No, I get it, I also find a lot of people who put links in to say "see, this is the definitive proof", I am not one of them; I've only put the paper into the response simply to add a bit more context to the other person's claim (since it was devoid of any form of links or reading material to back up his/her claim). I won't really believe that the study is true until there are more studies done on top of it and been peer reviewed (heck, peer reviewers can even be political!).
And don't think that those studies that you got sent by the article supporting a claim are the only studies concerning that claim. Nobody will link you the study that discredits them, but it will often exist.
It's funny that so many commenters are complaining about the lack of a linked study. It's as if people are incapable of independently analyzing the claims and reaching their own conclusions.
Why didn't you linked to the report instead? This feels like original research, and I doubt that a lot of people will be bothered to verify your claims.
Why? They're suggesting the data doesn't support the claim - They only needs data of their own if they had their own claim. The burden of proof is not on them.
This isn't a trial, it's an argument. And regardless of context, you should support your argument with facts, not pure speculation. The entire article is completely devoid of supporting evidence. There's nothing wrong with saying that the original study lacked evidence (if that's true), but making up your own facts without either citing a source or acknowledging that they're just speculation is not valid criticism.
It would be nice if we could have a link to the research, instead of a politicised interpretation of the research.
And this is just a single study: the columnist seems to be saying "This one study that agrees with me must be true; all those studies that don't agree with me must be lies."
>those studies are not 'science'. Have you heard of 'replication crisis'?
Just because there has been a replication crisis doesn't mean you can dismiss all scientific studies willy nilly.
Those are not some Deepak Chopra style BS, they are actual clinical studies (and I've just sent a sample, there are tons). And the "replication crisis" argument doesn't really hold up if independent studies reach similar conclusions (as is the case with a lot of these).
>People like you who blindly believe anything a supposed authority puts out there in the name of science are real curse to the gift of science.
I don't "blindly believe anything a supposed authority puts out there". I respect multiple teams working on a field and coming up with relevant results, and having their papers peer reviewed etc.
I don't use issues like the "replication crisis" to dismiss any study I don't like based on predetermined convictions.
Notice also how your links are irrelevant. We are not talking about Psychology studies but medical clinical studies. So whether "Positive” Results Increase Down the Hierarchy of the Sciences" (as another paper says) is irrelevant, as we're not talking about soft sciences and humanities here.
Are you reading the actual study? Because what's linked here isn't a study, it's an article about a study. In other words, it's written by a journalist, not a scientist that worked on the study.
Thank you for the TLDR, and I'm disappointed that you're being downvoted for a direct quote from the link.
HN may not like the conclusion of the study, and there may even be methodological criticisms or alternate conflicting studies, but - in my view - that isn't a reason for you, personally, to take a karma hit.
I can see why you'd infer that from my wording, but FWIW, I'm not intending to imply anything against Prof. Sweeney's work as I've not yet read the actual study. I was posting what I had found when trying the searches myself; for some reason, Google isn't serving me any ads...and Reuters served me what I had posted above.
If anything, this post is directed at commenters who have reflexively dismissed the study because they dislike the OP's summation. Just because the article summarizing the study may jump to a contentious conclusion does not mean that the study itself did. The fact that Reuters apparently messed up here is just an example of how a study with possible controversial implications can be misread by someone trying to write about it.
It's not great news, this study. It could be wrong, it could be inapplicable to reality, it could be a lot of things that mitigate the results in one way or another.
But I think we can all agree that it would have been nicer to hear that there was "No Evidence" of a link.
Another thing worth pointing out: how common is it that an actual valid scientific study is posted and someone says "Well this isn't true in my experience"?
More often than not, it's a case where some other article summarizes (most likely in an incorrect way) another study or someone on HN mentions a study, etc.
Having posted this link, I feel bad for calling attention to a weak study when I'd only read the press release. Yet I'm glad that doing so resulted in someone (Gwern) providing a link to this excellent analytical rebuttal that I probably wouldn't have encountered otherwise.
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