Dear Scientist out there~!

Hi all, I am just wondering what is your attitude as a scientist towards research?

Do you really practise noble value in research? Sometimes, I found scientific community is somehow quite confusing ya!

1. For whatever reason, scientist tend to cite ONLY those research favourable towards their purpose. Shouldn't a scientist take account of both sides?

2. I have heard people who do research replicate their result several times just to obtain favourable result. Again, is this a correct attitude? Disregarding the unfavourable result and publish the one which favour your hypothesis or the one you can explain.

3. Again, as a scientist, what is your attitude towards pseudoscience? For example, you think they are completely nonsense or maybe just can't be explained? For me, I always think that science shouldn't be a definite. People once said that moon-landing was preposterous, but it is now proven possible. I saw quite some documentaries where people challenge the fact, some scientists just cannot accept it.

4. When something is improbable, should we keep digging the same hole or look for alternative? This applied to the theory of big bang and the origin of life. The possibility of having life originate from chemical basis is so small that is deemed as impossible. So, should we keep on finding solutions to explain this theory, or should we think of alternative?

All in all, just to brag something Hope to listen from you too.

The title rings a bell, I have read a "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre, and I recommend TS to read it too, it shows you how to do a fair trial, how to distinguish fake science e.g. homeopathy with real science.

I am not a scientist, but a student that has interest in science, do correct me if I'm wrong.

2. A good theory must be supported by observation of experiment that can be reproducible. That means if another scientists do this experiment again, they should get the same result. About the issue of cherry picking the results, you should read "Bad Science".

3. The definition of Pseudoscience as cited in Wikipedia Pseudoscience does not follow the scientific method, hence it is not accepted in the scientific community. It's not that scientist are not open minded about pseudoscience, but pseudoscience has to prove its claim by giving valid evidences, and having its claim tested via experiment. I would recommend you to read about history of science, scientific discoveries are not as black and white as you think, they are time where ridiculous ideas are treated as scientific truth, but it soon get dispelled by the scientific community. e.g. spontaneous generation, the belief that living things can arise from inanimate things, but soon it got dispelled by Louis Pasteur.

4. I have not yet read evidence about big bang theory and abiogenesis, I think there are so much that you must learn before giving a judgement about it. There are problems in these models as well. I think in the mean time of finding evidence for these theories, other valid hypothesis supported by evidence and experiment should be respected too. Maybe Big bang theory will turn out to be wrong, we won't know at the moment.



References:
1. Wikipedia. Pseudoscience. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience (accessed 24/1/2013).

You don't need to be concerned if we cannot hope to answer this question by looking at the subject matter of the sciences. Science investigates natural phenomena of every conceivable sort, from the physical to the biological to the social.

Do you know scientists study everything from events occurring at the time of the formation of the universe to the stages of human intellectual and emotional development to the migratory patterns of butterflies? Though in what follows we will often refer to “the natural world” as that which science investigates, we must understand that the “world” of the scientist includes much more than our planet and its inhabitants. Judging by its subject matter, then, science is the study of very nearly everything.

Not a very nice setup for scientists to answer. It sounds like you ask a policeman, “Are you an upright member of the police force?”

What is an example of that?

According to whom you heard?

Though much of pseudoscience is simply false or incoherent, it is possible that some claim will turn out to be of scientific value even though the evidence for it now appears to be entirely pseudoscientific.

As a case in point, acupuncture theory claims that the human body is covered with channels of energy, called chi, that intersect at numerous “meridians.” However, up to date, there is no scientific evidence for the existence of chi. Its existence is confirmed only by a multitude of anecdotal evidence in the form of satisfied customers. But even if it turns out that something in acupuncture theory is right or even on the right track, the theory will remain an artifact of pseudoscientific thinking until it can be confirmed, modified, or rejected on the basis of controlled experimentation.

If an anomaly can be documented, something has to give. Accepted ideas need to be revised and new forms of explanation may need to be developed and tested. Because so much is at stake the investigation of anomalies must be undertaken with two goals in mind. The first, of course, is to uncover the facts, to get a sense of what is going on. The second is to determine whether the phenomena can be “explained away.” Only if conventional explanation fails can we be confident we have uncovered something that is genuinely anomalous.

Sides? You first decide on the conclusion you want, and then you do the literature research and carry out the experiments, to support your conclusions?

Me thinks you've got things back to front. Your doing it upside down.

But yes, there's a well know problem with an asymmetry, of negative results being less likely to be published than positive ones. In fact, some research might be abandoned incomplete, when it seems that it will lead to a negative result.



Depends on how you define "favourable". If the "unfavourable" results are the inconclusive ones, it may make more sense. A larger data set might help with that. No bad intention need be inferred. Unless you actually cherry pick the results.



I was recently listening to a radio program. One caller was saying that scientists should be open and receptive to homeopathy. The hosts were saying things like homeopathy cannot be scientifically explained, so it should not be considered scientific. Well, no. Just because you couldn't explain something, does not mean that the observation should be discarded. Didn't we learn anything from that sorry episode with Galileo 500 years ago?



Do both. There is nothing sacred in science. Every theory is tentatively accepted, until a better one comes along.

Of course sometimes, it is just bad data. Like that recent thing with FTL neutrinos.