10 Comments

My concern about locking fraudsters up is that it will be abused for political reasons. People may claim that controversial research areas are a type of fraud and they may want to prosecute the people who work within that field.

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I do agree. I have a half-written post about paper retractions that argues that we shouldn't be doing it for political reasons, and the same thing clearly applies to this. I don't really have a good answer outside of "everyone magically begins to respect open academic enquiry and realises the difference between controversial research and fraud".

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Superforecasting: AFAIK, time travel has been the only thing shown to work consistently

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My wife recently did a literature review regarding “mediation” only to come up with hundreds of studies on meditation with misspellings. Unfortunate.

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Another one I do all the time TBF!

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For me and the colleagues it’s usually the medication—> meditation/mediation. My feedback to a friends paper I edited recently was “control F mediation”

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The scientific literature does have peer review and bad science if proven fraudulent does get exposed. If a theory proves the test of time it become fact (unless proven otherwise). Skeptism is good for science advancement. Skeptics keep it honest.

Keep it advancing.

Lol

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Have you read Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz’s takedown of the Cass Review? So far it’s 7 parts long, but I don’t think he’s done. I first heard about Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz from listening to your The Studies Show podcast, where I think you described him as a good science writer. I’m wondering what your thoughts are about his criticism of the Cass Review, especially since you covered the same topic with more positive feedback on your podcast. You can find the introduction of his criticism (with links to the other sections) here: https://open.substack.com/pub/gidmk/p/the-cass-review-intro?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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Yeah this is probably our biggest divergence, except on some free speech stuff that I seem to remember we disagreed about on Twitter one time. I must admit I haven't read his stuff on it. I'll get round to it eventually!

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Howdy Stuart, longtime listener of the studies show (since inception!).

Been on my mind for some months, curious your feedback on this interesting literature evaluation tool:

https://consensus.app

I've used it myself on a variety of topics, such as minoxidil, laser therapy for hair, uterine lining thickness and IVF, among other things, creatine and nitrous oxide supplements for fitness. Genuinely helps me parse, and that's with the freemium version alone as I'm comfortable reading studies as it is...

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