Research data as a jewel to be cut and polished for best effect

[Simon]

This is a blog about problems in psychological research, by a psychological researcher and lecturer. Some of the smartest critiques of problems in research (which usually apply to life science too) often seem to come from psychologists.

sometimes i'm wrong: life after bem

many people have written about how bem's esp paper was one of the major factors that triggered the latest scientific integrity movement in social/personality psychology.

Prof Daryl Bem is the researcher whose paper on Extra-Sensory Perception caused stir a few years ago.
The blogger thinks Bem has many good points in his approach to research, but takes issues with some of his approaches that he (the blogger) thinks undermine good science. I'd recommend reading the whole blog but this quote from Bem struck a chord with me - seems to highlight the attitude of too many researchers towards their data:

'think of your dataset as a jewel. your task is to cut and polish it, to select the facets to highlight, and to craft the best setting for it.'

 

[barbc56]

Thanks @Simon . Fascinating article.

Barb

 

[Simon]

NICE to seek greater access to clinical trial data when appraising drugs | News and Features | News | NICE

At the House of Commons Health Select Committee on NICE last week, NICE Chair Professor David Haslam was askedduring the hearing whether pharmaceutical companies should be able to keep their data secret.

He told MPs: “We were early signatories of the AllTrials.net campaign. We ask for a signature from the UK medical director of pharmaceutical companies that we have all the data relevant to the topic – the drug that we’re considering. Again it’s an area we do take extremely seriously.

“My personal view on this is I can see no reason whatsoever not to publish all the data, and I think there’s a moral imperative from the point of view of the patients who’ve been part of the trials that their time, their effort shouldn’t be ignored. I think everything should be in the public domain and I’ve always felt that way very strongly.

 

[alex3619]

Take the facts, then craft a good story? Storytellers versus scientists?

 

[Cheshire]

i was reminded of the complexity of this question when a historian friend of mine suggested i read 'the question of narrative in contemporary historical theory' by hayden white (1984). i will share a few quotes with you:

'but it is precisely because the narrative mode of representation is so natural to human consciousness, so much an aspect of everyday speech and ordinary discourse, that its use in any field of study aspiring to the status of a science must be suspect. for whatever else a science may be, it is also a practice which must be as critical about the way it describes its objects of study as it is about the way it explains their structures and processes.'

'a discipline that produces narrative accounts of its subject matter as an end in itself seems methodologically unsound; one that investigates its data in the interest of telling a story about them appears theoretically deficient.' *

That's the main problem of the BPS CFS theories.

 

[alex3619]

Actually, arguments along these lines circulating all over the place, I keep bumping into them. Latest place I read was Taleb's The Black Swan. He is focused mainly on economics, but the same issues seem to arise in economics and psychopsychiatry.

 

[Snowdrop]

Actually, arguments along these lines circulating all over the place, I keep bumping into them. Latest place I read was Taleb's The Black Swan. He is focused mainly on economics, but the same issues seem to arise in economics and psychopsychiatry.

@alex3619

If you haven't run into this one already, I would recommend 'Voltaire's Bastards' as worth reading. Link to review below:

http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/saul.html

 

[Esther12]

For some reason I found that a struggle to read.

Some of the Bem quotes are a bit terrifying.

I thought this comment underneath was also of interest:

Like it or not, Bem's advice has been followed by many of today's most successful scientists.

Science is not an a-political field and if scientists don't 'sell' their results, then they will cease to get funding and even published in high quality journals.

If you question the ethics, then we need to change the incentive structure - the way scientists are funded to do their research, otherwise this behaviour will continue.

Posted by: Andrew | 09/08/2014 at 07:34 AM