Sunday, February 06, 2011

research truth

"It can be proven that most claimed research findings are false," according to this essay in the Public Library of Science, Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, by John P. A. Ioannidis. Another interesting article on the same subject can be found in The Atlantic.com Lies, Damned Lies, and Medical Science

The following is from Charles Henry Ham's book, Mind and Hand, 1886:
It is thus that the trained hand comes at last to foresee, as it were, that a false proposition is surely destined to be exploded. The habit of rectitude gives it prescience. It invariably discovers, sooner or later, that a false proposition, when embodied in wood or iron, becomes a conspicuous abortion, involving in disgrace both the designer and the maker. A false proposition in the abstract may be rendered very alluring; a false proposition in the concrete is always hideous. One of the chief effects of manual training is, then, the discovery and development of truth; and truth, in its broadest signification, is merely another name for justice; and justice is the synonym of morality.
If medical research can be so corrupt what do you think about the standardized testing movement? Do we have any idea what THEY are doing? Just trying to make a few extra bucks at our children's expense. Throughout modern American culture we witness what Jerome Bruner has called Factual Indifference. There is a cure. DIY, TIY Let the kids make beautiful, useful things. Let them dance and sing. Let them learn the truth of things and become observers of real reality. Make, fix, create.

2 comments:

  1. Out of respect for it being Sunday, I say "Amen" to this post.

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  2. Anonymous5:37 AM

    I bet that doctor isn't very popular at medical conventions...

    Mario

    PS The word verification was very appropriately "grasp."

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