The unstoppable momentum of outdated science
(news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26390835 www.aei.org/articles/the-unstoppable-momentum-of-outdated-science-2024-update/)
When you have a topic that has been weaponized politically, as climate change has, people who use that weapon actively work against information they perceive would make the weapon less effective. The author sums it up as follows:
According to Rayner, in such a context we should expect to see reactions to uncomfortable knowledge that include:
- denial – (that scenarios are off track),
- dismissal – (the scenarios are off track, but it doesn’t matter),
- diversion – (the scenarios are off track, but saying so advances the agenda of those opposed to action) and,
- displacement – (the scenarios are off track but there are perhaps compensating errors elsewhere within scenario assumptions).
The entire opening of the article discussing 2020 papers erroneously using skin cancer data in breast cancer research papers which was a known error for at least 13 years […]
I understand science "is expected to be wrong" sometimes, but I'm still somewhat boggled that there's 13 years worth of (presumably) peer reviewed papers making claims about breast cancer using "wrong science" that was proven wrong in 2007…
Science has momentum. Even when a paper is wrong, it keeps being cited for quite a few years afterward, effort is wasted. We need to be faster at changing course, at noticing when a paper no longer is trustworthy. Use scite.ai and its Zotero or Firefox plugins!
And I know this is idealistic but… why refer to a paper if you won't so much as read its pubpeer.com reviews? If you'll use them, read the reviews, even if you're "just" writing a blog post, a Twitter argument, or a flashcard for your own memorization.
Example cases