They are spying on my life, #251 in a series

[snousle]

Today, Andrew Sullivan has a post which mentions DNA microarray analysis and its role in understanding human behavior. He quotes someone who compares it to "trying to detect the effect of a day of farm weather on the flavour of your lunch".

I don't know if it's because I've spent too much time with DNA microarrays, or too much time being a chef, but there's nothing about the latter problem that strikes me as unreasonable.

I have to agree that mainstream media reports of advances in genetics are very often both misleading and cringe-inducing. On top of that, serious science publications like Science News publish critiques of publications in my own field that are devastating and, sad to say, entirely accurate. I cannot say I have been guilty of any of these analytic crimes myself, since steering scientists away from them is my personal raison d'etre, but the whole guilt-by-association thing is somewhat oppressive.

It's kind of an uncomfortable situation, trying to do high-quality analysis in a field that is tarnished by work of much lower integrity. I'm grateful that I don't have to deal with the politics of it myself, I'm just a statistical soldier of fortune. But unfortunately the situation in science these days is that the people who spout bullshit get more attention than the ones who are serious about the integrity of their work.

Comments

[danthered.livejournal.com]

It's kind of an uncomfortable situation, trying to do high-quality analysis in a field that is tarnished by work of much lower integrity.[…] the people who spout bullshit get more attention than the ones who are serious about the integrity of their work.

Sigh. This.