<p>I really enjoyed this article and thought some of you might, too.</p>
<p>[The</a> Chronicle: 1/31/2003: The Seven Warning Signs of Bogus Science](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i21/21b02001.htm]The”>http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i21/21b02001.htm)
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<p>Good list. And for Bogus Medical Science I would propose an eighth warning sign: Beware the Miracle Treatment that claims to cure multiple diseases.</p>
<p>It’s a very rare true miracle drug (such as aspirin) that can treat or prevent two or three things. Anything that claims to cure a long list of say half dozen or 10 or 20 ailments is bogus. Such miracle multiple cures do not exist.</p>
<p>And as a corollary to the author’s Rule #1, I would add beware of a drug or cure pitched on the basis of testimonials rather than published, controlled scientific studies. Testimonials are worthless for establishing scientific validiity. No matter how useless, preposterous, or even dangerous, a treatment is, you can always find people willing to state that it worked wonders for them.</p>
<p>timely, thanks for the article. Alas, even Science occasionally published some bogus stuff…</p>
<p>Well, I’m a lawyer and not a scientist, and I can’t imagine an article getting things more wrong about the historic legal standards for admissibility of expert testimony and the impact of Daubert.</p>
<p>The Daubert holding considerably broadened the standards of admissibility for expert testimony and pretty much said the opposite of what the author asserts. The underlying case had been dismissed on summary judgment because the trial court applied the old Frye “general acceptance” test. The Supreme Court reversed – reinstating the dismissed lawsuit - precisely on the finding that it was wrong to preclude the proferred testimony. </p>
<p>See: [Daubert</a> v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579 (1993).](<a href=“http://supct.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/92-102.ZS.html]Daubert”>Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, 509 U.S. 579 (1993).) for the court’s opinion. </p>
<p>Bogus science? I don’t know. Bogus law? Definitely.</p>
<p>I’m a scientist and not a lawyer, and it comes as no surprise to me whatsoever that Science and Law have very differing notions of what constitutes solid evidence and truth. For example, scientific questions are settled through observation and experimentation to generate new findings and/or to confirm or refute the observations of others and not through arguing in front of a judge and jury. The concept of judges and juries has no place in the quest for scientific knowledge. Judges, juries, courtrooms, and hired advocates may be good Law, but they are Bogus Science.</p>
<p>Coureur, juries are a form of peer review.</p>
<p>^^In a very broad sense, yes. But they are quite different forms of peer review. Scientific peer review does not take 12 more or less random people off the street, weed out the ones who might actually know something about the topic, and then seek to establish and sway their opinions through a highly restricted and stylized argumentation procedure, and then have them vote to determine what the truth is. Such a process would be laughable in science.</p>
<p>Scientific peer review takes the opposite approach. It selects the most highly-knowledgeable scientists in the same field and asks them whether the manuscript or grant application in question is a well-designed experiment based on sound science. Scientifc peer review decides questions of publication and allocation of public funding. It does not presume to establish the truth or falsity of any particular fact or theory. Only the data, withstanding the test of time and follow-up experiments, can do that. Scientific facts cannot be determined by the vote of a committee.</p>