John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at the University of Ioannina School of Medicine in Greece, says that small sample sizes, poor study design, researcher bias, and selective reporting and other problems combine to make most research findings false. But even large, well-designed studies are not always right, meaning that scientists and the public have to be wary of reported findings.
Basically the article states that the findings of less than 50% of research studies are accurate.
Public Library of Science Medicine (DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124) as taken from this article.
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Definitely troubling. Scientists are human, and politics and emotion hold more sway than they should, particularly when funding is based on results. However, replication and validation are essential parts of science -- people rarely make big decisions based on one paper:
"We should accept that most research findings will be refuted. Some will be replicated and validated. The replication process is more important than the first discovery," Ioannidis says.
Part of the beauty of science is that it's testable. One group makes a claim and provides some evidence, and then it's fair game for everyone else to try to reproduce the experiment and see if it was accurate.
I work in computer science and this happens all the time. Let's suppose I publish a paper based on some research I did which claims that:
"If a document has say 1.4% of words that end in -ing, there's a 90% chance it's an English document."
Now anybody in the world can go run some tests and see if I'm right. Maybe someone will realize that the documents I tested my hypothesis on didn't include any German ones, and German ones also have 1.4% of words ending in -ing. He then publishes his paper, showing that I was wrong, and we can amend the hypothesis to "if a document has 1.4% of words that end in -ing, there's a 95% chance it's either an English or German document OR it's one of these other languages which we haven't tested yet."
And that's the beauty of it. When they're proven wrong, most scientists will admit it. What happens when you show an actual dinosaur bone to a Biblical literalist? When does a so-called Intelligent Design theorist admit he was wrong? When does he even make a claim which is clearly testable?
Showing a dinosaur bone to a person is not proof of evolution. It is proof that dinosaur bones exist. To make the assumption that evolution is true because the dinosaur bone exists is the bias, politics, and emotion talked about.
The dinosaur bone isn't proof of evolution, it's proof the world is older than 6000 years.
"The dinosaur bone isn't proof of evolution, it's proof the world is older than 6000 years."
I really hate to say this right now because it will cause a huge debate, and it's one i don't have time to get into, but that comment is debatable.
Here are some resources that you can look at in this debate:
‘Young’ age of the Earth & Universe Q&A
Age Estimation
In the Beginning: Compelling Evidence for Creation and the Flood You will need to go down the page for awhile before you reach the relevant data.
I have not studied these sites fully, thus i cannot verify their complete validity, but this should hopefully answer some of your questions while hopefully preventing a huge debate (which i don't have time to get into at this point).
From your first link:
I want to make it VERY clear that we don’t want to be known primarily as ‘young-Earth creationists.’ AiG’s main thrust is NOT ‘young Earth’ as such; our emphasis is on Biblical authority. Believing in a relatively ‘young Earth’ (i.e., only a few thousands of years old, which we accept) is a consequence of accepting the authority of the Word of God as an infallible revelation from our omniscient Creator.
So they admit that they start assuming the Bible is literally true and draw their conclusions from that.
They then list 6 examples of what they call evidence for a young Earth. All are simply incorrect and it shows a high degree of dishonesty to continue making arguments based on them. No scientist who is not a creationist believes in any of them.
First, they claim that hemoglobin and red blood cells have been found inside of dinosaur bones. This is an out-and-out lie.
Second they use this claim, which is repeated word-for-word all over the internet on creationist websites: "The earth's magnetic field has been decaying so fast that it looks like it is
less than 10000 years old." Just try googling that whole sentence and see how many other creationist sites still claim that. It's an absurd argument because it's known that "The Earth's magnetic field reverses at intervals, ranging from tens of thousands to many millions of years, with an average interval of approximately 250,000 years. It is believed that this last occurred some 780,000 years ago, referred to as the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal." (source -- Earth's Magnetic Field from wikipedia.)
In fact, we have witnessed the Sun's magnetic field reverse as recently as 2001. is a CNN article about it. That CNN article also says, "Earth's magnetic fields also change places but with much less predictability and frequency. The reversals take place between intervals lasting from 5,000 to 5 million years. The last one happened 740,000 years ago, scientists estimate."
Also, they claim: "The moon is slowly receding from earth at about 1-1/2 inches (4cm) per year, and the rate would have been greater in the past. But even if the moon had started receding from being in contact with the earth, it would have taken only 1.37 billion years to reach its present distance."
This is just bad math, but every creationist site has this one, too, because they're either dishonest or don't bother to check if their facts are correct. The Moon is 384,403 km from the Earth, according to NASA. That equals 38,440,300,000 centimeters. If the Moon receded 4 cm per year (as they claim -- it has varied, but they either don't know this or don't admit it) from being in contact with the Earth, it would have taken it 38,440,300,000 / 4 years, or 9,610,075,000 years! That's 9 billion, not 1.5 billion. This is simple math.
Ack! Sorry about that runaway tag!
Yeah, i tried to put a disclaimer up saying i couldn't verify the content.
I agree, not all creationists use good judgment or good science all the time, and as i said before, everyone is biased. The difference is that while those who are religious and use some bad science to support their view are ridiculed when it is discovered that they did so, scientists and evolutionists are not treated the same way. Either they are accepted as erroneous while their theories can still be accepted as true, they are ignored entirely, or they are just swept under the rug.
When less than 50% of scientific studies are flawed and this is accepted as fine, but when a Creationist uses studies that are flawed the entire belief/theory is rejected, that should be evidence that something is massively screwed up.
The point is the Creationists are knowingly using lies and studies that were debunked decades ago. And they all rely on the same 6-12 wrong claims. They said that red blood cells were found in a dinosaur bone and this is just a flat-out lie! Almost every creationist site on the net uses the same lie! Why is that acceptable?
If all of science were based on 10 papers which were knowingly misinterpreted and included severe mathemetical errors, then it would be analogous. When a study is found to be erroneous, scientists stop using it! Why don't creationists?
"The point is the Creationists are knowingly using lies and studies that were debunked decades ago. And they all rely on the same 6-12 wrong claims."
Actually, i don't think that it is that Christians are knowingly using lies and studies debunked decades ago. I think that Christians are very wary of "science"/"research" (for very good reason), thus when they find something that looks right, they use it without realizing that there have been studies that have "proven" (again, these studies may or may not be reliable due to the nature of science and research) that what they say is wrong.
Does that mean that Creationism is wrong? Absolutely not. But when the top schools in the counrty refuse to accept or teach anything that may speak against evolution there is a problem.
It kind of reminds me of the APA (American Psychological Association) who in the 70's and under political pressure pulled Homosexuality from the DSM-III. It stated that homosexuality is genetic in nature and thereby was not a disorder. This was based on political pressure and not research. Since then it has accepted research that agrees with their philosophy and rejected research and studies that state otherwise. Their set view is that homosexuals cannot change, and they stick to this even when other organizations have shown and proven otherwise.
By the way, APA is the primary counseling/psychology "professional" organization. It is over all professional counselors and therapists. Without the APA's approval most therapists and counselors would not be allowed to practice. That is a problem.
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