This is why I hate it so much when authors overstate their findings in abstract, which unfortunately is extremely common in medicine.
this post was submitted on 21 May 2024
603 points (98.2% liked)
Science Memes
11161 readers
2923 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- !abiogenesis@mander.xyz
- !animal-behavior@mander.xyz
- !anthropology@mander.xyz
- !arachnology@mander.xyz
- !balconygardening@slrpnk.net
- !biodiversity@mander.xyz
- !biology@mander.xyz
- !biophysics@mander.xyz
- !botany@mander.xyz
- !ecology@mander.xyz
- !entomology@mander.xyz
- !fermentation@mander.xyz
- !herpetology@mander.xyz
- !houseplants@mander.xyz
- !medicine@mander.xyz
- !microscopy@mander.xyz
- !mycology@mander.xyz
- !nudibranchs@mander.xyz
- !nutrition@mander.xyz
- !palaeoecology@mander.xyz
- !palaeontology@mander.xyz
- !photosynthesis@mander.xyz
- !plantid@mander.xyz
- !plants@mander.xyz
- !reptiles and amphibians@mander.xyz
Physical Sciences
- !astronomy@mander.xyz
- !chemistry@mander.xyz
- !earthscience@mander.xyz
- !geography@mander.xyz
- !geospatial@mander.xyz
- !nuclear@mander.xyz
- !physics@mander.xyz
- !quantum-computing@mander.xyz
- !spectroscopy@mander.xyz
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and sports-science@mander.xyz
- !gardening@mander.xyz
- !self sufficiency@mander.xyz
- !soilscience@slrpnk.net
- !terrariums@mander.xyz
- !timelapse@mander.xyz
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
And next you know, someone cites them and concludes that coffee cures cancer.... Or causes it when drunk at exactly or above 41.33456 degrees Celsius or when.you drink more than 4 but less than 3 daily. Or was that chocolate? No! Red wine! It was red wine!
Oh my god exactly.
I work on a pretty neglected Neuroimmune illness ME/CFS (hence my username) with really low recovery rates whether treated or untreated (~5%).
And the number of “clinical trials” of things like “Graded Exercise Therapy” or “CBT” or “Acupuncture” or [insert random supplement] that claims to “cure” the condition is so large. Except these trials all rely on subjective outcome measures and none are placebo controlled, oh and ofcourse the results never last in long term followup.
They only need to last long enough for the results to be published /s
Hey fam, as a person with ME/CFS who works in healthcare, just wanted to say that I appreciate you.
Also, I think it's downright absurd that MECFS gets ignored so much. That shit is way more common than we like to admit and it can turn a healthy person into a massive drain on everyone around them (ignoring their own suffering, of course). Like, you would think we'd be super motivated to fix this shit.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Everyone who put on the PACE trial should be exercised to death.
Turns out alcohol has zero benefits and it was legumes all along.
Eat yo damn beans people.
I need some source for this cause I know people were just making an excuse to drink when they say this.
Also what's academic research. Do I gotta go back to college for it? It sounds interesting.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Not just medicine, it’s common especially among celebrity scientists but they’re too famous to be called out. Doug Tallamy comes to mind.
I write my papers then find sources. Confirmation bias at its finest
Isn't this how everyone does it?
This is the way.
I cited research I had no access to but read the paragraph in wikipedia that cited it and copied its citation
I got called out on that once in a seminar.
How did they know you had no access?
bro has 250 I.Q
Doesn’t work if, like in my line of work, you have to cite specific locations in each paper for data verification. Sci-hub is your friend, when it works
Best I can do is abstract and discussion. Take it or leave it.
don't forget skimming the paper for quotes and or handy graphs if you're feeling ambitious
TIL I was ambitious. And here I thought my attitude of, "I can skip these 2 papers and still have a solid C," made me kind of a bum. NOPE! I skimmed so many papers.
load more comments
(1 replies)
As a scientific researcher I am amazed at everyone being all like "yeah me too."
#WHAT
How you about to be citing something without being 100% sure it actually supports your claim? That shit could easily have a bunch of qualifications you don't know about!
#ALSO
Bruh. If it's worth citing, it's worth reading the whole paper. You might learn something or gain inspiration for future work. Plus, you know, always be learnin, yo.
......
You guys are gonna hate me.
I was aiding in a peer review and was diligently checking citations and sources to find that the majority of sources used had relevant titles but did not support the claims the author was making... I pointed these out and was removed from reviewing with the professor saying I needed to offer positive comments only ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I am sorry, but what is wrong with your professor? You were doing exactly what you are supposed to do in a peer review. You should go look for things that are wrong or should be improved and only if the paper can withstand that process, it should be published. Only providing positive comments is really harmful to the scientific process and, in the end, to society.
To be honest, I think I reject more than half of the papers that I review. The rest require major or minor revision. It is not that I have a target or anything for how many I need to reject, it is just that most papers are of such low quality that I cannot do anything else. I think the number of papers I reject is quite normal in my field.
So, not all your comments need to be positive. If there is reason to be positive, you should mention it. And your comments should be constructive and respectful, but definitely not always positive.
In the case you are describing where the authors seem to only have read the titles of the papers, I would definitely reject. This is fraud. You are saying you did a literature study and you did not. So, I would be quite clear about that. I would also be a bit angry that they wasted my time. So, in my opinion, that is how a reviewer should respond in this situation, not with only positive comments.
(┛◉Д◉)┛
TBH I don't really care to read the bibliography sections where you recommend 4 or more books or studies from over 2 decades ago because their works laid the groundwork for a hypothesis that you very succinctly proved that there is not enough evidence to declare confidence in even with all your additional primary source data.
But yeah, not the abstract. I agree on that. They've at least gotta open the study.
Sometimes. Sometimes it's an intro sentence that already has 2 citations and just needs a 3rd, and you just find a paper with more measurements and the same conclusions.
load more comments
(2 replies)
There was a specific number that was repeated across a lot of papers in my field, always citing the same source.
That source did have the number, but it cited another paper for it, which itself cited yet an older paper. Im not sure where the citations went bad, but that last paper for not actually contain the value everyone waschain-attributing to it.
The number was fortunately still correct though (and people would have noticed pretty quickly if it wasn't).
I was recently cited for quoting a statistic. Thankfully the statistic was accurate.
Now I am the xerox of a xerox.
Is that a situation where you can write up your analysis, report the number as correct... and start getting cited in place of the paper with broken attributions?
Cite the people who already quoted the source (The internet, as cited in Lemmy, 2024).
If there is, I sure as shit don't know.
Sometimes it pays off checking methods too.
Lol at that paper.
My favorite part about Dunning-Kruger is that I see extremely wrong explanations of it all the time. While being wrong isn't exactly what Dunning-Kruger is about, it's usually what those wrong explanations think it's about.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Playing 4D chess here - I write what I already think, find someone else who said it, and reference them.
Or cite their work based on titles... Meh, close enough.
Honestly if the abstract can't deliver a succinct and accurate summary of the findings and their limitations, then it's probably a bad paper that you wouldn't want to cite.
I think, the bigger problem is when the abstract tells that everything is all nice and simple, but in reality it's not
... Is it ever?
If you have to end every sentence with outliers aside... Then maybe people should understand that they are talking about the norm. Not your fringe anecdotal cases lol.
I've been far away from academia for a long time, but last time I read papers on voice processing it went something like this:
Abstract: we've achieved [very good results] using this one simple trick…
Body: actually, we will maybe not tell what was the corpus we used to measure how good we are. We're also going to omit several important steps where they can be omitted nonchalantly, so that reproducing what seems to be a thorough description will be a pain
So, I don't know if it ever is all nice and simple, but man could it be better if things were always done in good faith and professionally
To be fair, a lot of good researchers have trouble creating succinct abstracts.
I pasted a bunch of scientific papers to a canvas and called it abstract art.
This is the only way, not enough hours in the day to dedicate to reading everything that is demanded. I gotta have time for lunch and perform my actual job.
Can confirm, my professor wife say yes, this is what she does.
This but the first half of the introduction and then the conclusion. I often end up throwing people's citations back in their own face because they clearly only read the title.
Hey gibberdee rewrite this paper as Dr Seus
view more: next ›