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Many Scientists Admit Unethical Practices
jangobongo writes "A surprising number of scientists engage in questionable research practices says a story at the Washington Post. According to a large-scale survey of scientific misbehavior, 15% admit to changing a study under pressure from a funding source. Other reasons for altering data include dropping data from a study based on a gut feeling and failing to include data that contradicts one's own research. This chart gives a quick rundown of the percentage of U.S. based scientists who reported having engaged in questionable research practices according to the survey."
unlike religion, science is self-correcting over the long term. If someone fudges the data and comes up with a wrong conclusion eventually someone else will discover that and get it right.
As someone who does scientific research for a living, I have to point out that changing a study because of pressure from a funding source is not necessarily unethical. It's very common for a scientist to say "I want money to study X, Y, and Z" and have a funding source respond "We only really care about X, Y and Q. How about studying those? We'll pay for that." Our the source might say half-way through the study "We've heard that one of our competitors is researching W. Will you look into that instead of Y?" Remember, 'changing a study' is not necessarily unethical. Studies change all the time even without pressure from a funding source, often simply because the researcher comes up with a more interesting or effective way to conduct the study.
I think about a quarter of the people on my "freaks" list got there because of my stating this point. Bear in mind that this only the percentage of scientist that will admit on a survey. My experience and observations suggest that the percentage is far, far higher. Many how do it aren't even conciously aware enough to know they do. It's just what they do, without even thinking about it.
Yes, science is by nature self-correcting, but when the errors are endemically embedded in the existing systems it can take a lot of time and convict a lot of Gallileos before it gets around to it.
In the meantime time, money and even lives are lost over bullcrap.
The practice of "science," as she is spoke, has become just another job undertaken by people who happened to go for a science degree instead of an MBA or joining the plumbers union.
I have come to empathize with Heinlein, who, through the mouth of Lazarus Long, said something along the lines of "I stopped calling myself doctor when they started handing out PhDs to anyone."
KFG
I don't wanna start a political tussle, but harping on the Bush administration for this leaves out the fact that liberals do this kind of thing, too.
Take a look at the various reactions to studies that show different ethnic groups, nationalities, and other genetically-similar categories of people (including men vs. women) have different intelligence distributions. The less-controversial results are the ones that say "Men are better at this type of abstract task, women are better at this other type of brain use," and even these get attacked by people who simply don't want to believe that their could be built-in differences.
And then you have "The Bell Curve" and similar studies. That specific study is questionable (not wrong, but it has issues), but other studies have repeatedly confirmed that different ethnicities can have markedly differing average IQs. The differences are statistically significant (meaning that they're not attributable to mere chance), though they're probably not practically all that significant. And it's not like saying "I'm Chinese, you're African, therefore I'm smarter than you," it's just saying that Chinese people tend to be smarter.
Strangely enough, the Left attacks these results bulldog-style. And most of the attacks aren't about the methodology, or the validity of the results. Most of the attacks seem to be "How could you possibly say such a thing?" It's like the reactions to Kinsey's sexuality studies: people base their values on assumed truths about the world, and when careful study reveals that the assumptions are false, people don't want to discard the basis of their value systems.
The point is, ANYbody, regardless of politics, can fall victim to resisting the truth because it's intellectually convenient to do so. Don't just blame the Bushies.
While it is true that peer review and repetition of studies does make science robust against individual researchers fabricating or 'bending' their data to match desired results, it still remains a problem in the scientific world. Just recently I read about a researcher who did particle physics and had fabricated his data on various different studies. Eventually, people discovered the false data, but it took a long time because he was a respected researcher and the project was abstruse and hard to reproduce (particle physics requires supercolliders, of which there are few in the world).
As a graduate student, I feel pressure from my advisor to not mention discrepant data or those conclusions/questions which detract from my overall hypotheses. It is unfortunate that such should occur, but I can see why it does happen. People want to be proven correct. If they set out to prove a hypothesis with a scientific experiment, and then after a few months or years of research, they discover that the evidence points against their hypothesis or that the method which they employed doesn't provide a conclusive solution, it can be tempting to 'throw out' some data. After all, they put in all of that effort, and they want their recognition. Usually, it means more papers, which oftentimes means more notoriety, job security, money, etc.
I'm not justifying this behavior because science should be done for the sake of understanding nature, not for making a paycheck, but I see where these scientists might be coming from.
I drink to prepare for a fight; tonight I'm very prepared. -Soda Popinksi
"I don't know" is the most important answer in science. I commend you!
Sorry. I should have been a bit less broad in using the term "creationism". The actual "man didn't evolve from monkeys" debate of course started right around Mr. Darwin's time. However, by the middle of the 19th century pretty much everyone agreed that the Earth was at least several million years old thanks to geology.
:)
The recent "Earth is only 6000 years old" movement really needs a better name, because while it's tied to creationism, it isn't exactly the same thing. The fundies started up with the insistence on 6000 years simply because it pretty much dismisses the possibility of any evolutionary processes. By the 60s, with the overwhelming majority of science pointing to evolutionary theory as correct, they needed *something* as evidence against it.
But you're right, by the proper definition of the word, creationism has been around for a long, long time. We really need a term to separate the two. Ussherism, named for the bishop who originally calculated the 6000 years back in the 17th century?
(And no, I didn't see the movie. Maybe it's an American thing only? Got a link?
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.