[R] Waaaayy off topic...Statistical methods, pub bias, scientific validity

[Joel Schwartz]

The issue Spencer brings up is a problem whether the funding is private or
public. Just as businesses fund studies that support their goals, government
agencies fund studies that justify the need for their services and expansion
of their powers and budgets. In fact, there's a whole field of study
variously called "public choice economics" and "the new institutional
economics" that study these and related issues. 

On a related note, there is certainly a lot of self-selection bias in what
fields of study people choose to enter. For just one example, it isn't too
difficult to believe that of the pool of people talented and interested in
statistics, those who choose to enter public health or epidemiology might be
more likely to want research that justifies expansion of public health and
environmental agencies' regulatory powers and this might affect the research
questions they ask, the ways they design and select their statistical
models, and what results they choose to include and exclude from
publications. AFAIK, there is substantial evidence that researchers,
espeically in non-experimental studies, tend to get results they "expect" or
"hope" to find, even if they feel no conscious bias. This is likely one of
the reasons observational studies are so frequently overturned by randomized
controlled trials. RCT's provide less room for confirmation bias to rear its
ugly head. 

Joel 

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On
Behalf Of Spencer Graves
Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 9:13 PM
To: Carl Witthoft
Cc: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] Waaaayy off topic...Statistical methods, pub bias,
scientific validity


>       A more insidious problem, that may not affect the work of Jonah
Lehrer, >is political corruption in the way research is funded, with less
public and more private funding of research
(http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=21052&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&U
RL_SECTION=201.html).  
...as private funding replaces tax money for basic science, we must expect
an increase in research results that match the needs of the funding agency
while degrading the quality of published research.  This produces more
research that can not be replicated -- effects that get smaller upon
replication.  (My wife and I routinely avoid certain therapies recommended
by physicians, because the physicians get much of their information on
recent drugs from the pharmaceuticals, who have a vested interest in
presenting their products in the most positive light.)


       Spencer


On 1/6/2011 2:39 PM, Carl Witthoft wrote:
> The next week's New Yorker has some decent rebuttal letters.  The case 
> is hardly as clear-cut as the author would like to believe.
>
> Carl
>
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