[Travis McGee]

The panel reported that he would discuss in detail experimental designs, including drafting questionnaires, and would then claim to conduct the experiments at high schools and universities with which he had special arrangements. The experiments, however, never took place, the universities concluded.

I wonder how much leftist social dogma was created this way, with phoney "social science" studies?

[yarddog]

I would guess that most of it is done this way. It is sort of like the “rock soup” method where the bum creates a nice meal by first asking for something to add to his rock soup.

When I was in grad school, there were huge numbers of material published. Once it got published, it had a life of it’s own. People would cite it and then cite the one who cited etc. Finally they would create an entire system or truth which was based on many phoney studies to start with.

[neverdem]

I wonder how much leftist social dogma was created this way, with phoney "social science" studies?

I have to wonder, but I don't think it's that much. Any experiment that generates a novel hypothesis is bound to be repeated. When the data can't be reasonably replicated, questions will be asked. This phony was begging for trouble.

[FreedomPoster]

Pournelle has called these so-called disciplines “the voodoo sciences” for many years. His essay on the topic is worth reading.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/science/voodoo.html

[Jim Noble]

“Studies show” is a phrase which the Left uses constantly to move the ball down the field.

Most of the “studies” are done in such a way to have a predetermined outcome, when they are not falsified outright.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The panel reported that he would discuss in detail experimental designs, including drafting questionnaires, and would then claim to conduct the experiments at high schools and universities with which he had special arrangements. The experiments, however, never took place, the universities concluded.

I wonder how much leftist social dogma was created this way, with phoney "social science" studies?

Thomas Sowell has an interesting take on that:

My late mentor, Nobel Prize-winning economist George Stigler, used to say that it could be very instructive to spend a few hours in a library checking up on studies that had been cited. When I began doing that, I found it not only instructive but disillusioning.

A footnote in a textbook on labor economics cited six studies to back up a conclusion it reached. But, after I went to the library and looked at those six studies, it turned out that they each cited some other study -- the same other study in all six cases.

Now that the six studies had shrunk to one, I got that one study -- and found that it was a study of a very different situation from the one discussed in the labor economics textbook.

. . .

Once a minister was explaining to me the structure of his funeral orations. He said, "At this point, you are expected to say something good about the deceased. Now, Tom, if I were preaching your funeral, what would I say good about you at that point?" He thought and thought -- for an embarrassingly long time. Finally, he said gravely: "In his research, he always used original sources."

I'll take that.

"Studies Prove": Part II (Thomas Sowell)

If I'm still Freeping when the Lord calls Thomas Sowell home, I intend to repost that article for him then.

[CodeToad]

Fraud in academia is rampant. Universities should be decetified and the entire system flushed anew.