Recent comments in /f/science

iamfondofpigs t1_jdy6hem wrote

Reply to comment by Trill-I-Am in Linguistic analysis of 177,296 Reddit comments sheds light on negative attitudes toward science by HeinieKaboobler

Not sure what you mean. If I am to take you literally, what I'm hearing is, "/r/science would be a better subreddit if all critical comments were deleted."

I don't believe this is what you meant, but perhaps you could clarify?

When I use the word "accusation," I mean, "A claim that someone has done something wrong." This could be an accusation of malicious fraud; it could also be an accusation that someone has mistakenly used an inappropriate statistical test.

Is there a particular class of accusations that you think are harmful? Perhaps your definition of "accusation" is different from mine?

Would be interested to hear.

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thomaso40 t1_jdy3i4w wrote

Reply to comment by nerdygnome1 in Study: CBD Decreases Daytime Drowsiness And Is Associated With A Lower Prevalence Of Low Testosterone Levels In Men by Defiant_Race_7544

  • Not associated with lower testosterone levels in men under 40, and was associated with lower prevalence of low testosterone in men over 40 (in science-speak, they can’t say CBD might combat low testosterone in men >40 based on the results, but it is indirectly implied).

  • Not associated with elevated liver enzymes (which would indicate liver inflammation).

  • Associated with lower reports of daytime drowsiness

Not the strongest study design, but some interesting results if you like CBD.

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iamfondofpigs t1_jdy1b1p wrote

Reply to comment by dumnezero in Linguistic analysis of 177,296 Reddit comments sheds light on negative attitudes toward science by HeinieKaboobler

Author Jordan Batchelor:

> Analysis of keywords identified several sources of negative attitudes, such as claims that scientists can be corruptible, poor communicators, and misleading. Research methodologies were negatively evaluated on the basis of small sample sizes. Other commenters negatively evaluated social science research, especially psychology, as being pseudoscientific, and several commenters described science journalism as untrustworthy or sensationalized.

/u/dumbnezero:

> And the mods should've removed all of those. Press that Nuke button, mods.

I am not so certain.

  • "Corruptible": Conflict of interest is relevant and should be pointed out.
  • "Poor communicators": This accusation can be a jumping-off point for a commenter to clarify the authors' intent.
  • "Misleading": Always good to point out when an author makes a claim that is not supported by their own data.
  • "Small sample sizes": This is the one where I most agree with Batchelor. Commenters often slam down this criticism without thinking about its relevance. Still, scientists often make the opposite mistake of overvaluing statistical significance.
  • "Negatively evaluated social science": Many articles that get posted here under the social science tag are closer to political commentary than social science.
  • "Described science journalism as untrustworthy or sensationalized": This is straightforwardly true, though. The majority of the time I read science journalism, and then go on to read the actual research paper, the science journalism article makes stronger claims than the research paper itself.

No doubt, there are good and bad ways to comment on these problems. I'd like to see what words and phrases Batchelor actually looked for in the corpus, and I'd like some examples of what Batchelor considers to be unreasonable comments. I can't access the actual article, though. My normal search methods failed. And my, ahem, other methods failed as well.

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iamfondofpigs t1_jdxz08w wrote

Reply to comment by MpVpRb in Linguistic analysis of 177,296 Reddit comments sheds light on negative attitudes toward science by HeinieKaboobler

> Skeptical redditors, like me, respond

Yep. Especially on a science subreddit, the majority of comments should be critical.

If you go in person to a conference, or a paper presentation, the majority of questions will be critical. Not attacking, but questions that probe for weaknesses in the experimental design. This is not "anti-science sentiment." This is science itself.

On Reddit, the average level of expertise is lower than at a conference. So, a higher proportion of the criticisms will be spurious. But we should still expect mostly critical comments.

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