Oct 26, 2017 01:17 AM
Criticizing a scientist’s work isn’t bullying
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and...lying.html
EXCERPT: [...] Unfortunately, the pressures society has placed on scientists have made it almost impossible for us to admit when we’re wrong. We’re rewarded—by funding agencies, by prestigious scientific journals, by the media—for cherry-picking and polishing our results to make them look as shiny as possible. “Groundbreaking” discoveries are often the standard for getting a job or getting promoted. When the stakes are that high, it’s easy for scientists to start seeing what we need to see—to convince ourselves that our embellished findings are rock solid because we have to. What’s worse, there is little incentive for scientists to challenge and correct each other. Doing the hard work of checking each other’s discoveries is not glamorous. And when scientists bother to do it, the response is rarely gratitude—instead, efforts to point out legitimate errors in methodology are often met with accusations of bullying. Indeed, science’s dirty little secret is that scientists are often actively hostile to the very mechanism that science depends on: self-correction. But when I read it, what I see is a well-reasoned criticism of a scientific claim—exactly the kind we need more, not less, of.
The story of Amy Cuddy, as told in a recent New York Times Magazine story, illustrates why self-correction is so rare in science. In painting a moving portrait of Cuddy’s life over the past few years, it conflates Cuddy’s experience as the target of scientific criticism with her experience as the target of something much more vicious and universal: actual bullying....
MORE: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and...lying.html
The bad science of medical cannabis
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/the-b...l-cannabis
EXCERPT: [...] While the medical uses of the opium poppy, a vastly more dangerous plant, are well understood, cannabis has remained stuck in a no man’s land. It had been part of the US pharmacopeia till the 1930s, as an alcohol-based tincture, until the federal government effectively outlawed its possession and sale through the Marijuana Tax Act. More draconian penalties followed. It is still demonised by federal law as a ‘Schedule 1’ drug with no medical use, lumped in the same category as heroin, LSD and ecstasy. Yet as a quick online search will show, the plant is lauded for a seemingly inexhaustible list of curative properties.
In the past two decades the disparity between evidence and anecdotes has grown extreme. Despite a majority of states (beginning with California in 1996) having legalised cannabis to treat medical conditions, federal restrictions on research remained ironclad. So researchers have great difficulty studying whether such medical uses have any basis in science. “What we have is a perfect storm,” says Daniele Piomelli, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine....
MORE: https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/the-b...l-cannabis
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and...lying.html
EXCERPT: [...] Unfortunately, the pressures society has placed on scientists have made it almost impossible for us to admit when we’re wrong. We’re rewarded—by funding agencies, by prestigious scientific journals, by the media—for cherry-picking and polishing our results to make them look as shiny as possible. “Groundbreaking” discoveries are often the standard for getting a job or getting promoted. When the stakes are that high, it’s easy for scientists to start seeing what we need to see—to convince ourselves that our embellished findings are rock solid because we have to. What’s worse, there is little incentive for scientists to challenge and correct each other. Doing the hard work of checking each other’s discoveries is not glamorous. And when scientists bother to do it, the response is rarely gratitude—instead, efforts to point out legitimate errors in methodology are often met with accusations of bullying. Indeed, science’s dirty little secret is that scientists are often actively hostile to the very mechanism that science depends on: self-correction. But when I read it, what I see is a well-reasoned criticism of a scientific claim—exactly the kind we need more, not less, of.
The story of Amy Cuddy, as told in a recent New York Times Magazine story, illustrates why self-correction is so rare in science. In painting a moving portrait of Cuddy’s life over the past few years, it conflates Cuddy’s experience as the target of scientific criticism with her experience as the target of something much more vicious and universal: actual bullying....
MORE: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and...lying.html
The bad science of medical cannabis
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/the-b...l-cannabis
EXCERPT: [...] While the medical uses of the opium poppy, a vastly more dangerous plant, are well understood, cannabis has remained stuck in a no man’s land. It had been part of the US pharmacopeia till the 1930s, as an alcohol-based tincture, until the federal government effectively outlawed its possession and sale through the Marijuana Tax Act. More draconian penalties followed. It is still demonised by federal law as a ‘Schedule 1’ drug with no medical use, lumped in the same category as heroin, LSD and ecstasy. Yet as a quick online search will show, the plant is lauded for a seemingly inexhaustible list of curative properties.
In the past two decades the disparity between evidence and anecdotes has grown extreme. Despite a majority of states (beginning with California in 1996) having legalised cannabis to treat medical conditions, federal restrictions on research remained ironclad. So researchers have great difficulty studying whether such medical uses have any basis in science. “What we have is a perfect storm,” says Daniele Piomelli, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Irvine....
MORE: https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/the-b...l-cannabis