A Rough Guide to Spotting Bad Science
Click to enlarge
A brief detour from chemistry, branching
out into science in general today. This graphic looks at the different
factors that can contribute towards ‘bad’ science – it was inspired by
the research I carried out for the recent aluminium chlorohydrate graphic,
where many articles linked the compound to causing breast cancer,
referencing scientific research which drew questionable conclusions from
their results.
out into science in general today. This graphic looks at the different
factors that can contribute towards ‘bad’ science – it was inspired by
the research I carried out for the recent aluminium chlorohydrate graphic,
where many articles linked the compound to causing breast cancer,
referencing scientific research which drew questionable conclusions from
their results.
The vast majority of people will get their
science news from online news site articles, and rarely delve into the
research that the article is based on. Personally, I think it’s
therefore important that people are capable of spotting bad scientific
methods, or realising when articles are being economical with the
conclusions drawn from research, and that’s what this graphic aims to
do. Note that this is not a comprehensive overview, nor is it implied
that the presence of one of the points noted automatically means that
the research should be disregarded. This is merely intended to provide a
rough guide to things to be alert to when either reading science
articles or evaluating research.
science news from online news site articles, and rarely delve into the
research that the article is based on. Personally, I think it’s
therefore important that people are capable of spotting bad scientific
methods, or realising when articles are being economical with the
conclusions drawn from research, and that’s what this graphic aims to
do. Note that this is not a comprehensive overview, nor is it implied
that the presence of one of the points noted automatically means that
the research should be disregarded. This is merely intended to provide a
rough guide to things to be alert to when either reading science
articles or evaluating research.
EDIT: Updated to version 2!
EDIT 2 (April 2015): Update to version 3, taking into account a range of feedback and also sprucing up the design a little.
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The
graphic in this article is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Want to share it elsewhere? See the site’s content usage guidelines.
The second version of the graphic is also available in: Portuguese (courtesy of Marco Filipe); Russian (courtesy of orgchem.by); and Spanish, (courtesy of Carolina Jiménez at nuakas.com).
Compound Interest - A Rough Guide to Spotting Bad Science
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