Limits of the scientific method

[firecat]

"The Truth Wears Off: Is there something wrong with the scientific method?" by Jonah Lehrer

...all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology.

Comments

Limits of the scientific method

[betonica]

Thanks! Someone else posted this somewhere recently - I thought it was a fellow faculty member in email, but can't find it. Anyway, I agree with both possible factors: that there are subtle things that have made initial studies more convincing than later ones, and that there is outright fraud.

Also, though, the placebo effect appears to be growing: http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect?currentPage=all - so, for medical trials at least, it isn't that the drugs are somehow becoming less effective (or were never that effective in the first place but were reported erroneously), but what they're measured against has gotten more powerful.

I'm all for the placebo effect. As I tell my students, it isn't that you're just *thinking* that you're getting better but not, it's that you're actually *getting* better, due (in part, one assumes) to thinking that you will. Excellent medicine with few side effects. And inexpensive. What's not to love?

But the overall issue with the "truth wearing off" is certainly an interesting puzzle, and may not be just due to the above three factors. I love it when science gets tweaked, and absolute truths become puzzling uncertainties.

Re: Limits of the scientific method

[firecat]

What's not to love?

Giving patients a placebo without their knowledge is sometimes not to love, IMO. But recent studies suggest that the placebo effect might work even when no deception is involved. That's promising.

It would be pretty cool if we could figure out how the placebo effect works.