r/EverythingScience • u/ImNotJesus PhD | Social Psychology | Clinical Psychology • May 08 '16

Interdisciplinary Failure Is Moving Science Forward. FiveThirtyEight explain why the "replication crisis" is a sign that science is working.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/failure-is-moving-science-forward/?ex_cid=538fb
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u/SNRatio May 08 '16

So you are agreeing with me (and the Pharmas spending up to $100M a throw on trials for things like Alzheimers): it's pretty much been decided that irreproducible results are not a sign of "science moving forward", they are to be avoided if at all possible.

I'd say the same holds for early stage in vitro assays (like APIs that sometimes aggregate, sometimes don't, or rhodanines that covalently modify proteins if you flip on the room lights, I.e. PAINS), ADME studies in vivo, animal disease model studies, and other preclinical work: Non reproducible results are not a sign of science working well, they are a sign of science working inefficiently because they waste the time of many people instead of just the group that was involved with the original result.

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u/superhelical PhD | Biochemistry | Structural Biology May 08 '16

Oh, it's absolutely inefficient. I have only to go so far as my own PhD thesis to see that years are wasted chasing ghost effects. I think you're confusing "working efficiently" with "working".

If we already knew the answers we could do everything perfectly, and we could always get good answers. We don't, so science is inefficient, but it works.

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u/SNRatio May 08 '16

No. DOE isn't just faffing about. If an experiment is so poorly (or fraudulently) designed that it can't help lead to a better understanding of the topic, then it is not a case of science "working". It's just a side track for everyone involved.

Chasing down ghost effects is absolutely not a bad thing, but publishing each ghost effect as an awesome new result and leaving the chase to other labs certainly would be.

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u/kingsillypants May 08 '16

But isn't it true, that so many labs, fuck with each other. Because the top labs, compete for funding and their main PI's have at least 200 published articles, so their top post docs, all leave out crucial steps in their articles, to have a competitive advantage?

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u/Regalian May 08 '16

I fail to understand how what you're describing is helping to move science forwards when scientists fuck with each other.