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Show HN: usefulscience.org – one sentence summaries of journal articles

15 pointsby jaanover 11 years ago

8 comments

11001over 11 years ago
I really don&#x27;t want to diss your work, I respect your intentions to bring scientific discoveries to the masses, but...<p>This is part of a huge problem in science, the &quot;one sentence summaries&quot;, or simple interpretations. It might be tempting to think that knowing a one sentence summary is better than not hearing about the research at all, but it&#x27;s not so obvious to me.<p>Most (social science, nutrition, environmental science, economics, psychology etc.) research is deeply flawed. That includes study design, statistical analysis and interpretations. Politicians love to through money at scientists that look for simple straightforward causal relationships between such incredibly complex systems as human behaviour, brain chemistry, nutrition, genetics, etc. And that&#x27;s why there is so little reproducible research. You won&#x27;t get a right or wrong answer about whether, say, cannabis is harmful without taking into account, a person&#x27;s genetics, daily stress, the use of coffee, alcohol and other substances, their diet, their level of physical activity, social life, childhood trauma etc. But that would be too hard to interpret. Instead we get headlines like &quot;Teenagers smoking pot are (arbitrary number) more likely to develop schizophrenia&quot; and &quot;Cannabis has been shown to kill cancer cells&quot;, which leads absolutely nowhere, because they just delude people to thinking the scientists are answering the original question (&quot;is cannabis harmful?&quot;), which isn&#x27;t well defined in the first place.<p>The necessary part of improving the current state of social &quot;sciences&quot; is acknowledging that simple rules rarely govern complex systems, and therefore the public should be incredibly skeptical to any headlines that report that &quot;the scientists proved&quot; some straightforward &quot;law&quot;.<p>Source: I do data analysis for multiple research groups that include psychology research (hormones, behaviour, depression), nursing research (breastfeeding, childbirth complication) and psycho-oncology research (quality of life of cancer patients and their caregivers).
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jaanover 11 years ago
Looking for feedback, and we&#x27;re happy to answer any questions! RSS: <a href="http://usefulscience.org/rss.xml" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;usefulscience.org&#x2F;rss.xml</a>
illdaveover 11 years ago
Really <i>really</i> love the design - great work. Could be useful to add a search function (it&#x27;d be interesting to headlines that mention &quot;coffee&quot;, for example).
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perrincitaover 11 years ago
Great idea! This is definitely going to be useful in class! Glad to find a place where I can easily find interesting research papers. Keep up the good work!
bhudmanover 11 years ago
This is fantastic. It is annoying to come across papers that are incredibly hard to read, but convey <i>very</i> little.
lcaryover 11 years ago
A recent study showed that daily doses of usefulscience.org will enlarge the frontal cortex by 15%.
jezclaremuruganover 11 years ago
Any place where I could sign up to get a digest will be great. Good job on the website.
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bensonperryover 11 years ago
great design! how are the headlines&#x2F;summaries written?
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