This is a pretty decent check-list for suspected bad science from blogger Eric Raymond. It is the sort of thing that it would be useful for trainee and even experienced journalists to learn.
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3 comments to How to spot junk science |
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These eight conditions mentioned in the posting (science by press release, rhetoric to incite moral/eschatological panic, short memory, over reliance on computer models for marginally correlated data, etc) reminds one of James Lett’s “Field Guide to Critical Thinking” which introduces the acronym FiLCHeRS, explaining that
– Falsifiability
– Logic
– Comprehensiveness
– Honesty
– Replicability
– Sufficiency
are the basis of reasoning from evidence. The first three of Lett’s elements are essential for evidential reasoning, and the second three refer to conditions surrounding the reliability of humans as instruments to disseminate information (e.g., because humans may rationalize, lie to oneself and others, mistake facts into patterns, misperceive, and misremember).
It’s important to keep this discussion active to remind people to demand that the evidence for any factual claim be evaluated without self-deception, that it be carefully screened for error, fraud, and appropriateness, and that it be substantial and unequivocal. Doubly so, when there are motives to centralize control of business conditions by increasing regulation (growing government size and favoring too-big-to-fail entities).
I think this list of Raymond’s goes quite a way to explaining how a number of people who are politically savvy but not up on science spotted the CAGW fraud very early on. Notably the late Chris Tame, who was adamant it was a pack of lies long before I worked it out. It’s not that Chris had the entire list in his head. Merely that he was thinking along those sort of lines.
Good posting.
I thought that was a rather good post.
For me, the one that’s most useful is #3 “Rhetoric that mixes science with the tropes of moral panic.” That’s when I personally started smelling a rat with AGW – when people started telling me I was a bad person for questioning it. I will, of course, question the science behind any theory that’s fueling mad political spending, so I wouldn’t have thought any more about it had my questions simply been answered. But the automatic assumption that I was one of “them,” and that “they” were terrible people, set off alarm bells.