Tag: science

Research findings that are probably wrong cited far more than robust ones, study finds

Scientific research findings that are probably wrong gain far more attention than robust results, according to academics who suspect that the bar for publication may be lower for papers with grabbier conclusions.

Studies in top science, psychology and economics journals that fail to hold up when others repeat them are cited, on average, more than 100 times as often in follow-up papers than work that stands the test of time.

The finding – which is itself not exempt from the need for scrutiny – has led the authors to suspect that more interesting papers are waved through more easily by reviewers and journal editors and, once published, attract more attention.

“It could be wasting time and resources,” said Dr Marta Serra-Garcia, who studies behavioural and experimental economics at the University of California in San Diego. “But we can’t conclude that something is true or not based on one study and one replication.” What is needed, she said, is a simple way to check how often studies have been repeated, and whether or not the original findings are confirmed.

The study in Science Advances is the latest to highlight the “replication crisis” where results, mostly in social science and medicine, fail to hold up when other researchers try to repeat experiments. Following an influential paper in 2005 titled Why most published research findings are false, three major projects have found replication rates as low as 39% in psychology journals, 61% in economics journals, and 62% in social science studies published in the Nature and Science, two of the most prestigious journals in the world.

Working with Uri Gneezy, a professor of behavioural economics at UCSD, Serra-Garcia analysed how often studies in the three major replication projects were cited in later research papers. Studies that failed replication accrued, on average, 153 more citations in the period examined than those whose results held up. For the social science studies published in Science and Nature, those that failed replication typically gained 300 more citations than those that held up. Only 12% of the citations acknowledged that replication projects had failed to confirm the relevant findings.

The academic system incentivises journals and researchers to publish exciting findings, and citations are taken into account for promotion and tenure. But history suggests that the more dramatic the results, the more likely they are to be wrong. Dr Serra-Garcia said publishing the name of the overseeing editor on journal papers might help to improve the situation.

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How Facebook uses ‘fact-checking’ to suppress scientific truth

At the end of a recent 800-meter race in Oregon, a high-school runner named Maggie Williams got dizzy, passed out and landed face-first just beyond the finish line. She and her coach blamed her collapse on a deficit of oxygen due to the mask she’d been forced to wear, and state officials responded to the public outcry by easing their requirements for masks during athletic events.

But long before the pandemic began, scientists had repeatedly found that wearing a mask could lead to oxygen deprivation. Why had this risk been ignored?

One reason is that a new breed of censors has been stifling scientific debate about masks on social-media platforms. When Scott Atlas, a member of the Trump White House’s coronavirus task force, questioned the efficacy of masks last year, Twitter removed his tweet. When eminent scientists from Stanford and Harvard recently told Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis that children should not be forced to wear masks, YouTube removed their video discussion from its platform. These acts of censorship were widely denounced, but the social-media science police remain undeterred, as I discovered when I recently wrote about the harms to children from wearing masks.

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Scientists Shot Tardigrades from a Gun to See If Interplanetary Travel Is Survivable

Tardigrades are one of nature’s most indestructible lifeforms. These microscopic animals can survive both freezing and boiling temperatures, pressures equivalent to those six miles under the ocean, and even the vacuum of outer space.  

But for one pair of scientists, a lingering question remained: can tardigrades survive being shot out of a gun headlong into an impact target?  

It’s a worthy hypothetical in any context, but there also happens to be a legitimate scientific reason to conduct such an experiment. For decades, scientists have speculated about the possibility that hardy organisms might be able to survive trips between planets by hitchhiking on meteorites. This theory of interplanetary cross-pollination, known as panspermia, has implications for understanding how life might have emerged on Earth and whether it is common elsewhere in the universe.

With this in mind, Alejandra Traspas and Mark Burchell, a PhD student and professor of space science at the University of Kent, respectively, sought to determine whether spacefaring tardigrades would be able to withstand the sudden impact of arrival at an alien world. 

In a study published this month in the journal Astrobiology, the researchers point out that “there is no knowledge of how [tardigrades] survive impact shocks” and so “accordingly, we have fired tardigrades at high speed in a gun onto sand targets, subjecting them to impact shocks and evaluating their survival.”

“We had no real info, only guesswork,” Burchell said in an email. He noted that past studies of tardigrade-scale seeds break apart when they impact at speeds over 2,200 miles per hour, and at shock pressures of 1 gigapascal (GPa), which suggested that it “might be an interesting regime to test” actual tardigrades in the same conditions.Tech

“The results were however a surprise in that the tardigrades seemed to recover from impacts, right up to speeds which started to physically tear them into pieces,” Burchell added.

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TRUST THE SCIENCE: MIT Study Confirms Anti-Maskers Understand Data Better Than Their Opponents

A new study from MIT researchers has confirmed that coronavirus skeptics and anti-maskers understand science and data better than their political opponents.

The study, entitled “Viral Visualizations: How Coronavirus Skeptics Use Orthodox Data Practices to Promote Unorthodox Science Online,” was published this month, and analysed the reaction from skeptics and anti-maskers towards the pandemic from March to September 2020, during much of the initial phases of the breakout and then its expansion. The study focused on Facebook groups and Twitter posts, and the interaction between anti-maskers and visualisations of the coronavirus data that was being published by mainstream science outlets and governments.

In the study, the researchers revealed that despite current narratives that anti-maskers are simply scientifically illiterate, they actually have a very good grasp of science and data analysis. In the Facebook groups they studied, the researchers saw a serious emphasis on originally produced content, with people wanting to make sure that they were “guided solely by the data.” Many participants made their own graphs, and instructed others on how to access raw data. “In other words, anti-maskers value unmediated access to information and privilege personal research and direct reading over “expert” interpretations,” they noted:

Its members value individual initiative and ingenuity, trusting scientific analysis only insofar as they can replicate it themselves by accessing and manipulating the data firsthand. They are highly reflexive about the inherently biased nature of any analysis, and resent what they view as the arrogant self-righteousness of scientific elites.

Anti-maskers found themselves not on the side of ignoring science and data, but striving to push for “more scientific rigour” in their approach to the pandemic. The researchers argued that “users in these communities are deeply invested in forms of critique and knowledge production that they recognise as markers of scientific expertise,” and added that “if anything, anti-mask science has extended the traditional tools of data analysis by taking up the theoretical mantle of recent critical studies of visualisation.”

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Scientists Believe These Photos Show Mushrooms on Mars—and Proof of Life

Could there be mushrooms on Mars? In a new paper, an international team of scientists from countries including the U.S., France, and China have gathered and compared photographic evidence they claim shows fungus-like objects growing on the Red Planet.

In their paper, which appears in Scientific Research Publishing’s Advances in Microbiology, the scientists analyze images taken by NASA’s Opportunity and Curiosity rovers, plus the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera. The objects in question show “chalky-white colored spherical shaped specimens,” which the Mars Opportunity team initially said was a mineral called hematite.

Later studies refuted the hematite claim. Soon, some scientists coined the term “Martian mushrooms” to describe the mysterious objects, because of how they resemble lichens and mushrooms, while in another study, fungi and lichen experts classified the spheres as “puffballs”—a white, spherical fungus belonging to the phylum Basidiomycota found on Earth.

In the new paper, the scientists point to a set of Opportunity photos that shows nine spheres increasing in size, and an additional 12 spheres emerging from beneath the soil, over a 3-day sequence. The researchers claim Martian wind didn’t uncover the amorphous spheres, and that they “expand in size, or conversely, change shape, move to new locations, and/or wane in size and nearly disappear.”

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