Paedantic Basterd

Meta-analyses are the greatest tool we have to determine scientific fact and how a sea of findings converge to reveal a greater picture.

A case study is a snapshot of a person. A study is a snapshot of a specific population. A meta-analysis is the closest thing science has to a complete picture of a phenomenon.

The meta-analytic process involves massive teams of researchers pooling ALL of the research (some parameters specified depending on what the meta-analysis is designed to study) on a topic--and I mean scouring thousands--hundreds of thousands--of studies (both published and unpublished), then pooling and analyzing the data from those studies to examine the broad trends that are occurring in a field of research.

Meta-analyses are how we can say something with 99.9% certainty. They're how 95+% of scientists can agree upon issues like climate change and the value of vaccines. They're as concrete as science currently gets, and they're the future of scientific agreement in any given field.

**** yeah science!

Chula Vista

Not sure if you saw this link.

https://www.acpeds.org/the-college-s...-is-misleading

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Paedantic Basterd

Well, first of all, I never claimed that spanking turns kids into psychopaths. I know the research isn't conclusive regarding whether spanking ruins kids. My point has only ever been that (A) spanking has proven to be less effective than other behavioural training methods and (B) if you don't have to hit someone, you shouldn't.

Regarding meta-analysis, the complaints cited are only partially valid and do not detract from the value of meta-analysis as an analytic tool. Complaining about correlational research? In that case you are going to have a problem with literally all of science, because guess what? It's all correlational. It's not possible to isolate a variable in such a way as to definitively prove causation. We can get very close, and the closer the better, but ultimately, it's all correlation.

I only skimmed the rest because this document appears to be about whether meta-analysis has shown that spanking ****s kids up, which is irrelevant to me because that was never my claim.

Chula Vista

The article points are that medicine and discipline are areas where meta-analysis is most flawed. And I wouldn't consider physics, math, and electronics as three areas of science that are corellnational.

__________________

“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

Frownland

Which is why vaccines cause autism.

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Studies show that when a given norm is changed in the face of the unchanging, the remaining contradictions will parallel the truth.