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The Inside Story Of How An Ivy League Food Scientist Turned Shoddy Data Into Viral Studies (Brian Wansink, Cornell)

Discussion in 'Research methodology news and research' started by Cheshire, Feb 26, 2018.

  1. Cheshire

    Cheshire Moderator Staff Member

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    https://www.buzzfeed.com/stephaniem...cking?utm_term=.cb9BaqMQN&bftwnews#.brXZqwz1x
     
  2. Alvin

    Alvin Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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  3. Barry

    Barry Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Really brings home the perils of changing the question (or just numbers in the question) after scouring the data for answers to a question you did not originally ask, and maybe not properly controlled for. Presumably there will sometimes be genuine cases where someone stumbles upon an apparent correlation of interest in the data post hoc, but would then need to do another independently designed study with freshly acquired data to prove if a fluke or not.
     
    Skycloud, sea, Louie41 and 1 other person like this.
  4. Flying Dutchman

    Flying Dutchman Established Member

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    21
    This is such an elegant story - a beautifully perfect train-wreck, so to speak.

    The Cornell prof in question got caught out by blogging about how to fish for relationships in data sets. He'd had a 30-yr academic career, and apparently had no idea that his normal research methodology (p-hacking) is unscientific; a recipe for false positives. (Why else would he tell the world that this is how to do research?)
     
    Indigophoton, Barry, Skycloud and 3 others like this.
  5. Barry

    Barry Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Yep. A mind set so steeped in bad methodology, that he had no recognition of that fact. Sort of sounds familiar.
     
  6. Skycloud

    Skycloud Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    I feel for the "dogged" unpaid grad student from Turkey "who never said 'no'"
     
    Esther12 and Trish like this.
  7. Esther12

    Esther12 Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    My sympathy is somewhat limited by having read so many crappy CFS dissertations.

    There are so many PhD students working underneath quacks churning out dodgy work and when they play along with it they can do real harm to others. The money made from PhD students seems to be another corrupting aspect of academia (although I don't really know enough about it to be sure).
     
    Skycloud and Trish like this.
  8. Skycloud

    Skycloud Senior Member (Voting Rights)

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    Location:
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    Good point. I suspect I wouldn't have made that comment if the research hadn't been about subsidised pizza eating.
     
    Samuel and Esther12 like this.

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