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Deep-seated cognitive biases distort science: Problems of production and consumption| old_uid | 13766 |
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| title | Deep-seated cognitive biases distort science: Problems of production and consumption |
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| start_date | 2014/04/04 |
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| schedule | 17h-18h30 |
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| online | no |
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| summary | While it has clearly had its historical successes, science is currently in a state of crisis both in terms of how it is produced and how it is consumed. On the production side, it has recently (and quite dramatically) come to light that an uncomfortably large proportion of reported findings are false. In the medical field, Ioannidis (2005) has estimated that as many as 1/3 of all findings are non-replicable, but similar problems arise across a wide range of scientific domains including psychology (Rosenthal & Rubin, 1978; Reproducibility Project), economics (Ioannidis & Doucouliagos, 2013), software engineering (Robles, 2010), and biology (Pfeiffer & Hoffman, 2009). On the consumption side, people systematically reject scientific findings that would clearly be in their best interest to adopt. For example certain groups of people regularly deny climate change (Washington, 2013; Kahan et al., 2012), the theory of evolution (Miller, 2007), and the usefulness of vaccination (Kahan, 2010).
Many contributing elements have likely helped bring about these problems. Here, I focus on what may be the most central of these: our own psychology. In particular, I argue that that deep-seated cognitive biases, which are present cross-culturally and early in human development, systematically deform both the production and consumption of science. Thus by understanding the most fundamental aspects of human reasoning, we can gain crucial insight into how to best fix current problems with the scientific process. |
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| responsibles | Strickland |
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