2 mo. ago • 99%

xkcd #2977: Three Kinds of Research

xkcd.com Three Kinds of Research

alt text:

The secret fourth kind is 'we applied a standard theory to their map of every tree and got some suspicious results.'

https://explainxkcd.com/2977/

OpenStreetMap community @lemmy.ml Finally an xkcd comic about OSM 👀

24 comments

Then there’s also the flat-earther style: “We applied a flawed model and flawed methodology to standard circumstances and got the results we wanted!”

I guess we need a new comic to address all the different kinds of pseudo-science.

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- That's easy! We call that Garbage In Garbage Out!
  
  25
What about 'we applied a standard theory to standard circumstances and somehow the results aren't right and it's probably our fault'

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- Business as usual, just another day at the lab. People using actual real world samples instead of the expensive standards to produce a very messy calibration squiggle. Also, the machine probably requires some maintenance from time to time.
  
  13
  
  Should just assume a perfectly spherical cow in a vacuum for simplicity's sake 🤷
  
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- The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not “Eureka!” but “That’s funny …”
  
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  Not to be confused with "is it supposed to be making a noise", which is usually pretty bad
  
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The one I see the most is:

"We avoided any semblance of rational experimental design and got significant results."

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- We were awarded grant money from a corporation and got results that are favourable to them but require further grants to really boost that evidence up a notch, wink wink
  
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- If all else fails, use "significant at a p>0.05 level" and hope no one notices.
  
  source: xkcd
  
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There is also "We did nothing of value"

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- Aka "we applied a standard theory to standard circumstances and got the expected result" - one can argue it does help in a way by providing another dataset although it didn't really accomplish anything it can be useful for student research projects in that field.
  
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  No I meant wasting time with useless stuff
  
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Help us map all the trees

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- App also available on F-Droid.
  
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- I'm afraid tree mapping isn't yet in it
  
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  It is. But it groups trees that are next to each other. You can add a single tree in the "Things" overlay
  
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Content notice on explainxkcd:

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a DEPTH-FIRST TREE SEARCHER

😄

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Don't forget "these are novel circumstances and so we attempted something, but really the circumstances are so novel that just documenting them is pretty neat"

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We applied a map of every tree to a set of all possible sets we're waiting on the results

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