Comment by searine
2 days ago
Anti-science types keep holding this up as some kind of 'gotcha' or as a waste, but in the end it shows that the scientific method and the scientific establishment work efficiently.
Despite even intentional fabrication, the truth of it was found in a few years and the field marches on.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...
45 citations in 10 years for a paper pointing out a major systematic flaw in almost all foundations of amyloid reserch. the system is not working.
It was published and cited. 45 in 10 years is a reasonably okay citation count. What's the problem?
Science is slow and consensus based. Ideas are put forth, tested, and replicated. Eventually a consensus is formed. If enough new contrary evidence is collected a new consensus can form. The article you linked is not consensus changing, but it adds weight on the scale of change, and clearly it worked. Mission accomplished.
Science does not turn on a dime. It took many decades for Lynn Margulis's endosymbiosis theory to catch on, but it did. The evidence was eventually undeniable, and the consensus changed.
This AD story is just another slow consensus change. We still don't know exactly how AD works. We still know amyloid is involved somehow. We now know amyloid isn't everything.
The system works. It's just slower than you like it to be.
45 in ten years is extremely low.
3 replies →
> it was found in a few years and the field marches on
I agree but 16 years is still significant. It represents 5% of the modern medicine era.
I guess it depends where you set the starting point. Was it a dead end exacerbated by fabricated data? Yes. Did the system correct itself (relatively) quickly. Yes.
Working as intended.
HN (and Silicon Valley) has a contingent of people that want to attack the credibility of the scientific community so that they can present their own (usually very flawed) conclusions as being legitimate.
I noticed it’s very prevalent here. Lots and lots of academia is dead, useless, fraudulent, etc comments.
well that's a funny way to put it. i assure, there is a contingent of the scientific community that would like to attack the credibility of the scientific community to discredit the actually very flawed conclusions of the scientific community.