Re: [2014-05-31] Noses in Psychology
Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2014 7:08 pm
Seriously who let reddit in here?"real science"
Proudly ignored since 1867
http://www.smbc-comics.com/smbcforum/
http://www.smbc-comics.com/smbcforum/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=4144
Seriously who let reddit in here?"real science"
Making useful predictions makes it science. Sociology is far less fictitious than your post about it.Nerd wrote:Being useful or making useful predictions doesn't make it a science.
This installment of "reading is fundamental" goes back to my first post in this thread:Kaharz wrote:Here are some I grabbed at random:ReasonablyDoubtful wrote:You asked me for sources... where's yours?
Studies showing vegetarian diets may reduce incidence of mortality for ischemic heart disease (mostly in cohorts under 65), but otherwise are no better or worse
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/di ... aid=814540
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/70/3/516s.short
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1 ... 4xkVyjc-Ms (this study also shows a reduced risk for cancer, but most others haven't.)
And, if you still don't understand why observational studies are bad, there is a lecture by Tom Naughton dealing largely with this issue (though he also touches on some other aspects of bad science).ReasonablyDoubtful wrote:Observational studies, which can't account for the effects of health consciousness, once again "prove" that vegetarianism is healthier.
Had you perused the study, you might have found this table, which actually shows an increased risk (albeit not statistically significant) when the researchers control for age, sex, and smoking. They didn't, however, control for alcohol intake or exercise, which is substantially different in vegetarian populations than in non-vegetarians. Keep in mind that those are not the only health-conscious choices that vegetarians make over non-vegetarians, those are just the ones studied in that study. Denise Minger discusses these differences in a lecture she did. This doesn't count other factors in health-consciousness, such as using dietary supplements, which, in spite of certain news stories and "scientists" insisting otherwise, probably do make a difference.Kaharz wrote:There are other studies that may indicate the effect is not due to the meatless diet, but due to the intake of healthier foods in general. Such as this one:
http://www.bmj.com/content/313/7060/775
Well, thank goodness I'm here, as I have quite a few that do! In fact, I even have , something you don't have.Kaharz wrote:What I can't find is anything that indicates that a proper vegetarian diet is actually less healthy than a non-vegetarian diet.
Uh-huh. Uh-huh. We could dismiss it out of hand as a conspiracy theory. The problem with that is that conspiracy theories have a distinct lack of a paper trail (which is something that, for some reason, conspiracy theorists seem to think proves the conspiracy). On the other hand, remember what I mentioned about homocysteine levels and heart disease? This is something we should have known 30 years ago. Why didn't we? Because Kilmer McCully's theory ran counter to the NIH's official policy. He could receive no government funding. Sure, government funding doesn't account for all of the funding scientists receive, but keep in mind that a good chunk of the "industry" funding goes to "prove" that BPA is safe or cigarettes don't cause cancer or... well, see the study Tom Naughton referenced in that video I linked.Kaharz wrote:This does happen of course, but there are a lot of other governments, non profits and organizations that fund studies. And the government does not always defund studies that go against their stance. But I guess you are right and anything that goes against what you say is part of the conspiracy.It's more than that. The US Government doesn't fund studies from people whose studies go against their official stance. One researcher was even blackballed after he published a book detailing the issues with the official stance not long after the official stance became official.
Gary Taubes, in case you didn't know, wrote Bad Science: The Short Life and Weird Times of Cold Fusion and Nobel Dreams: Power, Deceit and the Ultimate Experiment. He's made a career out of informing the public about the politics of science, but since Good Calories, Bad Calories (6 1/2 years ago), he's focused his work on nutrition. Funding, though, is always in the politics of science. Oh, and Robert Olson was a major dissenter when the McGovern Committee was formed to tell the public about how terrible fat and cholesterol are.Gary Taubes wrote:Though the conflict-of-interest accusations served to discredit the advice proffered in Toward Healthful Diets, the issue was not nearly as simple as the media made it out to be and often still do. Since the 1940s, nutritionists in academia had been encouraged to work closely with industry. In the 1960s, this collaborative relationship deteriorated, at least in public perception, into what Ralph Nader and other advocacy groups would consider an “unholy alliance.” It wasn’t always.
As Robert Olson explained at the time, he had received over the course of his career perhaps $10 million in grants from the USDA and NIH, and $250,000 from industry. He had also been on the American Heart Association Research Committee for two decades. But when he now disagreed with the AHA recommendations publicly, he was accused of being bought. “If people are going to say Olson’s corrupted by industry, they’d have far more reason to call me a tool of government,” he said. “I think university professors should be talking to people beyond the university. I believe, also, that money is contaminated by the user rather than the source. All scientists need funds.”
Scientists were believed to be free of conflicts if their only source of funding was a federal agency, but all nutritionists knew that if their research failed to support the government position on a particular subject, the funding would go instead to someone whose research did. “To be a dissenter was to be unfunded because the peer-review system rewards conformity and excludes criticism,” George Mann had written in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1977. The NIH expert panels that decide funding represent the orthodoxy and will tend to perceive research interpreted in a contrarian manner as unworthy of funding. David Kritchevsky, a member of the Food and Nutrition Board when it released Toward Healthful Diets, put it this way: “The U.S. government is as big a pusher as industry. If you say what the government says, then it’s okay. If you say something that isn’t what the government says, or that may be parallel to what industry says, that makes you suspect.”
I spent at least six hours on mine.Oldrac the Chitinous wrote:Welp, now I wish I hadn't taken the time to type out that thing, but there's no helping it, I guess.
Do you have any idea how sociology and psychology work? Have you actually studied them or just read some pop sci books bashing them and making taken a 101 class or something? They both use fairly rigorous statistical analysis and modelling. Psychology is also increasing moving to a neuro-chemical approach. Both psychology and sociology utilize a form of the the scientific method. Yes a lot of the early stuff is complete bunk, such as Freud and Durkheim's macro theories. And yes, people continually draw ridiculous conclusions from the data. But that happens in all sciences.Nerd wrote:Being useful or making useful predictions doesn't make it a science. <blah blah blah>
I just grabbed some stuff that looked decent. I didn't actually read any of those articles I posted beyond the abstract and just hoped they were what I was looking for. I also didn't read any further in your post than what I quoted above. I just wanted to see if you'd waste huge amounts of time proving your point. I don't know if you proved your point, because I didn't read what you wrote, but you apparently did waste huge amounts of time.ReasonablyDoubtful wrote:In this post, I teach Kaharz that reading is fundamental!
Kaharz wrote:But then you were kind of a dick and demanded sources from me
Kaharz wrote:Do you have sources on those
You were saying?ReasonablyDoubtful wrote:You asked me for sources
Actually, I plan to use the bulk of that post I made as the bulk of another post on my nutrition blog. So the amount of time I actually spent that wouldn't have gone into my blog post is fairly minimal. I also plan on doing the same thing for that aerobics post that I do still plan on making, because you've given me quite a bit to actually support my argument.Kaharz wrote:but you apparently did waste huge amounts of time.
I'm just saying.He who loves discipline, loves knowledge. Stupid is the man who hates correction.