[Corpora-List] "Cargo cult" NLP?

[Kevin B. Cohen]

I was recently reading the Wikipedia page on "cargo cult science," a
concept attributed to no lesser a light than Richard Feynman.  I found this
on the page:

"An example of cargo cult science is an experiment that uses another
researcher's results in lieu of an experimental
control<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_control>.
Since the other researcher's conditions might differ from those of the
present experiment in unknown ways, differences in the outcome might have
no relation to the independent
variable<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_variable>under
consideration. Other examples, given by Feynman, are from educational
research <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_research>,
psychology<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology>(particularly
parapsychology <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parapsychology>), and
physics<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics>.
He also mentions other kinds of dishonesty, for example, falsely promoting
one's research to secure funding."

If we all had a dime for every NLP paper we've read that used "another
researcher's results in lieu of an experimental control," we wouldn't have
to work for a living.

What do you think?  Are we all cargo cultists in this respect?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science

Kev


-- 
Kevin Bretonnel Cohen, PhD
Biomedical Text Mining Group Lead, Computational Bioscience Program,
U. Colorado School of Medicine
303-916-2417
http://compbio.ucdenver.edu/Hunter_lab/Cohen
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