A Study On Harris, Science & Experts

Is the progressive “follow the science” battle cry baloney? Case in point: A study by research reformers trumpeting the value of rigorous standards in scientific research was retracted because the authors” admitted to being “incompetent.”

Oh, the WSJ article quotes the incompetents as assuring us that they didn’t intend to mislead anyone. Note, this wasn’t some minor mia culpa. The project involved was “sprawling,” one in which “four labs designed & tested experiments & then tried to replicate one another’s work.” The whole goal was to “test methods aimed at ensuring the integrity of published research.” But, we’re now told, “the group [supposedly led by leading authorities] neglected to fully document key aspects of the project ahead of running the experiments, one of the practices the study was looking to test.” Hence, the retraction. Hence, the weird explanation by Leif Nelson, one of the authors & Prof at the prestigious University of California Berkeley Campus: “It wasn’t because we were trying to fool someone, but it is because we were incompetent.”

Great. Mistakes can be made, even by experts. But, the real question is how often does this “incompetence” happen in our academic/research community? The media is full of alleged yet similar instances. True, it’s inherent in scientific research that there will be multiple studies reaching conflicting conclusions. Think about all the confusion over Covid. And yet, to hear Kamala Harris brag about how, unlike Donald Trump, she’ll “follow the experts” when devising policies that will affect America’s future, one just has to wonder how much “expertise” or “incompetence” she and we would get.

Davd Soul