John Oliver gives the most awesomely accurate slam against pop science reporting. Why did it come out now, at the end of the term? I’ll use this next time I teach introductory biology.
(via Sandwalk)
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
That brings up a question: Why don’t granting agencies insist that statistically valid sample sizes be mandatory for any study they fund?
moarscienceplz @1
Well, to know what is statistically valid, you need to do power analyses, which are required for some things. Unless you already have a crap-ton of preliminary data, those are based on variables that are more-or-less arbitrary.
That was brilliant, and a fine example of why I’ve abandoned TED talks.
IMO, Jon Oliver and Samantha Bee, are about the best things on US TV at the moment.
@Caine, snap. I got tired wading through too much dross to find the odd good one. Fortunately, I have a couple of friends who still watch them and know what I enjoy so will give me a heads up so I don’t have to waste time on the dross.
Is there a way to see this outside the US?
@cartomancer: Try downloading the video from Youtube with youtube-dl.
I’m in Germany and I can play the embedded as well, but Youtube videos always hang when streaming, so I download them.
That is the greatest thing since oxygen.
@cartomancer:
I downloaded tunnel bear (https://www.tunnelbear.com/) to do this.
It allows you to specify from which country your IP should appear to come.
It didn’t work in combination with my work VPN.
You also have a limited amount of MB that can be transferred this way, but for the shows I’m interested in I could turn of tunnel bear after it started streaming.
Great segment. I think this article was the first that really made me notice just how the TED Talk industrial complex operated.
This is rather tangential, but I’ve long wondered why there isn’t a law requiring crime labs to double-blind their work. We keep seeing reports that for the past X decades, this or that crime lab (including the FBI crime lab!) have been sent samples and told what the desired result was. Unsurprisingly, they returned results that tended to convict the defendant. Defense attorneys are forced to trust these results, because they don’t have the samples and/or can’t afford to do their own studies–and it would be pointless anyway, because what jury would disbelieve the the FBI crime lab?
Not off topic, I think, because it’s a special case of what Oliver is talking about, except with criminal convictions instead of misguided chocolate consumption.
I got worried when John said “Even TED Talks, which has had some amazing speakers,” but he quickly called if out for the self-helpish quackery it has become. The Onion has been doing parodies for years called Onion Talks, using those same silly headset mics and the cult-like this-one-secret-will-transform-your-life way their guests speak. Sorry, but I don’t need to pay thousands of dollars for a hug prescription from Dr. Love. And I’m not joking about thousands; the current price to attend next year’s is $8500.
I will admit I’m a sucker for H. Jon Benjamin (he’s the lab coated coffee-cures-all charlatan in the TED parody).
So…
Recent study claims 5 out of 4 scientific papers are grossly misrepresented by popular media?
And in a perfect example of lack of self-awareness, Fortune magazine just published a story about Oliver’s piece using this headline:
“HBO’s John Oliver Just Debunked Most of the Scientific Studies You’ve Heard About”
Applause, Applause.
Try wearing your white lab coat into an cGMP audit. You will set the bullshit detectors of the auditors off. Whereas a well documented report showing the primary data, that actually backs up your claims…
Yawn, OK, turn the page to the next set of questions…
No need for TODD talks, TED talk already does the same thing.
A disturbing new study shows that studies are disturbing.
Seems a “trigger warning” is any article that has a question for the title. or is itself a warning.
Did you know that 75% of all statistics are made up on the spot?
EG
Awesome. Someone has given Oliver some good advice to get him up to speed. I’m really impressed with his show when I see these clips.
@15: God, yes. Lab coats are to protect you and your clothes from chemical contamination. Wearing a lab coat outside the lab spreads contamination. Scientific organizations would ban them from lecture halls or any other common area. It’s even sillier than wearing a hard hat outside a construction zone to show you know about buildin’ stuff.
@16: That was my only complaint, there is no need to parody TED talks! They are already a self-parody far too often.
Just to add, the constructive points–scientists know to trust a single study because they are constantly putting it in the context of the field as a whole–show a level of understanding of how science really works. Combing literature and coming up with even a dozen or two studies is unconvincing unless you know how representative this is of the body of the literature and current thinking. The “citation needed” meme is often counterproductive because that’s *not* what’s needed to trust something, it’s a misleading shortcut.
A Masked Avenger, @11:
You seem to have fallen into the trap of believing that the “justice” system is engaged in a search for the truth. It’s not – it’s just after convictions. Anything which hampers that will be fiercely resisted.
slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)), @18:
Betteridge’s law of headlines: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”
Perhaps there should be a Nobel Prize for fact checking.
Briquet@20: consilience is nice, but [citation needed] already raises the bar.