Do you trust $tatistics & $cientific $tudies?

Question

Seems to me its very easy for a corporation or special intrest part to buy the result they want by funding studies.

slatyb · Accepted Answer

Individually? No. But I trust the established science about many things. There is still a lot we don't know about biological systems. Results of drug trials are often uncomfortable unclear. Some scientists publish fraudulent data to support spurious claims. But eventually there is more data and their claims are refuted.

NathanDavis · Accepted Answer

I understand them... therefore know, not to make that much about them statistics are susceptible to variability manipulation... and studies are usually open to broad, convenient interpretations

Siri137 · Accepted Answer

Hell, no. All of the images you show above are 100% spot on, and that's extremely unfortunate, because it now seems as though there is literally  nothing  we can put our trust in, nothing we can safely assume isn't tainted in some way.

FreyaRed · Accepted Answer

So many mistakes have been made in the past in scientific studies, lot of them even intentionally. One was foolish to take every study for truth. Remember, Joseph Mengele was a scientist either

GoodGuyBreakingBad · Answer

Sometimes I trust statistics.

RavVid · Answer

You need to be cynical. Any interests are usually declared but inherently a researcher has an interest in getting funding to do more research. So when there is a political aspects to the subject matter it is best to count your fingers several times. An obvious example is climate change.

There is a lot of funding to find results results in one direction. It is not to say the research is bad or corrupt but the way it is funded may prejudice the results sadly.

Beware of 1 in 3 results. People believe 1 in 3 results. It is obviously seriously common but not so common to be unbelievable. I saw a newspaper report that women on oral contraception had a 1 in 3 greater chance of *some medical* complication. Yes they did. But the frequency of that medical complication was incredibly low that an increase in chance didn't really mean anything significant.

You really do need to be wary of interest group funded research.

One of the most notorious was into domestic abuse... at a maternity ward. Presumably the mothers were happy enough with their husband to have a baby by him. It was reported that 1 in 3 women in hospital had been abused by their husband.

That sounds very disturbing. 1 in 3 is just rare enough to be believable. 1 in 2 would be too frequent to be credible. 1 in 4 or 5 is not frequent enough to think it very serious. The maternity ward wasn't mentioned so we didn't smell a rat.

Abuse is a beautiful word It can cover kneecapping with a baseball bat down to yelling in angry way. In this particular research, it went down to the husband walking out of a room in silence as a response to something the mother had said to her husband.

So there was a set of graduated levels of what could loosely be described as abuse. In reality the mother might have made an unkind observation on the husband that caused him to walk silently out of the room. Maybe she said "I really didn't believe you could knock me up".

Anyway the mothers have answered a series of questions of 'has your husband ever xyz' all of which can be loosely described as abuse.

So the researchers just have to find the level at which 1 in 3 new mothers have experienced. It might be the husband was cross with the new mother.

It can then be truthfully reported that 1 in 3 women in hospital have been abused by their husbands and let the public infer it caused enough physical injury to justify a hospital admission.

This trick has been repeated many times since.

IceCreamSandwich · Answer

That depends. If many different studies funded from many different sources find a similar conclusion, I'm more likely to trust that than just a few studies all done by the same group.

Pohjolan · Answer

Seems to me its very easy for a corporation or special intrest part to buy the result they want by funding studies. That's a load of BS. The company wants accurate information not disinformation. Just because the scientists are subject to a NDA and the company's marketing department is lying through their teeth about the study it does not mean that there was anything wrong with the study or the science itself.

JacobJordan · Answer

All things are subjective. Statistics can be useful as a way to help make informed decisions but you need to understand the variables that go into making a Statistic. Same with science reports

Sharkstealth · Answer

Things change constantly especially science. A lot of what I was taught in school is different now. One obvious example is no longer putting 2 spaces behind a period.

Bricealan · Answer

Did some statistical studies as an undergrad, and took a Statistics course at Pepperdine as a Grad student. Statistics are one of the reliable ways we can make some decisions in my opinion

Anonymous · Answer

About as much as I trust anyone that is not family.

exitseven · Answer

I look and see who is paying the bills.

Mansearching · Answer

Depends on what the subject is

SUMAIREBRAHIM · Answer

Some are right and some are wrong

Do you trust $tatistics & $cientific $tudies?

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Sometimes I trust statistics.

Do you trust $tatistics & $cientific $tudies?

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Sometimes I trust statistics.

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