After reading “Studies Are Usually Bunk, Study Shows”, my mind started to go over every piece of information from a study that I have believed. Anything from the best way to study, to how global warming is effecting our country, and everything in between — there is a study on just about everything. Because of the scientific lingo and statistics, it is easy to believe anything that these write ups talk about.
But in reality, one must look at all of the aspects of a study. This is something I have learned in both my high school and college statistics class. One must look at the population that the data is being pulled from and if the question is biased or not. That can heavily influence the outcome and can make the data coming from the study either more or less applicable to your life. And when it cannot be applied to your life, what good does the information do?
“More than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments,” the survey report concludes. “And more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments.” This quote from the article just goes to show that no matter how much research goes into the data research, it can still be luck of the draw. If it can’t be repeated, how much can we actually trust it?
What it all boils down to is knowing just how reputable a data set is. If it is not valid, then nothing good can come from it. But most people don’t think to look at how these studies were conducted and just believe whatever researchers type up. This leads to so many more problems which could have been avoided, plus people are now walking around with false ideas in their mind — what could be more dangerous than that?
It is interesting that you brought up the point about looking at all aspects of a study. In my post, I talked about how people really do have a tendency to believe everything they read, so long as they deem it credible (which is most of the time when you are just skimming sources). However, this tendency really does them a disservice as they likely are going to repeat the information. If they look at all aspects of a study, particularly the conditions of the study as well as the experimenter, their analysis would be more valid, as you said in your post.
I completely agree with this analysis of the article. I think also a keep component that Andy Kessler expresses is that when reading an article and finding data we naturally look for words that will help our argument or research rather than looking at all aspects of the concept. Andy expresses that correlation does not mean causation, which I feel is completely true. You talk about some key points that are discussed within the article and I think it is important to not have a false mind.
I completely agrees with your statements about the article. I also believe that the author Andy Kessler expresses that just because there is correlation does not mean there is causation and I think that is an important element in the way we find research. We only look for what we want to look for. Overall, I completely agree with your ideas that in todays society we are developing false minds and ideas about people and essential aspects in life.