Showing 237 to 240

Science quality assurance

Retraction Watchđź”—

Why? Because retractions too often pass quietly and with vague reasons given or no reason given, like it's all a big embarrassment to involved parties, rather than an essential part of the March of Science.

The people who took part of a study early on don't learn that the study's been retracted, so they go on spreading incorrect conclusions.

Thus, Retraction Watch. Since they began their work around 2010, retractions have become lots more informative [see RW self report], and they've helped some scientific sleuths gain fame.

Related: Health News Review "Note to our followers: Our nearly 13-year run of daily publication of new content on HealthNewsReview.org came to a close at the end of 2018. Publisher Gary Schwitzer and other contributors may post new articles periodically. But all of the 6,000+ articles we have published contain lessons to help you improve your critical thinking about health care interventions. And those will be still be alive on the site for a couple of years." Who wants to guess that they got a little too famous? I'm glad they opted to shut down, for all I know they were offered "donations" for continuing, and we wouldn't have known. [ Rhetoric device: show the actual website, and point out the date on the last review, makes it more real ]

PubPeerđź”—

I'm honestly surprised that PubMed and other classic databases haven't thought of having a discussion forum for their publications. I'm glad though, because can you imagine paywalling the discussion? And giving bribeable journals the power to delete or edit critical posts?

It brings to mind you know, the bibliography app Mendeley which was bought by Elsevier. Lots of people got suspicious about why Elsevier would do that as it runs counter to their business model and it's probably not a good idea to use Mendeley now. There is an open source app Zotero which can't be bought. But the moral is that you don't let the researchers and publishers own the rights to the discussion, the discussion must be done elsewhere, in a medium created by readers for readers.

Publons

Ioannidis 2005đź”—

Social media for science critiqueđź”—

When it comes to pointing out errors in published work, social media have been necessary. There just has been no reasonable alternative. Yes, it’s sometimes possible to publish peer-reviewed letters in journals criticizing published work, but it can be a huge amount of effort. Journals and authors often apply massive resistance to bury criticisms.

It's funny because when I was growing up, the term "peer review" made me imagine that the journals quickly correct and take down faulty studies, that scientists are fiercely critical of badly done studies. Apparently I was optimistic. Until the airing of the reproducibility crisis around 2010, publications were treated as permanently incumbent. You could write a letter with criticism, and presumably many naive optimists did, but you'd never get a response or see any change. A journal editor was recently cited as saying "I'm not quite sure what a retraction is".

What do I like about blogs compared to journal articles? First, blog space is unlimited, journal space is limited, especially in high-profile high-publicity journals such as Science, Nature, and PPNAS. Second, in a blog it’s ok to express uncertainty, in journals there’s the norm of certainty. On my blog, I was able to openly discuss various ideas of age adjustment, whereas in their journal article, Case and Deaton had nothing to say but that their numbers “are not age-adjusted within the 10-y 45-54 age group.” That’s all! I don’t blame Case and Deaton for being so terse; they were following the requirements of the journal, which is to provide minimal explanation and minimal exploration. . . . over and over again, we’re seeing journal article, or journal-article-followed-by-press-interviews, as discouraging data exploration and discouraging the expression of uncertainty. . . . The norms of peer reviewed journals such as PPNAS encourage presenting work with a facade of certainty.

— statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2014/11/22/blogs-twitter/#comment-252332

Not being allowed to express uncertainty is just about the most unscientific thing there is!

Let me conclude with a key disagreement I have with Fiske. She prefers moderated forums where criticism is done in private. I prefer open discussion. Personally I am not a fan of Twitter, where the space limitation seems to encourge snappy, often adversarial exchanges. I like blogs, and blog comments, because we have enough space to fully explain ourselves and to give full references to what we are discussing.

Related

What links here

Created (3 years ago)

Jupiter

Jupiter, the planet.

Its distance from Sol is 5.2 AU (770 million km).

Earth has 10% the diameter of Jupiter, and Jupiter in turn has 10% the diameter of Sol.

Jupiter's mass is 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined—this is so massive that its barycentre with the Sun lies above the Sun's surface at 1.068 solar radii from the Sun's centre.[44] Jupiter is much larger than Earth and considerably less dense: its volume is that of about 1,321 Earths, but it is only 318 times as massive.[7][45] Jupiter's radius is about one tenth the radius of the Sun,[46] and its mass is one thousandth the mass of the Sun, so the densities of the two bodies are similar.[47] A "Jupiter mass" (MJ or MJup) is often used as a unit to describe masses of other objects, particularly extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs.

Somehow, while school had plenty of astronomy and I liked those parts, no one told me astronomy was this interesting!

Theoretical models indicate that if Jupiter had much more mass than it does at present, it would shrink.[49] For small changes in mass, the radius would not change appreciably, and above 160%[49] of the current mass the interior would become so much more compressed under the increased pressure that its volume would decrease despite the increasing amount of matter. As a result, Jupiter is thought to have about as large a diameter as a planet of its composition and evolutionary history can achieve.[50] The process of further shrinkage with increasing mass would continue until appreciable stellar ignition was achieved, as in high-mass brown dwarfs having around 50 Jupiter masses.[51]

Although Jupiter would need to be about 75 times more massive to fuse hydrogen and become a star, the smallest red dwarf is only about 30 percent larger in radius than Jupiter.[52][53] Despite this, Jupiter still radiates more heat than it receives from the Sun; the amount of heat produced inside it is similar to the total solar radiation it receives.[54] This additional heat is generated by the Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism through contraction. This process causes Jupiter to shrink by about 1 mm (0.039 in)/yr.[55][56] When formed, Jupiter was hotter and was about twice its current diameter.[57]

Created (3 years ago)

Buffering

Buffering is this wonderful trait where you can speak directly to me, and I won't hear a word.

Then you might call me out by name, and I'll say "What?", and then the contents of what you just said will start loading in my brain.

Then I will interrupt you and answer the question you asked just as you begun to repeat it.

– romankogan.net/adhd/#Buffering

This happens to me. I am aware that you said something, but it's like the language centers of my brain are temporarily offline. Then they gets plugged in and suddenly it makes sense all at once.

It's one part of why conversations can be exhausting… this can happen in the middle, then I try to pretend that I am still listening but I have to keep in my memory your last sentence while I wait for it to make sense, and then catch up remembering what you said since.


Alternatively, I may have Cognitive disengagement syndrome (CDS). Then it may not be an issue with language processing itself, just that doing it under time pressure, such that I feel compelled to respond promptly, is one of the times I'm most likely to "log out" mentally for no reason.

What links here

Created (3 years ago)

Unit conversion

The ability to convert in your head between m/s and km/h can be useful in conversations (about astronomy, vehicle speeds, wind…).

From m/s to km/h, the multiplication factor is 3600/1000 (seconds and meters) = 36/10 = 3.6. I suppose a quick head rule is to multiply by three and then add a bit.

So 20 m/s is 72 km/h. And the speed of light 300 Mm/s is about 950 Mm/h, or 950 000 000 km/h.

From km/h, the multiplication factor is the inverse of that, 1/3.6 = 0.2777…, or if you prefer, 1000/3600 = 10/36 = 5/18. I suppose a quick head rule is to just take a fourth of the number; 0.27 is close to 0.25.

From km/h to m/s: the multiplication factor is the inverse of above, so instead of multiplying by 3.6, you divide by 3.6, or multiply by 1/3.6 = 0.2777… Or just take the fourth of the km/h number and add a bit. But I think I heard of a neater rule for this.

Notice a surface generality: always expect the km/h number to be bigger than the m/s number.

Created (3 years ago)
Showing 237 to 240