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Physicist Reputations Tarnished

Posted by michael on from the irrational-exuberance dept.

ruszka writes "An article at PhysicsWeb goes over a growing concern in the physics community: their reliable image. This isn't a case of jumping the gun, as seen with cold fusion, but over fabrication in data results. Bell Labs and Berkeley are both recovering from cases where their own employees falsified data."

1 of 32 comments (clear)

  1. Reproducible. by Alranor · · Score: 4, Interesting

    And this is why one of the fundamental rules of science is that your results have to be reproducible by someone working independently.

    I can't see this being a major problem over here (UK) because

    a) Scientists understand that results need to be reproducible, and thus won't be hugely thrown by a single lab producing something like this

    b) The general public don't really know much about science anyway, and they mistrust it already for a completely separate reason, namely the way the government presents any scientific research as supporting whatever policy they've already decided on (see BSE / foot & mouth / GM food / etc)