Research: To Trust or Not To Trust (this is a questions you must ask yourself)
Don't worry I will not be diving into the world of poetry or love stories. What I do want you, the reader, to take out of this is that there is lots of clear bad research out there. In addition there is also research that seems great which has been cleverly disguised as sound data showing genuine evidence that is just as bad. These articles can be very difficult to spot, for both the average reader and an experienced researcher. At this point I'm sure you're saying, what in the world are you talking about? Please review the two links below. Then I will walk you through the behind the scenes of how research is executed.
The research process:
Ok, now that you have seen the very brief, readers digest, version of research behind the scenes what are your thoughts? I can imagine you go lost somewhere in the mix of the back and forth at some point....and yes that truly is how this goes. So how in the world does this process let bad research through? Well that simple not all schools have standard policies and sometimes politics...money talks. Another struggle with research is that after all this work that takes months sometimes years, there are no findings. That's a long time and sometimes a lot of money spent just to show that there are no findings from the study. This is when most errors occur. Because the research team will dig and dig at data using multiple calculations, equations, and cross referencing data tools to find some sort of significance in the data that can correlate with the research question. All this analyzing eventually stretches data thin so that the true findings are so blurred that findings are formed more by the searching for findings than the findings themselves. This is where most good research goes wrong and is produced with poor findings. This is an example of p-smudging.
The article you see below discusses a well known researcher from a well known university that has fallen prey to these research hacks. This is a case that is in the spotlight but is just one of hundreds of examples that are out there.
The youtube video below highlights an article a bout low carb high fat diets that has circled the news, magazines, and research journals. This very beneficial to watch and helps to better understand why you should always do your homework before taking the findings of a study at face value before looking at the details yourself.