PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - The Empire Strikes Back! on Colour Defective Pilots
Old 4th Jul 2014, 08:42
  #336 (permalink)  
Creampuff
 
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Salt Lake City Utah
Posts: 3,079
Received 0 Likes on 0 Posts
These extracts from Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us—And How to Know When Not to Trust Them, by David H. Freedman, are still my favourites:

“Researchers headed into their studies wanting certain results—and, lo and behold, they were getting them.”

“At every step in the process, there is room to distort results, a way to make a stronger claim or to select what is going to be concluded,”

“Not surprisingly, the studies that tend to make the grade are those with eye-catching findings. But while coming up with eye-catching theories is relatively easy, getting reality to bear them out is another matter. The great majority collapse under the weight of contradictory data when studied rigorously.”

“[R]esearchers were frequently manipulating data analyses, chasing career-advancing findings rather than good science ...”

“[A]ssuming modest levels of researcher bias, typically imperfect research techniques, and the well-known tendency to focus on exciting rather than highly plausible theories, researchers will come up with wrong findings most of the time.”

“Simply put, if you’re attracted to ideas that have a good chance of being wrong, and if you’re motivated to prove them right, and if you have a little wiggle room in how you assemble the evidence, you’ll probably succeed in proving wrong theories right.”
Creampuff is offline