With research appearing almost daily in the media and then living online, using good judgment to determine what results count is getting more and more difficult. How does one begin to tell good science from not so good science? Compound Interest, a blog looking at chemistry and chemical reactions, posted a great 12 step infographic that walks through the things you need to think about when deciding the quality and validity of research. It isn’t conclusive but it does give you a really good place to start. The 12 points are:
- Sensationalized headlines
- Misinterpreted results
- Conflict of interest
- Correlation & Causation
- Speculative language
- Sample size too small
- Unrepresentative samples
- No control group used
- No blind testing used
- “Cherry-picked” results
- Unreplicable results
- Journals and citations
See more at www.compoundchem.com