to show that widespread traditional beliefs about sexual morality—or “structural stigma”—gravely imperil the health of people who don’t identify as straight, whom the study classified as “sexual minorities.”

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"It was yanked because its key claim—that stigma reduces life expectancy for sexual minorities in the United States by an average of 12 years—came to naught. It was entirely the result of a coding error to which Mr. Hatzenbuehler himself, to his credit, owned up.

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"This case has the marks of confirmation bias—a problem that bedevils social science, especially when research concerns controversial issues. Remember when UCLA graduate student Michael LaCour’s study indicated that people’s minds could be changed about same-sex marriage merely by gay canvassers engaging them in a simple conversation? Columbia political-science professor Donald Green signed on as a co-author of that study without closely scrutinizing the data. When those data were exposed as having been fabricated by Mr. LaCour, Mr. Green commendably called for the study’s retraction, which came swiftly.

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"Confirmation bias—and its converse, the aggravated denial of unfavored results—flourishes when there is a lack of viewpoint diversity in scholarship. As such diversity has waned in the American academy, scholarly journals and federal funding agencies have too often become intellectually inbred. They sometimes constitute an academic version of interlocking directorates on corporate boards, in which decision makers who share the same outlook tend to view each other’s work with an insufficiently critical eye. Research that pleases everyone in the club sometimes doesn’t get enough scrutiny, even when its results are strikingly implausible.

"“Prudent” scholars are often afraid even to mention the rise of confirmation bias, much less try to do anything about it. Yet following the example of Mr. Regnerus, any hope of rescuing social-science research from further disrepute will require a little less “prudence” and more guts."

Comment: The worst cases are in the sociology and psychology sciences where much research cannot be confirmed. But this clearly points out skepticism is needed when reading any article with Darwin-inculcated authors.