Most of it is a set of nearly fanatical beliefs about reality only vaguely related to facts agreed through consensus by authority. Look at how strongly doctors fought against germ theory. They saw no reason to wash their hands for delivering a new born after having spent their morning cutting open cadavers. Their response was anything but scientific even in the face of easily tested claims and results.
If research can’t be reproduced it’s just a story with interesting data. I doubt most scientists using statistics would be able to provide the alpha / p value / confidence interval etc for their hypothesis.
When the bar is set so low should we be surprised by low quality?
Hand washing may still be a problem. I saw a blurb recently which stated that when doctors know that they're being monitored for using proper hand washing protocols, compliance was near the top end of the scale. But when they thought they were no longer being watched, compliance fell by something like two-thirds. So in other words, doctors (and no doubt others) probably still aren't anywhere close to doing it right.
That would be because “doing it right” is completely over the top. You are suppose to wash your hands before and after each patient interaction, which includes touching their notes, or coming into a patient environment without touching anything.
This is impractical, as it would slow everything down so much, and would make carrying anything impossible, not to mention the negative impact of doctor-patient interactions. It also doesn’t match how patients then move around, touching objects around hospital and nullify the whole process.
Doctors and nurses tend to common sense check when a hand wash/alcohol gel is needed, which I think is a good thing. I think some go too far the other way, but there will always be variation.
> That would be because “doing it right” is completely over the top.
Understand the over the top and common sense angles here, but the "unmonitored" drop was so dramatic as to imply that this was less a matter of reverting to a more sensible approach and more one of dropping down to outright carelessness. That may not actually be the case though.
Most science isn’t.
Most of it is a set of nearly fanatical beliefs about reality only vaguely related to facts agreed through consensus by authority. Look at how strongly doctors fought against germ theory. They saw no reason to wash their hands for delivering a new born after having spent their morning cutting open cadavers. Their response was anything but scientific even in the face of easily tested claims and results.
If research can’t be reproduced it’s just a story with interesting data. I doubt most scientists using statistics would be able to provide the alpha / p value / confidence interval etc for their hypothesis.
When the bar is set so low should we be surprised by low quality?
Rant complete.
Initiate beer.