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Comment by tjpaudio | Hacker News Reader

Well, until it has been confirmed by a study, it's not science, obvious or not. A few years ago there was a major study that proved a relationship between multiple concussions and long term brain damage. Anyone could have made the conclusion that repeated blows to the head is bad but it doesn't become science until we apply rigor to test it. That's a good thing. At all points in history we believed foolish things that we thought were obvious.

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And sometimes with modern p-hacking and big corp sponsored studies, it's still not technically science. We should all be wary of the "this one study proves everything" attitude. Confirmation studies are both underfunded and the real rubber meets the road science.

I'd really love to see an awareness campaign about this issue.

From my non-scientist perspective who reads things like HN and a few other sources of announce, there's quite a bit of awareness on scientists' part with respect to p hacking. That may not necessarily translate to studies that rely on p hacking to be published and then conferred by the media, though.

"Friends don't let friends P-hack."

"This is your research on P-hacking."

"Just say no to P-hacking!"

Ha. The sad reality in our system is that if you choose science as a career, you publish or you perish. P-hacking allows you to publish. Most biologists know they need to publish or perish, but very few know what P-hacking is, although many of them do it implicitly.

Once you are aware of the problem, you have three choices that I could see: (1) roll the dice and legitimately win the lottery of objective truth discovery, (2) consciously be evil in order to feed your family, or (3) escape and go find another flawed system to feed yourself.

So I chose (3) and went to med school.

https://cos.io/

Acquaintance of mine runs this thing, and is very passionate on the topic.

I'm not sure what you mean about it not being "science". Science is a process, and hypotheses are part of that process. And the process never really ends.

Crossing over from thinking something is one way to testing that something really is that way is certainly a line held within the purview of science. I think you are reading my statement too literally.

I agree, but I think science isn't the right word. I think people use the word science as some sort of proxy for objective truth. But the reality is that science is a messy process that often goes through many drafts before it arrives at something somewhat resembling objective truth. Sometimes that takes centuries depending on the subject.

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