Nature of Science

This page contains my posts about how science works, and why we can be confident in the results that it gives us.

The Peer-Review System

• 10 steps for evaluating scientific papers
• 12 bad reasons for rejecting scientific studies
• Does Splenda cause cancer? A lesson in how to critically read scientific papers
• How to find and access peer-reviewed studies (for free)
• Is the peer-review system broken? A look at the PLoS ONE paper on a hand designed by “the Creator”
• Methodolatry: An over-reliance on placebo-controlled trials
• Most scientific studies are wrong, but that doesn’t mean what you think it means
• No, homeopathic remedies can’t “detox” you from exposure to Roundup: Examining Séralini’s latest rat study
• Peer-reviewed literature: What does it take to publish a scientific paper?
• The hierarchy of evidence: Is the study’s design robust?
• Understanding abstracts: Does the study say what you think it says?
• Who reviews scientific papers and how do reviews work?

How Science Works

• 8 lessons that MythBusters taught us about science and skepticism
• Are creationists and scientists both interpreting the evidence?
• Can Science Tell Us What Happened in the Past? Historical vs. Observational Science
• Don’t cherry pick your experts
• Facts, Hypotheses, Theories, and Laws: What’s the Difference?
• How not to science: Lessons from flat earthers and climate change deniers
• Science doesn’t prove anything, and that’s a good thing
• Using Deductive and Inductive Logic in Science
• What movie theories teach us about science vs. pseudoscience
• Windows into Science: Scientific Conferences

The Reliability of Science

• “But scientists have been wrong in the past…”
• Most scientific studies are wrong, but that doesn’t mean what you think it means
• No one thought that Galileo was crazy, and everyone in Columbus’s day knew that the earth was round
• Settled science part 1: Is science ever actually settled?
• Settled science part 2: Creating the illusion of a debate
• Science and the Public Part 1: Why You Shouldn’t Trust Blogs
• Science and the Public Part 2: Scientific Results Are Facts, Not Conspiracies
• Science and the Public Part 3: A Scientific Consensus is Based on Evidence, not Peer Pressure and Adherence to Dogma
• Science matters because it works
• Scientism: Is it a straw man or a legitimate critique?
• Scientists aren’t stupid, and science deniers are arrogant
• The Value of Carefully Controlled Studies: A Thought Experiment

Statistics

• Basic Statistics Part 1: The Law of Large Numbers
• Basic Statistics Part 2: Correlation vs. Causation
• Basic Statistics Part 3: The Dangers of Large Data Sets: A Tale of P values, Error Rates, and Bonferroni Corrections
• Basic statistics part 4: Understanding P values
• Basic Statistics Part 5: Means vs Medians, Is the “Average” Reliable?
• Basic Statistics Part 6: Confounding Factors and Experimental Design
• When can correlation equal causation?

Miscellaneous

• 5 reasons why anecdotes are totally worthless
• Courts don’t determine scientific facts
• Training to be a scientist: It’s not an indoctrination and it’s more than just reading
• Understanding grants in science: doing research without selling your soul
• Understanding the reported risks of medicines, foods, toxic chemicals, etc.