I’ve always argued this wasn’t the case and that motoring is a worse transport mode because of the associated externalities, not because of anything inherent to the users.
But you can’t argue with the scienceTM!
I’ve always argued this wasn’t the case and that motoring is a worse transport mode because of the associated externalities, not because of anything inherent to the users.
But you can’t argue with the scienceTM!
So you didn’t bother to read the paper, didn’t you.
There’s a lengthy part of that paper discussing their criteria, with references to other studies.
Which doesn’t even remotely exist in Germany, where this study was done. Which, you know, you could have known if you’d actually read the study…
“This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.”
https://www.fernuni-hagen.de/universitaet/stimmen/schuster.shtml
The lead authours stated personal goal is to increase proportion of bicycle use from 8% to 25%.
While it might not be “science for hire”, the authours have a pre-existing and documented goal.
I’m not saying the results are wrong… Only that you maybe shouldn’t be so quick to shit on the guy who raised his eyebrow… Because it’s an extremely valid question to ask, given the facts about the relationship between the authours of the study and the clearly personal relationship they have to the subject matter.
They, in essence, did a study that “confirmed” that they themselves are better people than 92% of the population.
Climate scientists often have the goal of cleaning up emissions/passing effective regulation to curb climate change. Is that a problem too?
Who just “does science for science’s sake”? This is just a nonsense talking point because you don’t like what they’re saying. You’re arbitrarily deciding this matters when it’s not a standard anywhere.
Critique their work. Try to duplicate it. But assess the work. That’s what matters. You’re functionally saying that nobody can “do science“ if they have an opinion on the thing they are studying.
Yes, scientists have opinions and agendas.
They. Did. Not. Read. The. Study.
Look, if you want to dismiss a study, do so, I couldn’t care less. But so far you both haven’t brought anything but ad hominem against the authors.
For someone constantly accusing others of not reading, you seem to have a lot of trouble reading. I’ll leave it to the exercise to the reader (not you, obviously, lol) to find the sentence where I explicitly say that this doesn’t necessarily invalidate the results.
Acknowledging the biases of the people doing research isn’t an ad homienem attack. Would you be clamouring to defend studies about the dangers of smoking written by people with large interests in the tobacco industry? No?
You are having an extreme an emotional reaction to the presentation of fact.
I’m all for more cycling and getting rid of cars entirely, but this is reaserch methods 101. One of my college courses was entirely about finding flaws in research, and this is a great example of a study that has an intended purpose, and very selectively shows the data they want it to show. And with things like qualitative data that requires an opinion to show in the first place, you can throw this out as junk from the getgo. This is popular science made for click bait headlines.
And another ad hominem. Bye.
Edit: and if you cannot see a difference between a scientist advocating for bikes and someone advocating for a known hazardous drug you are completely lost.
Holy mother of based someone on this site who actually reads the fucking study
Did they have a preconceived goal and then did the research to match it, or did they do the research and then formed a goal to match it?
These are two different things. And while the former is bad, the latter is not. In fact, forming a political opinion after in-depth study of a topic is something we should all do.
Most research is somewhere between: scientist has a belief on how something works and does studies that can provide evidence for or against it and competing hypotheses. Doesn’t matter if it’s super basic science about some obscure bacterial protein that has no known real world implications: often the scientists have a belief before doing the studies. There nothing wrong with that as long as you don’t hide data and you are open to being wrong. Aelwero provided no evidence for their claim. If we just accept that “well maybe there lying”, we would have to reject all science by that standard.
Of course independent groups should verify results from other studies. But it’s boring, non-flashy work that makes enemies and doesn’t interest funders. But we should work towards getting more funding to do this. We also should work towards a culture of reporting null data. Not reporting “no difference between groups” can result in a similar problem without anyone intentionally doing it (sorta like the jelly bean xkcd, but with 20 different groups doing the same experiment but only 1 publishes because they didn’t know 19 group already tried and found no association and only they did by chance).
So I’m not the person you replied to. I also admit upfront that I didn’t read the article because I don’t want to. Everything I’m about to say is purely my opinion, and based off of your comment. So, take it for what it’s worth which is literally nothing.
I have scanned a bunch of these comments. You are the first person to mention that the study was done in Germany that I’ve seen. Now, I’m not saying you’re wrong. What I am saying is that it seems like there is a good possibility that this is a cultural thing, and an inconclusive study at best.
Now, like I said, I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m simply pointing out that it’s weird that a study used a very specific subset of cyclists and didn’t tell us that in the title, but also probably isn’t representative of the cycling community at large.
It would be like if I posted a headline that said 99% of the people that died of heart related issues are black. So you read my article and find out I did the study in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
So, even if the science is correct. It seems like information that isn’t very relevant outside of the small area where it was conducted. I guess it would depend on where the other studies that they linked to were done. Which I really don’t want to read unless I have to.
This was just an observation based on your comment, and I’m a bored internet stranger taking a poop.
The study didn’t “use a weird subset” of cyclists.
From the abstract of the study
Since there are cyclists the world over, but they only studied German cyclists. German cyclists are very likely to be very culturally different from say Chinese cyclists, or African cyclists, or American cyclists, or even other European cyclists.
Thus, German cyclists ARE A SUBSET OF CYCLISTS in general. Which is what I was saying.
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