Addiction and Self-Medication

[xise]

We have a list of problems and no suggestions of alternatives or potential ways to improve research... nor acknowledgment of the benefits of research. Suggestions?

I don't think we have a well defined list of problems.

No we don't, we have personal catalyst around the issue of research/researchers/psychologists (or what is externalized as such).

Put this into historical context, you do see the area of research changing. We speak of quantitative/modernist paradigm of research but not about lesser know, alternative paradigms that came out as a response to the limitations of modernist/reductionistic paradigm. Like paradigms that are 100x more transparent about biases, both personal and theoretical.

I don't think you can do anything with personal catalyst, other than encourage people to explore learning how to process personal catalyst so that anything labelled similarly will not produced a biased response. In short, it's similar problem whenever you deal with biases, prejudices, and stereotypes of any kind. A public awareness campaign or meme that each study (just like each person) should be treated fairly and without prejudice might help. (Btw, psychologists only upset me a little these days - maybe only a deep breath away from acceptance whenever they come up - but I wanted to draw an illustration from a personal catalyst that was much more significant in the past).


However, institutional issues with research are probably more than personal catalyst in the sense that they represent communal biases or communal catalyst (assuming that article is accurate); for example in the article referenced above about the major journals seeking flashy or 'impact' studies over reliable ones. I think couldn't hurt to try to balance institutional issues involving fame, impact, or whatever else it may be. Similar CNN article on impact distorting studies and reporting: Issues with Sugar studies and media reports


Another big institutional issue concerning the areas of research is that research often follows the money, and so our areas of most research are often the ones with reliable profit potential (I realize that you probably are using the phrase of "area of research" to refer to something else rie, but I do see room for improvement in this arena). I think we can make a real difference if we work upon the institutional issues present in the research community. For one random example of change (not necessarily for the better)- delinking money so that research is more curiosity driven than profit driven would shift where most of the research goes. For example, one possible way to delink money to research is decrease the duration of patents across the board by 50%. You'd probably decrease the amount of overall research, but you'd probably have a more representative range of research projects that accurately represent what most people are curious about as opposed to what areas of research corporations find the most lucrative. You often see a concern about the origins of the money for research play back into distrust of studies, especially drug-company funded studies - it's probably an intersection of personal distortion and institutional distortion.


As far as theoretical improvement to the scientific paradigm, I do fundamentally believe that one day we'll be able to prove scientifically and repeatedly recreate "spiritual" things which we cannot today. I think zenny is right when he's said in other threads that telepathy hasn't been proven because we have not sufficiently understood the mechanisms at work to able to do it reliably. An ancient soothsayer could try and predict hurricanes based on the movement of birds (birds have now been studied and scientifically proven to sense changes in air pressure and change their behavior before major storms), but until we really understood meteorology and utilized radar created through the scientific method we couldn't really predict hurricanes with much accuracy or warning. Many of these 'spiritual' abilities are like that soothsayer trying to read the birds. There might be some sort of connection, but it's not reliable enough to be reproduced in the laboratory because we frankly don't understand the mechanisms involved enough. But one day, I think that will probably change. For example, Tibetan Monks Raise Body Temperature Through Meditation Despite Being Wrapped With -25C Sheets

So in summarizing the potential issues with science in general, it seems there are at least three categories:

1) personal distortions
2) institutional distortions
3) theoretical distortions

Are we missing anything else?

p.s. Rie, I am not familiar with either the lesser known paradigms you mention or other paradigms with 100x more transparency you mention. What paradigms are you referring to?

This is an area that I have studied very little. But it's also an area I'm super fascinated with as I have repeatedly experienced people rejecting the scientific paradigm due to personal catalyst and so I'm interested in scientific paradigms as a whole (I am familiar with scientific reductionism and the issue of emergence).