Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-08T17:33:20.191Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Are the data reliable?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2009

Bertrand M. Roehner
Affiliation:
Université de Paris VII (Denis Diderot)
Get access

Summary

It would be a waste of time and energy to analyze and try to make sense of flawed or unreliable data. Ensuring the reliability of experimental data is a cornerstone of the natural sciences. In physics there is a proven procedure through which the validity of experimental results is established. Every time researchers claim to have observed a new physical phenomenon other teams around the world try to replicate the results. If their observations are consistent with those obtained by the first team, the phenomenon will be given the status of a new physical effect, often named after its discoverers. The Foucault pendulum (1851), the Zeeman effect (1902), and the Aharonov–Bohm effect (1959) are a few examples among many. On the contrary, if the claimed result cannot be replicated, the physics community comes to the conclusion that the first observation was spurious. A case in point was the flawed discovery of cold fusion in 1989, which will be described in some detail below. In what follows, this phase of verification will be referred to as the replication procedure. It provides an efficient way through which flawed observations can be eliminated. Unfortunately, there is no similar procedure in the social sciences even in cases where replication would be possible. In a previous chapter we mentioned the fact that thirty years after its discovery the reality of the Werther effect is still not clearly established.

Type
Chapter
Information
Driving Forces in Physical, Biological and Socio-economic Phenomena
A Network Science Investigation of Social Bonds and Interactions
, pp. 80 - 100
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Are the data reliable?
  • Bertrand M. Roehner, Université de Paris VII (Denis Diderot)
  • Book: Driving Forces in Physical, Biological and Socio-economic Phenomena
  • Online publication: 02 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511611148.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Are the data reliable?
  • Bertrand M. Roehner, Université de Paris VII (Denis Diderot)
  • Book: Driving Forces in Physical, Biological and Socio-economic Phenomena
  • Online publication: 02 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511611148.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Are the data reliable?
  • Bertrand M. Roehner, Université de Paris VII (Denis Diderot)
  • Book: Driving Forces in Physical, Biological and Socio-economic Phenomena
  • Online publication: 02 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511611148.007
Available formats
×