Tempting Shortcuts
Working notes on the slower path

There Is Something Wrong With Research

Apr 16, 2016

Lately I have come across two examples of research that was published and derided by the academic communities into which it was offered. Now, some decades later, there are developments that mean that these communities are now embracing these ideas. How is it that we can have research presented and be so completely dismissed?

The first example comes from the world of the octopus where

“behavior was such accepted science that in 1982, when Panamanian marine biologist Arcadio Rodaniche reported finding an octopus that mated beak to beak and cohabited between sex acts, his research was dismissed or ignored. Some three decades later Ross and Roy Caldwell of the University of California, Berkeley, have bred and studied that elusive cephalopod, the larger Pacific striped octopus (LPSO). They’ve confirmed what Rodaniche found—and more.”

The second comes from the field of nutrition and we find that one scientist wrote, in 1972, that obesity was to be linked to sugar intake rather than fat consumption. It is only recently that we are beginning to see the shift in the nutrition community and hear this message.

For all our concern about ‘show me the data’, and things being ‘backed by research’, we seem to still suffer from that affliction where we see what we want to see and think as collectives and are lured by fads.

See this article points to

And this newcomer: http://www.psypost.org/2016/05/no-evidence-grit-improves-performance-42944

And Serotonin:

  • http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/health-and-wellbeing/wellbeing/depressiondoes-it-originate-in-the-immune-system-20161114-gspavq.html
  • http://davidhealy.org/so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-serotonin/
  • http://davidhealy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/2015-Serotonin-and-Depression-bmj.h1771.pdf
  • http://kellybroganmd.com/depression-serotonin/

And this year we’ve reversed our thinking to discover that we need our appendix:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/2017/01/22/turns-out-the-humble-appendix-actually-does-something/?utm_hp_ref=au-homepage