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Scientific Methodology Quotes

Browse 6 quotes about Scientific Methodology.

Scientific Methodology Quotes

“Radionics was conceived as a diagnostic and treatment technology at a time when modern electronic theory and biomedicine had not become the dominant sciences they are today. Early radionic devices incorporated the new discoveries of radio and electronics into their design. During that period, the functional assumptions of radionic technology did not seem as implausible as it does today. However, it wasn't long before radionics became outmoded and completely non-scientific. As Mizrach has noted, radionics continued to appropriate the methods of orthodox science into its design and terminology, making the probability of understanding what it could accomplish even more difficult to assess. I will examine this appropriation in a spirit of tolerance, given the state of electronics and medicine circa 1910, when radionics was first discovered. I will do so in order to shift the focus of this interesting technology from the scientific to the metaphysical, where the reader not limited by a need for scientific approval can evaluate it. My aim is to provide a reasonable means of evaluating radionic technology as an artistic methodology.”

“One recent case highlighted by Dan Simons relates again to the work of Yale psychologist John Bargh. In 2012, Bargh and colleague Idit Shalev published a study claiming that lonelier people prefer warmer baths and showers, thereby compensating for a lack of “social warmth” through physical warmth.44 In 2014, psychologist Brent Donnellan and colleagues reported a failure to replicate this finding—and not just in a single experiment but across nine experiments and more than 3,000 participants, over 30 times the sample size of the original study.45 Despite this failure to replicate, as well as the presence of unexplained anomalies in the original data, Bargh and Shalev refused to retract their original paper. In many other sciences, a false discovery of this magnitude would automatically trigger excision of the original work from the scientific record. In psychology, unreliability is business as usual.”

“If we take a science such as experimental physics, where studies tend to have high statistical power, methods are well defined and de facto preregistered, then the failure to reproduce a previous result is considered a major cause for concern. But in a weaker science where lax statistical standards and questionable research practices are the norm, attempts to reproduce prior work will often fail, and it should therefore come as no surprise that retraction is rare.”

“In academia, the model that we are taught; that we are told in most fields - not the arts, and not the experimental sciences either - but many, many fields, [the model] is: - You have an idea, - You accumulate everything that anyone has ever written about that idea, - You become familiar with what everyone has already said about it, - And from there, you cobble together the pieces: the evidence either for or against your [idea], or you just review what they've done and you create something that's a little bit new. Over in science space I call this "Brick in the Wall Science". It's valuable that some people are doing Brick in the Wall Science but you will always have the same foundation of the house that you started with with Brick in the Wall Science, and it's possible the foundation of the house you started with is not the foundation that you want or that is true. [...] [With Brick in the Wall Science] you can't have revolutionary ideas. You can't have paradigm shifts.”

“An experimenter’s own biases, expectations and intentions, whether expressed knowingly and outwardly, or even held subconsciously, are known to influence certain experiments. This effect is so well known that it has a name: the ‘observer-expectancy effect’ or ‘experimenter effect’ and has itself been a topic of research.”