Research Bias Quotes

No one believes an hypothesis except its originator but everyone believes an experiment except the experimenter. Most people are ready to believe something based on experiment but the experimenter knows the many little things that could have gone wrong in the experiment. For this reason the discoverer of a new fact seldom feels quite so confident of it as others do.

A review of seventy-four clinical trials of antidepressants, for example, found that thirty-seven of thirty-eight positive studies [that praised the drugs] were published. But of the thirty-six negative studies, thirty-three were either not published or published in a form that conveyed a positive outcome.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.

The Glassco Commission was really not interested in good science. It was interested in good accounting.

A scholar can never let mere wrongness get in the way of the theory.

Realize that agendas drive data, not the other way round

When people don’t like the results that they are getting from honest scientific research, they try and discredit the researchers and the methods..

It's a very bad idea for scientific conclusions to be accepted because they fit with the political values of a group of researchers.

She goes in with a prejudice and comes out with a statistic.

Of Cooking. This is an art of various forms, the object of which is to give ordinary observations the appearance and character of those of the highest degree of accuracy. One of its numerous processes is to make multitudes of observations, and out of these to select only those which agree, or very nearly agree. If a hundred observations are made, the cook must be very unhappy if he cannot pick out fifteen or twenty which will do for serving up.

Researchers, treatment providers - we all have a stake in the drug hysteria game.

The opinions of a convenience sample... may not represent all users.

Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don't want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings. They don't want to admit that they might have minds and personalities because that would make it quite difficult for them to do what they do; so we find that within the lab communities there is a very strong resistance among the researchers to admitting that animals have minds, personalities and feelings.

I think there is a tendency in science to measure what is measurable and to decide that what you cannot measure must be uninteresting.

What props up biological research, at least in the vaunted U.S. of A., involves a situation so deeply imbued with entitlement mentality that it has sunk into institutional corruption.

Researchers find it very necessary to keep blinkers on. They don't want to admit that the animals they are working with have feelings.

Positive findings are around twice as likely to be published as negative findings. This is a cancer at the core of evidence-based medicine.

Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice.

Random search for data on ... off-chance is hardly scientific. A questionnaire on 'Intellectual Immoralities' was circulated by a well-known institution. 'Intellectual Immorality No. 4' read: 'Generalizing beyond one's data'. [Wilder Dwight] Bancroft asked whether it would not be more correct to word question no. 4 'Not generalizing beyond one's data.

Of all the climatologists whose careers depend on the climate changing to keep themselves publishing articles — yes, I could read that, but I don't believe it.

As in all of biology, comparative studies showing differences among species are often helpful for a better understanding of the basic mechanisms; with all its advantages, there is a danger of clinging exclusively to one model organism.

We need to have much clearer regulations on things like corporate funding of scientific research. Things need to be made explicit which are implicit.

I am the daughter of a psychologist. I know that the thing ostensibly being studied is rarely the thing being studied. (We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, p. 99)

When researchers try to break down what is happening at Mosaic, far too often they see the skin and miss the heart.

Computer science departments have always considered 'user interface' research to be sissy work.