Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

Comment by protomyth | Hacker News Reader

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"The original story linked to a review of peer-reviewed scientific research."

I believe the credit we assign to peer reviewed scientific, mathematical, or engineering papers shouldn't be anywhere near the same weight we assign to peer reviewed social science papers. I dealt with quite a lot of these papers early in my career and they do a wonderful job of backing up grant proposals but a poor job of being correct.

My takeaway was that they tried to present some idea as universal when it really required the culture of the researcher in the geographical area the researcher was studying[1]. The second problem is that they didn't understand what they were studying. They didn't think that way.

Now, don't get me wrong, there are some amazing researchers whose results were really useful, but the lack of true rigor in many of these studies is just poor. Don't get me started about the damn math errors or "correlation does not imply causation" arguments.

1) Community risk factor studies have to be the worst. The number of them that only studied urban settings, but believed their results applied to rural areas is astounding.

While my inclination is to agree with your critical view of social science research, I think picking at this example misses the point of the article.

The idea that 'hivemind' discussions are drowning out 'other' viewpoints has merit with respect to this forum. There are copious examples, from role-of-government discussions to technical preferences.

Indeed, there are cases where the community massively promotes dubious science that it finds agreeable.

We would be foolish to throw out this author's commentary because one of his examples is not bulletproof.

That assumes that the purpose of HN is to be a debate site, or a 20th century "fairness doctrine" media outlet, or a town-hall style public forum. I do not think any HN is any of those things or well-suited to become one.

Most of the useful and interesting things that come out of HN are in threads that assume the answer to the big question and make some interesting point about the details.

I don't dismiss the whole of the article, but I do dismiss its premise event.

I get the greater point, but I do not like starting off a perfectly fine argument with such a poor premise. It reeks of wanting to write an article on an important subject and using a poorly chosen event as the "catalyst" or "trigger point" for your need to write it. Also, I am not among those who take that sentence from the article as a "statement of truth".

"My takeaway was that they tried to present some idea as universal "

Strange apologia. This isn't about whether it was a good article or not or the relative merits of peer reviewed social science. It's about whether it's good for the community when top articles are disappeared by a bunch of dittoheads simply because pg was critical.

Before pg post: top article.

After pg post: flagged to oblivion.

If that's going to be the case than it would be better for the community that pg had not commented in that post. Which is unfortunate because pg is very insightful and I think right in that case. Insight is wasted when it's buried on page 10.

The fault obviously is the poor use/abuse of the flagging power and has been extensively documented previously. I've seen zero evidence that it adds anything to this site. Make it cost 100 or 1000 karma to flag something and maybe it can work.

I assume, since you commented well after spartango, that you read spartango's comment and my reply. To repeat, "I don't dismiss the whole of the article, but I do dismiss its premise event."

Also "My takeaway was that they tried to present some idea as universal", is a takeaway from social science research, not the article.

I think your second sentence reads the opposite of what you mean!

this one?? "I dealt with quite a lot of these papers early in my career and they do a wonderful job of backing up grant proposals but a poor job of being correct."

No, I'm pretty sure I meant they can get you grants but are, on the whole, hogwash. I do admit to using these studies to write grants to get money to do things for people. I was a bit of a crusader in my younger years before I realized the end never justifies the means.

I kind of thought the same thing, but then again he didn't mention the direction of the disparity.

peer reviewed scientific, mathematical, or engineering papers > peer reviewed social science papers.

Right, I got that from the overall context. It's just that when one reads a comparison worded the way yours was, one expects the latter item to be the stressed and greater one. Eg:

Beth is nowhere near as good looking as Tricia.

Without other context, I'd assume that Tricia is much better looking according to the author of the comment.

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