LGBT shuts down science

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Esoterica, but the cross on the shield is an affirmation of the university's "britishness" - fairly typical for Providence..Rhode Island.....1765.

ala-

Too right.  It seems that if Brown was a religious school, it would be mentioned in their admission policies, or their mission statement or...something.  As far as I can tell, it isn't.

And, for what it's worth, I attended two avowedly religious universities (Queens and Trinity) and obtained perfectly secular education at each one.

Boru

[I_am_not_mafia]

There are a number of issues with peer review which have come to light in the last few years.   It's about as political as the grammy's.   There is also the repeatability problem which they are finding.  It will be curious to see if they find a flaw in the methodology or if the come up with some fluff, because the conclusion isn't PC enough for them.

It's still better than not having any peer review. As Aoi Magi points out, peer review is a continual process. It happens before a paper gets published, and this is a very useful step. But once it is published, it's opened up to a much wider audience of scientists who can then look for evidence for and against and come up with competing hypotheses and explanations. This is also a form of peer review.

Just because two or three scientists have read a paper and accepted it doesn't mean that the paper is also accepted by the wider scientific community. As for politics, you get it every where. But if the methodology is correct then most will accept a paper for publication even if they do not agree with it because they are also aware that they might be wrong and the scientific community needs all the evidence to analyse.

Problems with repeatability are not due to the scientific method but economic considerations. Scientists are judged according to metrics and this translates to how well they are funded. For example if you try to reproduce some results and find that you cannot, the more prestigious journals like Nature won't be so keen to publish them as novel research because they are looking to increase their sales. The study can be still get published elsewhere but because scientists are judged by the impact factor of where they publish this hurts their funding. So there is less incentive to reproduce other people's work to check that it is correct.

[The Grand Nudger]

@Boru
I guess you could say it started out that way, pretty much by fiat?  More or less a consequence of history at this point..and left there.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

@Boru
I guess you could say it started out that way, pretty much by fiat?  More or less a consequence of history at this point..and left there.

Brown?  Of course. But in the 1760s, I'm not sure than any school which did not avow religious beliefs and practices would have gotten off the ground.  But to use the school's founding or motto or crest to deem it 'a religious college' (per 37) is really, REALLY missing the point.

Boru

[robvalue]

Yeah, "peer review" doesn't mean there is this specific group of people who do every single review, nor is guaranteed to be foolproof. It's an umbrella term for the checking of findings by others qualified in the field. Scientific findings don't get stamped with "true forever" because they passed any particular peer review. Of course these systems are never perfect, but as results go public, there's eventually more and more chance mistakes will eventually be found.

There's absolutely no alternative to this. (Or rather, the alternative is just publishing any nonsense someone comes up with.) All that can be done is to make the process more rigorous and impartial. Any particular peer review may turn out to be inadequate or biased.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Exactly.  That peer review in this case appears to have failed doesn't mean that peer review as a process is a failure.

Boru

[robvalue]

Right. Such a conclusion would be as foolish as abandoning the entire legal system because sometimes decisions end up being reversed.

[RoadRunner79]

There are a number of issues with peer review which have come to light in the last few years.   It's about as political as the grammy's.   There is also the repeatability problem which they are finding.  It will be curious to see if they find a flaw in the methodology or if the come up with some fluff, because the conclusion isn't PC enough for them.

It's still better than not having any peer review. As Aoi Magi points out, peer review is a continual process. It happens before a paper gets published, and this is a very useful step. But once it is published, it's opened up to a much wider audience of scientists who can then look for evidence for and against and come up with competing hypotheses and explanations. This is also a form of peer review.

Just because two or three scientists have read a paper and accepted it doesn't mean that the paper is also accepted by the wider scientific community. As for politics, you get it every where. But if the methodology is correct then most will accept a paper for publication even if they do not agree with it because they are also aware that they might be wrong and the scientific community needs all the evidence to analyse.

Problems with repeatability are not due to the scientific method but economic considerations. Scientists are judged according to metrics and this translates to how well they are funded. For example if you try to reproduce some results and find that you cannot, the more prestigious journals like Nature won't be so keen to publish them as novel research because they are looking to increase their sales. The study can be still get published elsewhere but because scientists are judged by the impact factor of where they publish this hurts their funding. So there is less incentive to reproduce other people's work to check that it is correct.

So then, most of the peer review happens outside of and really apart from the publishing process.  I would agree to that.  My disagreement is mostly when people over-emphasize only the publishing part of the process as the be all, end all.  I do believe that it could be better, if it was more transparent, and we could know why it was rejected.

  It's understandable that a journal can pick what it wishes to publish, but it may not always be for problems with the research as you point out.  It seems that some are skipping the publishing process all together, and sharing their information in more open platforms to begin with or along with submitting it to a journal.  It's faster, cheaper, and less red tape to get to the wider audience for evaluation.   I think that you are going to see more of this in the future.   The politics and push to publish, I think is leading to cheap science, and hurtful to the field.

[The Grand Nudger]

So...would this be an example of that "cheap science", or would it be an example of the OP contention - LGBTQ shutting down science?

Some clarity might be helpful.

[Angrboda]

https://news.brown.edu/articles/2018/08/gender

As you may be aware, Brown late last week posted a news announcement regarding research on gender dysphoria published by a faculty member in the School of Public Health. In light of questions raised about research design and data collection related to the study on “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” the University determined that removing the article from news distribution is the most responsible course of action.

The research had been published in the scientific journal PLOS ONE, which stated in a comment posted on the study August 27 that the journal “will seek further expert assessment on the study’s methodology and analyses.” Independent of the University’s removal of the article because of concerns about research methodology, the School of Public Health has heard from Brown community members expressing concerns that the conclusions of the study could be used to discredit efforts to support transgender youth and invalidate the perspectives of members of the transgender community.

As it made it through peer review, the charges on methodology are BS. Or, peer review is BS. Take your pick.

I choose false dichotomy for the win. Peer review can be ineffective in certain cases without indicting the usefulness of peer review in general. The problem is you are viewing peer review is some sort of guarantor of specific qualities in published research. It is not. It is simply a tool that is applied toward the end of establishing scientific truth. As is post peer review analysis and commentary. As noted, review of scientific research doesn't end once a paper is published. There have been papers that have been withdrawn after publication because of fraudulent data or results. That the original peer review did not catch these cases suggests only that peer review is not 100% effective, but no one is claiming that it is. And I'll point out that you omitted bolding the part where the Brown letter noted that the concerns about transgender youth and the transgender community were independent of the university's action in the matter, so you seem to be basing your skepticism of the process upon something that was not a part of the process. This is not to say that the study wasn't pulled for political reasons alone. It may have been. Only time and actual examination of the issues will tell. But that's not what you've presented here. Regardless, your implied claim that peer review is "BS" if the methodological charges are valid only shows that you have a rather absolutist view of peer review, that it's all or nothing.