Many journals are absolute garbage that will accept anything. Keep that in mind the next time someone links a study to prove a point. You have to actually read the thing and judge the methodology to know if their conclusions have any merits.
Full disclosure: I don’t intend to be condescending.
Research Methods during my graduate studies forever changed the way I interpret just about any claim, fact, or statement. I’m obnoxiously skeptical and probably cynical, to be honest. It annoys the hell out of my wife but it beats buying into sensationalist headlines and miracle research. Then you get into the real world and see how data gets massaged and thrown around haphazardly…believe very little of what you see.
I have this problem too. My wife gets so annoyed at things because I question things I notice as biases or statistical irregularities instead of just accepting that they knee what they were doing. I have tried to explain it to her. Skepticism is not dismissal and it is not saying I am smarter than them, it is recognizing that they are human and that I may be more proficient in one spot they made a mistake than they were.
I will acknowledge that the lay need to stop trying to argue with scientists because “they did their own research”, but the actually informed and educated need to do a better job of calling each other out.
Many journals are absolute garbage that will accept anything. Keep that in mind the next time someone links a study to prove a point. You have to actually read the thing and judge the methodology to know if their conclusions have any merits.
Full disclosure: I don’t intend to be condescending.
Research Methods during my graduate studies forever changed the way I interpret just about any claim, fact, or statement. I’m obnoxiously skeptical and probably cynical, to be honest. It annoys the hell out of my wife but it beats buying into sensationalist headlines and miracle research. Then you get into the real world and see how data gets massaged and thrown around haphazardly…believe very little of what you see.
I have this problem too. My wife gets so annoyed at things because I question things I notice as biases or statistical irregularities instead of just accepting that they knee what they were doing. I have tried to explain it to her. Skepticism is not dismissal and it is not saying I am smarter than them, it is recognizing that they are human and that I may be more proficient in one spot they made a mistake than they were.
I will acknowledge that the lay need to stop trying to argue with scientists because “they did their own research”, but the actually informed and educated need to do a better job of calling each other out.
A good tactic, though not perfect, is to look at the journal impact factor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_factor