How do you tell the difference between good and bad science?
As a layperson browsing the Abstracts or the content of a given study or paper available on Pubmed how do I tell the difference between credible science and not so credible science?
I know that (like in any other domain of human endeavor) there is a spectrum of quality and accuracy in science. Some double, blind placebo controlled human research is excellent but some is tantamount to a ranty, opinionated blog, like the recent (hilarious!) hoax paper...
"The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct"
...That actually got published in a mainstream social science journal.
My interest is mostly in human science related to health and longevity. This field science is particularly vulnerable to corruption because of the commercialization of the science. Most of the science is done to develop Biohacking products and supplements, which is fine but I'm sure that there is some marketing masquerading itself as science in pages of journals and on Pubmed.
Without getting too political, how does one tell the difference between credible science and junk science?
Sometimes it's pretty obvious like with the Conceptual Penis paper, but sometimes I'm just looking at the paragraph abstract of study that was done 10 or 20 years ago and I'm not sure if it's something I should really believe.
Recently 62 scientists and physicians, and five United States senators petitioned the National Library of Medicine & National Institutes of Health to make public the funding sources of studies. I did a video about this...
However the conflict of interest information does not appear on a lot of studies. If there's no conflict of interest information available what other signs might there be that one should trust or distrust a study you find on Pubmed?
Edited by jroseland, 20 June 2017 - 02:17 PM.