"Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/"

A poster listed this article for some reason.  It has absolutely nothing to do with honey bees or insects.  It is about medical research.  So, I expect that poster to explain in plain English what all the math in this article is about so those who are not skilled in statistical analysis can understand the basis for the claims made.  In addition if that math is valid why it is of any interest at all on this forum and is it applicable in any way to bee keeping.  Or is it mainly just applicable to medical research?

Concerning the You Tube quote the speaker very clearly says in the opening to her Ted talk her drug example (Cholextra) is fictitious.  There is nothing fictitious about the drug Cholextra.  I quote from the company web site:

https://www.solacenutrition.com/product/cholextra-t-f/

"A Medical Food for the dietary management of an Inborn Error of Metabolism for cholesterol synthesis disorders, such as Smith-Lemli-Optiz Syndrome (SLOS). It is intended for individuals requiring tube feeding."

This drug contains 25% cholesterol as the active ingredient.  It seems the speaker did no home work at all and I submit should be sued for slander and false statements.  I will admit this is all too often typical of the quality of advice generally mixed in with excellent advice on You Tube.  I submit this talk tells us nothing at all about science in general or bees in particular.  This talk is mainly concerned with advertising claims and studies done and paid for by the company to support the drug in question.  It is not about research findings published in scientific journals by independent researchers.  It does tell us something about citations from You Tube.  You need to listen carefully and be skeptical from start to finish.

The third citation is simply a rant by a guy named Briggs (apparently this guy only has one name making it a bit hard to determine if he has any credentials at all to talk about the subject he is blasting) about all research being wrong with zero supporting evidence or examples.  In fact this guy uses the astroturf propaganda methods and other common propaganda methods to support his position that the Ted Talk speaker warns us to watch out for and view as a warning to ignore what is being claimed.  So based on the Ted Talk this citation is pure junk.

I think it only fair to ignore entirely both the last two examples as meaningless about the validity of published science.

Is science perfect?  Of course not.  We all believed Newton's laws for over 200 years and then Einstein came along and showed Newton was very, very close under most conditions but still wrong.  It is well documented that publications in psychology are rife with errors that sneak into studies all kinds of ways.  As an under grad I participated in a number of psych studies for extra credit and can easy see how the results could be meaningless as it was a common game to try and screw up the results with answers the student knew were dead wrong and that the student did not even believe.  Medical research is equally difficult as is bee research for many of the same reasons.  It is near impossible to control experimental conditions in both cases and the cost of a study with enough individual tests to get to only a 95% confidence level is very high.  So such studies nearly always are under powered.  We had this discussion over a year ago about do bee stings protect against covid-19.  I argued at the time you could not collect enough data on enough bee keepers to get a valid scientific result and still make that argument today.  But, in view of the number of bee keepers who have gotten sick and in some cases died of covid-19 see no reason today that anyone would even bother trying to do the study.

There are lots and lots of bee claims out there.  Some are fine and a lot are garbage.  The editor of one of our bee publications is opposed to ever using oxalic acid to treat mites as he claims, with zero evidence, that such treatments harm the bees no mater how the oxalic acid is applied.  I suppose it is true that every mite treatment hurts the bees in some way.  Killing a bug on a bug is not easy.  This person has never to my knowledge supplied any actual evidence that such harm is significant.  I have never seen this person supply data on his own hive winter survival rates.  I do not know if he actually has any bees.  There are many of us using such treatments who are seeing 90% winter hive survivals.  Give me an alternative to oxalic acid that is as inexpensive, easy to apply and as safe to apply and as safe to the bees and consumer and I will be happy to listen. 

I recently listened to a talk on how feeding sugar syrup was terrible for honey bees.  The speaker claimed sugar syrup fed to bees could not be concentrated to a high enough sugar content to avoid growth of micro organisms and further that such syrups had an alkaline pH.  Perhaps he fed sugar syrup in November in Ohio and that was his problem?  I do not know.  What I do know is sugar syrup is a fine feed for winter stores if fed early enough for the bees to process it properly.  And when processed properly it is neither too high in water nor too high in pH to be a stable and an excellent winter feed as shown in numerous published studies.  The bees are perfectly capable of dealing with sucrose feed regardless if the sucrose came in the form of nectar or in a bag from the store.

I do not care if a claim is published in a scientific journal or published in a mag or on You Tube or in some club talk the requirements are the same to evaluate the usefulness of the advice.  Is there enough supporting evidence to make the claim credible or is the claim simply hot air and wishful thinking?  The problem the bee keeper has is it is real boring for most to dig thru a big pile of numbers to understand the meat behind the claim.  And many do not have the math and statistics background to understand the arguments being made.  They should have learned those skills in high school math classes but very few do learn them.  Just like most college students who take calculus learn next to nothing about calculus.  But, if there is no big pile of numbers it is easy.  It is meaningless and should not be viewed as credible.

Dick

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