I don’t think we actually disagree, but I think you need to be a little more clear with some of your statements. For example your statement: “there is evidence that funding affects ones results,” suggests that biased funding dooms a study. I know that is not what you mean, but is exactly the argument that is being made in condemning this study. In fact, you know that funding does not directly affect results. Funding pressures can cause researchers to mess with the data, and messing with the data changes results.

I think that bias is always a reasonable thing to discuss when looking at a study, but it is not the end of the discussion. The criticism I have of the attack on this study is not that they shouldn’t be looking at bias, but that they shouldn’t suggest that once they have found it they can totally ignore the study. The bias of the researchers should make us concerned, but if they want us to ignore this result then they should give some hint of what the researchers actually did wrong. Otherwise we can just ignore everything in science because every researcher is biased.

Gavin

The issue is why is bias acceptable discussion in some areas but not others?

It shouldn’t be. Ideally it shouldn’t matter whether a pro-choice or a pro-life activist did studies. But we all know it does, if only to raise a certain level of skepticism. That’s an important part of science. To criticize this skepticism (which some are) seems unwise.

I have a different issue, not with the study but with the use of the study by pro-choice forces: I don’t think anyone should care. What matters is not whether the fetus feels pain, it’s that the fetus is not its own person — at that stage of development, it’s part of the mother. I can guarantee you that my toes feel pain, but if for whatever reason they need to be amputated then I should have the right to do so.

We need to distinguish between biased researchers and biased research. Good science is not promoted by trying to find trying to find researchers with exactly the right political view, funders with no financial interests, etc. This would be totally unrealistic. Drug studies will always be funded by drug companies and medical procedures will be studied by doctors who perform those procedures.

Good science is promoted by looking at all of the data, doing the statistics correctly, peer review, etc. This is how we ensure that biased researchers produce unbiased results.

The pharmaceutical industry broke the rules by suppressing studies they didn’t like and publishing studies with favorable results. Now there are systems in place to prevent this (studies must be registered before results are in if they are to be published).

Saying that the researchers in the pain study are biased is not a condemnation of the research, although it might be a cause for concern. If the research is checked and correct, then the researchers bias is irrelevant. If they only looked at portions of the pervious literature that supported their opinion, then the research would be poor. I’m not an expert in this field, but that would be such and obvious error that in a politically charged case like this the critics would be all over it. I suspect that they looked at not just a random sample of studies, but at every study. That is the standard for this sort of review.

Gavin

I’m not saying I agree with Sen. Brownback’s agenda, but I think you might have “edited” his comments on the study ever so slightly. I quote the article:

…Brownback says that’s inaccurate and that it “flies against practical sense.” [Your quote ended here] “They’re saying 28 weeks. But you have premature babies delivered at 23 and 24 weeks and you wouldn’t dream of doing surgery on them without anesthesia,”

You made him out to be an ignorant fool, whereas his “practical sense” argument is based on evidence (or at least common practice), not predjudice. I assume you wouldn’t quote so selectively in your science, too…

You stole my thunder!

Any research must be able to show that its results are not biased in any way.
In this case it is hard to defend the review against the charge of bias unless the sample of articles involved were either randomly selected or involve an exhaustive survey of all studies on fetal pain.
Were is this discussed?

This isn’t an issue of whether the people in question did good science. That’ll be something that is discovered in both peer review and more importantly replication of results. Just that why is one charge of bias allowable while the other seems open to ridicule?