I went to high school with Brian Wansink. He is brilliant, funny, and affable. I could hear his voice speaking his responses to the objections raised, and snickered a little bit.
I'm sure that Wansink cares about his research and its quality. He's that sort of person. I don't know what happened with these papers, but it seems likely that answering bloggers publicly would not serve the greater good.
It seems to me that all the hand-wringing about these four papers misses the bigger picture: What can we do to improve the practice of science across the board? Why is there almost no field of study which isn't tainted by the politics of left vs. right?
My suggestion is that it began when people began to believe the idea that all political and social questions are best served with some sort of applied scientific analysis. I counter that, in fact, scientists are some of the worst people to ask for solutions to political and social problems, since most of them have almost no understanding of the relevant fields of study, which mainly include history and philosophy, and perhaps psychology. Even fields like theology, linguistics, and literature and the arts have more to say to most political problems than, say, physics or chemistry or meteorology, because they speak to human behavior rather than the behavior of inanimate substances.
Please understand that I say all this not to provoke an argument, necessarily. But as someone whose formal studies were mostly in political history, in general, listening to HN talk about politics is a lot like what I must imagine it is for most on HN to listen to people on TV news shows talk about tech in general and software in particular: they sort of get it, but not really, and certainly are not as expert as they imagine themselves to be.
Wansink doesn't appear to be troubled by his prodigious contributions of unreliable results to the literature, nor does he appear inclined to correct them. All of science and discovery is a joke to him.
Left or right, the troubled extremes of politics start where respect for evidence and truth ends. Scientists are, nominally, people who search for truths about our universe with some degree of rigor, some respect for evidence, some appetite for truth (and usually an insanely competitive nature, but I digress). Absent that, what's the point?
This isn't about society, in my opinion. It's about having some respect for evidence and truth. Without these, science isn't science. And what wansink is doing isn't science. Cold fusion had more rigor. Yet he will probably be rewarded with grants of taxpayer money, taken from fellow citizens as taxes, under threat of force. Meanwhile pediatric bone marrow transplanters will shut down their labs for "lack of funding". Or, more accurately, lack of standards in science.
Yes, it affects people when dishonesty is accepted.
> “Why is there almost no field of study which isn't tainted by the politics of left vs. right?”
You lost me there. What did you mean when you included this statement here? Are you saying this particular incident is tainted by politics? I discerned nothing political in Wansink's papers, the feedback they received, Wansink's responses, or Andrew Gelman's reaction pieces. Did I miss something?
I ask this because the rest of your comment became about politics vs ___, which didn’t feel natural to follow when I didn’t understand why politics is relevant here.
If HN commenters are amateurs in this domain, what do you think of Andrew Gelman, who wrote the linked-to article and has harped on Wasnick's errors in multiple posts? ,any of the commenters on his blog seem to be well versed in the field too.
If he is so unconcerned with verifying his test results, perhaps luminaries in his discipline should write to the journals where his papers are being published pointing out the uncorrected errors and suggest that the journal's editorial department be supplemented to fine tooth comb his assertions.
I'm sure that Wansink cares about his research and its quality. He's that sort of person. I don't know what happened with these papers, but it seems likely that answering bloggers publicly would not serve the greater good.
It seems to me that all the hand-wringing about these four papers misses the bigger picture: What can we do to improve the practice of science across the board? Why is there almost no field of study which isn't tainted by the politics of left vs. right?
My suggestion is that it began when people began to believe the idea that all political and social questions are best served with some sort of applied scientific analysis. I counter that, in fact, scientists are some of the worst people to ask for solutions to political and social problems, since most of them have almost no understanding of the relevant fields of study, which mainly include history and philosophy, and perhaps psychology. Even fields like theology, linguistics, and literature and the arts have more to say to most political problems than, say, physics or chemistry or meteorology, because they speak to human behavior rather than the behavior of inanimate substances.
Please understand that I say all this not to provoke an argument, necessarily. But as someone whose formal studies were mostly in political history, in general, listening to HN talk about politics is a lot like what I must imagine it is for most on HN to listen to people on TV news shows talk about tech in general and software in particular: they sort of get it, but not really, and certainly are not as expert as they imagine themselves to be.