Expertise

In the EU it's usually like that. 3 years for a bachelor's, 2 years for a master's, only then you can start pursuing a phd.

I graduated in 2005, and back then we had a different system, where I did a single 5 year program for a computer science degree (engineering), that today is the equivalent of a master's (diplom engineer). I could have continued to go for a dedicated master's, another 2 years, but I got lazy.

Definitely depends on the field. Most "humanities" studies require a masters first, although for that reason many PhD programs include the step of getting your masters so it can all be done as a single track. So still a standard ~6 year program but you get both, masters after the first 3 and then PhD after 3 more. I've only ever run with folks in humanities I'm realizing, so I didn't even realize there were PhDs you could get without a masters

All of continental europe?

I came from a very large lab; 18 post-docs, and half a dozen grad students. The general observation about the PhD portion of the MD/PhD program is that it tends to be very programmatic research. Typically applying a known technique to a neglected but not novel area. The straight PhDs had much higher expectations for novelty and depth. The MD/PhDs were out in three and the PhDs were five to six.

There are roughly speaking two kinds of systems. The kind of system where Bachelor is the default degree you get from university, and you can go on to get a Masters and/or a doctorate. And the other kind of system where the default university degree is a combined Bachelor and Masters, and you can study further to get a doctorate. The latter kind is in use in a lot of continental Europe, at least.

Yes and that addresses only one of the three parts of my statement

Not usually for STEM in America, but we also don’t require a masters degree for PhD.

Still for most people in my program, it was 4 years of undergrad, followed by 2-4 years in a lab, then 5-7 years for a PhD, then another 2-5 years for post-doc, then finally get hired.

There is some field dependency - mathematics is notoriously fast. The other one I talk about below is the PhD portion of an MD/PhD. In some fields (mine included) there's 2 years of coursework plus lab research so it was heavily results driven.

Fucking happening over here. The thing with echo chambers is that someone eventually starts farting, and then people start breathing it in. Those people start farting, and boom a moronic fascist dictatorship or radical conspiracy group is born

Well I'd like to think I'm not! I wanted to point to an actually dubious thing where we might call into question a study, so we could still respect the work being done while validating the importance of keeping standards in research.

You're right though that it's disappointing how many responses seem to address only the flaws in modern science and not acknowledge the strength of the scientific process. I think a big part of it does come down to how scientific findings are interpreted and reported to the public, and even further an all-too-human misunderstanding of epistemic limitations. Our cultures should spend more time educating people about the limits of knowledge and fact, how they are constrained by other flawed systems, etc. That would be a half-decent start, if we could only fix the entire reporting problem too.

Thank you for pointing this out.

this is the way doggo puppers, hecking upboats to the left

It's actually much more common than people think. Oh your numbers don't match what the rest of every else's says? Fudge the numbers a tiny bit nobody will notice. That way when you have to defend your work it's a little easier because it's in like with other work.

i think you bring up valid instances where this is fair.

but i think i’m speaking to the very obvious and important ones that are worthy of reproduction. like i’ve seen articles be like “these corporations are responsible for 99% of climate change” or something

and the comments will be like “duh we knew that”

which true, but not empirically. being able to cite data from actual research from professionals is so valuable and far better than anecdotes or guesses. edit: and also informs meaningful policy.

that said, is there some way for a layperson like me to identify when research is not deemed worthy of reproduction? or is it a lost cause

I see this name everywhere these days. I think... I'm having a Baader-Meinhof about Dunning-Kruger

Former. I don’t touch the devil’s lettuce 🥬

In theory, a paper gives you a methodology that you can use to reproduce the findings. And a refusal to use papers to repeat findings (because shit costs money and nobody wants to publish iterative studies) means you end up with a bunch of novel findings that are never confirmed through repetition.

But the fact that nobody is bothering to repeat these studies also raises a question of what exactly is being researched. Certainly, the more useful scientific research efforts are about formulating applicable techniques. So they would need to be reproducible to have any functional value.

The fact that we're not seeking to replicate studies suggests that we're investing a ton of time in niche under-utilized fields. And that may be a problem of investigative research (we're so focused on publishing that we don't care what we're actually studying) or a problem of applied sciences (we're so focused on scaling up older methods to industrial scale that we're leaving better methods of production on the cutting room floor).

But its definitely some kind of problem.

TBF I’ve lost count of the number of times someone has cited some paper as a reference for the point they are trying to make and when I inspect the paper it has shitty “n”, the paper is written for an agenda (not sure what that’s called where I.e. a paper saying smoking is good for you/not harmful is paid for by the tobacco industry and written by tobacco industry scientists), or it might even just be straight up bullshit written to look like a legit paper.

Peer Review at least offers some barriers to the problems with papers, but it’s definitely not a panacea.

The problem is without peer reviewed papers it's hard to credit that someone all the way around the world observed something.

In a perfect world nobody is lying and everyone has the scientific base education to understand how to report phenomena properly. But uhhh... Yeah.

I'm not sure that's not my area of expertise.

My dad has a friend who is like 65. I lives quite isolated. He's not dumb or anything at all, but he only talks to maybe 6 people and 4 of them are alcoholics and almost as sheltered as he is. The other day i went by because my dad asked me to help him.bwe talked for a bit and he said his knee is fucked but don't want t o do anything about it. I just shrugged and said that everything involving knee or hip surgery is scary. Hell, every surgery is pretty scary. Somehow the conversation (obviously) pivot towards covid. And he said he'll never get another vaccine in his life, because it was a plot from the higher ups, covid is made to kill people but it didn't kill enough. What struck me the most was he kinda saw that i didn't cared abd disagreed, so he quickly said: it's not just me, many people are saying it. Yeah sure, but i also know the people you hang out with who are "saying it" and who have "theories".
That is the guy on the internet, who doesn't even has the internet.

My point being this is what the meme being about 🤦 and frankly i don't care what you think i shared my experience because this is lemmy and that is what it is for.

Hmm i have thought about it and asked tge mod to give stamet a similar warning too but he just ghosted me