How does the irreproducibility crisis affect government regulation?
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CounterCurrent: Modern Science on Shifting Sands
How does the irreproducibility crisis affect government regulation?
CounterCurrent is the National Association of Scholars’ weekly newsletter, bringing you the biggest issues in academia and our responses to them.
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Category: Science; Reading Time: ~2 minutes
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** Featured Report - Shifting Sands: Keeping Count of Government Science: P-Value Plotting, P-Hacking, and PM2.5 Regulation by David Randall, Warren Kindzierski, and Stanley Young ([link removed])
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The National Association of Scholars has long been concerned with a lack of reproducibility in the sciences, that is to say, the ever-increasing prevalence of peer-reviewed scientific findings that cannot be reproduced, and that are therefore not real science. This work culminated in NAS Director of Research David Randall’s 2018 report, The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science ([link removed]) , co-written with Christopher Welser.
To be sure, irreproducible science is as old as science itself, as there have always been scientists who draw faulty conclusions from spurious research. But the irreproducibility crisis as such is indeed a new phenomenon, given both the scope of fields it has infected and the amount of work within each field that has been compromised. What happened? A combination of shoddy statistical analysis; a scientific culture focused chiefly on producing positive results rather than seeking the truth; political conformity bent toward drawing specific conclusions; and the lack of professional accountability, among other factors.
Unfortunately, the irreproducibility crisis does not stay in the test tube—it has had and will continue to have substantial real-world effects on American environmental and health regulations, and thereby on the American people. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is primarily responsible for this travesty, as it frequently relies on irreproducible, unreliable scientific research when crafting regulations.
How many untold billions, even trillions, of dollars have been spent to comply with these dubious regulations? Nobody really knows, and herein lies the problem. As long as the irreproducibility crisis goes on unchecked, the EPA and other regulatory bodies will continue to operate on an unstable foundation—in other words, on shifting sands.
To get to the bottom of this issue, David Randall has joined forces with an all-star team of researchers to produce a series of in-depth reports, aptly titled Shifting Sands. Last Thursday, NAS launched the first of these reports, Keeping Count of Government Science: P-Value Plotting, P-Hacking, and PM2.5 Regulation ([link removed]) , written by Randall, Adjunct Professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta-Edmonton Warren Kindzierski, and the Director of the Shifting Sands Project, Stanley Young.
These three analyze a wide range of scientific malpractice that contributes to the irreproducibility crisis—including opaque methodology and data sets, P-hacking, HARKing, and political groupthink—specifically as they relate to the field of environmental epidemiology. The results are striking:
EPA regulations rely on environmental epidemiological literature, without applying rigorous tests for reproducibility ... Such rigorous tests are needed not least because earlier generations of environmental epidemiologists have already identified the low-hanging fruit.
These include massive statistical correlations between risk factors and health outcomes—e.g., the connection between smoking and lung cancer. Modern environmental epidemiologists habitually seek out small but (nominally) significant risk factors and health outcome associations. These practices render their research susceptible to registering false positives as real results, and to risk mistaking an improperly controlled covariable for a positive association.
Randall, Kindzierski, and Young also offer eleven recommendations to the EPA, designed to curb the irreproducibility crisis and bring regulations back to a foundation of reliable science. Does this all sound a bit too technical to you, my non-scientist readers? Fear not—as one who is a musician by training, I can assure you that the authors of Shifting Sands have worked hard to make sure that the core of these reports is accessible to all. I would recommend you read this first installment.
Until next week.
David Acevedo
Communications & Research Associate
National Association of Scholars
Read More ([link removed])
For more on the irreproducibility crisis and government regulation:
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January 12, 2021
** Comments on EPA's Final Rule, "Strengthening Transparency" ([link removed])
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David Randall
NAS applauds the Environmental Protection Agency for taking a significant first step toward strengthening reproducibility requirements in the science the agency uses to inform its regulations.
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January 08, 2021
** Journals Must Decide: Science or Censorship? ([link removed])
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David Randall
The journal Nature Communications has joined the parade of institutions that subordinate science to political censorship.
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September 19, 2019
** Bad Science Makes for Bad Government ([link removed])
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David Randall
The government needs to form rules to ensure that the exercise of scientific expertise can itself be independently reproduced and verified.
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April 09, 2018
** The Irreproducibility Crisis of Modern Science ([link removed])
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David Randall & Christopher Welser
A reproducibility crisis afflicts a wide range of scientific and social-scientific disciplines, from epidemiology to social psychology. This report analyzes the crisis and includes a series of policy recommendations, scientific and political, for alleviating the reproducibility crisis.
** About the NAS
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The National Association of Scholars, founded in 1987, emboldens reasoned scholarship and propels civil debate. We’re the leading organization of scholars and citizens committed to higher education as the catalyst of American freedom.
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