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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."
does this mean pigs can fly? have we had the cure for cancer all along??
I want my mommie.
Beat the computer, program your life.
Next they'll be telling us that politicians aren't ethical either. :)
People are always tempted to take the easy route...
When I did my last research project, I had no clue what my results meant and made that clear in my paper!
This was an undergraduate ornithology project that was supposed to take six weeks, according to my advisor. Every professor I've told about it since then has said, that's graduate level at least...
Uh, "if it looks roughly mouse-shaped according to my infra-red sensitive pit, eat it"? --Chris Burke 09-08-10
Don't trust the science behind this story!
My other sig is extremely clever...
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.
This is why we have peer review, independant repetition of studies, randomised double blind trials etc. It all comes out in the wash.
Deleted
It had to be the Professor of Gilligan's Island fame. If he could come up with a car, fix the radio, etc. don't you think he could have come up with a way to fix the boat.
In truth he just liked the attention of hanging out with Ginger, the movie star and Maryanne, the girl next door.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
That's why the Scientific Method requires reproducibility. It's not just to weed out confirmation bias or experimental error, but to double check against fraud.
Is there any way to say that this isn't surprising without being considered a troll?
The person who wrote conducted this research lied about the results. There are actually no researches whatsoever who falsify data.
If you leave out the plagiarism and resume builders then the numbers don't look so bad!
I'm thinking about it, therefore I might be.
This sort of behavior is encouraged by the Bush Administration if results are fudged to favor its position on the environment. Anybody catch this story in the NY Times about the White House doctoring reports on climate change? Here's an interview with Warren Olney about the incident. It seems to me that if we can't trust scientists to tell us the truth regardless of the political implications or of pressure from outside sources, we're really fucked.
My wife worked in a group at Northwestern that kept a greaseboard of in-jokes made by the various members. My favorite was always, "Let red denote the fabricated data..." It just sounds so natural.
blarg.
...unavailable for comment.
I saw this earlier in the print edition, and it's not really what it sounds like. The question to which 15% said yes was whether you'd ever changed the procedure, methodology, or results of an experiment in response to pressure from a funding source. Well, changing the results would be very, very bad, but they actually asked a separate question on that one and only 0.3% (a statistically insignificant number) said yes. Changing methodology is not necessarily illegitimate; if your funding source says "give me X precision", or "measure Y too while you're at it", then the procedure's going to change to reflect that. It doesn't mean there's bias, it means the question was asked incorrectly.
Maybe they work at the White House, funded by the oil industry to select "winning" research.
--
make install -not war
I posted that story twelve hours ago and it was rejected. Maybe because the link was in the Baltimore Sun (only link I found with Google, I read the story in a French webnewspaper) and not in Yahoo News / Washington Post ?..
</rant>
here is a additional link from the Baltimore Sun.
The full original article is in Nature.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink =1522707
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
100% of politicians lie, cheat and steal. Even scientists are *gasp* human. Unethical behavior should not be condoned, but what I'd like to see is a similar report done on lawyers and politicians. THe only problem is none of them would answer honestly! At least this research got some people to admit they were fudging numbers. The actual results are probably skewed to the low side, if anything, because undoubtedly there are some scientists who will lie to cover up their other lies. These are the wannabes to watch out for. Like Bill Frist.
What are the odds that the Republicans are going to use this report to try to smear scientists even more than they have?
Although if you look at the original Nature article...
...it actually sounds an awful lot like the Bush White House.
Certain types of research have bias built-in. If BigDrugCo wants research results on NewExpensiveDrug they aren't going to farm the research to the people who told them their last drugs were worthless. Therefore, if I want BigDrugCo's $$$ in the future I'll try to design the study and present the results in the most positive way. Whether or not I'm aware of it there will be some underlying pressure.
As such, I feel that this type of study needs what I've coined a "triple-blind study" in which a neutral party is placed between the funder and the researcher.
This neutral party would then choose researcher(s) at random from a pool of candidates qualified to do the research and frame the question in a neutral way. The funding source and desired outcome would be withheld from the researcher.
~~~~~~~
"You are not remembered for doing what is expected of you." - Atul Chitnis
Here's a Catch-22: this study was a study that might have been rigged to make sensationalist claims for the Post, right?
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
National Public Radio in the U.S. ran a story about how Merck ran a campaign to pressure M.D.s who were doing research showing Vioxx was a problem in patients, causing damage to the heart.
The story is right here and it outlines a major problem with all scientific research, but most acutely in the pharmaceutical industry, where the Bush administration has gutted the FDA and made them the lapdog of the drug companies. Capital markets use science and statistics as weapons, and objective evidence of problems exists only when other drug companies that compete fund research to show problems.
Bush said last week that he still wasn't interested in a Kyoto like treaty, because global warming needed more "research" and study. And, of course, the report that shows that an employee of the American Petroleum Council was sitting inside the EPA censoring reports that showed any causality between burning fossil fuels and global warming. Can't have that.
Corrupt scientists. No objective sources of information. And people wonder why there is a skyrocketing reliance on religion by our political leaders, who pander and are willing to teach nonsense like "Intelligent Creation" alongside scientific evidence of darwinism and natural selection. Divinity sells. And a assailable scientific community only makes it easier.
We seem to be leaving an age of reason, and entering a new Dark age. Instead of Thomas Aquinas we have Dr. Phil.
Also, if graders at university level care more about how a paper is formatted and (nicely) written, than if the experiments were properly conducted, bad behaviour is encouraged.
I know people who made one good measurement, made up the rest and spend the remaining part of the time on the paper due at the end of the day. While others spend their time on the experiments and had to write their papers quickly and hasty, forgoing a nice layout.
You didn't had time to do both.
Guess who had the better grade?
Sure, measuring the period of a swinging pendulum may not be groundbreaking, but it's all about instilling the correct work habit.
Perhaps what they did was good for getting a good grade, and they were the smarter of the rest of us. But it was damned lousy science.
Yes, after all these years, I am still "upset" about it.
Let's not blame the Bush administration for this. If you read the article, even Mendel may have fudged his numbers. And the highest percentage of unethical behavior seems linked more to career or research advancement, which appears to be built into the current system of funding. To get grants or tenure you have to bring in the money, which means appealing to those who have the money to give, be it private or public money.
While I agree that the current administration appears to be most guilty of fudging numbers, I seriously doubt that they originated it or that previous administrations didn't fudge numbers elsewhere.
... with the help of this online english/"science" language companion.
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.
Reached for comment, the researchers admitted that the actual number was 9%, but they felt some scientists were not willing to admit their wrong-doing, and their editor wasn't going to publish the story unless the number was at least 15%.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
the reason I think this stuff happens is that the "publish or perish" pressure is just too insane at top universities. It's not just publishing in any archival journal; to maintain funding, to get tenured, high quality publications in high profile journals are a must. I can't speak for other fields, but in the biological sciences, not only is the pressure to publish in quality AND quantity getting greater each year, the field has exploded to such a degree that the burden of proof for one's hypotheses is increasingly heavier. Exploratory studies cannot be carried out; the emphasis is almost entirely on what can be completed and published in a reasonably short period of time. Experiments are hard to do. If a grant deadline/tenure review is coming up and the data is not quite what it needs to be, people might be tempted to fudge it a tiny bit.
None of what I just said excuses scientific misconduct. But I think why it happens is just a symptom of a bigger problem (at least in biology). There are too many Ph.D. level scientists! The incessant cranking out of these highly educated people is creating an oversupply of researchers. Every Ph.D. who gets a tenure-track research position (these positions are highly competitive; typically 50-100 highly qualified individuals who have equally impressive CVs compete for one spot) has to stake out their little project and protect it like a lioness protects her cubs. If they're not careful and blink the wrong way, they could be scooped by competitors (i.e. beaten to publication); a good chunk of their career just went down the drain. This after a completely unreasonable length of postgraduate training (6-7 years for a Ph.D. and 4-5 years postdoctoral training after that is quite typical), poor pay and lousy hours. All because IMO there are too many people working on the same shit.
I think that to fix the problem, something fundamental needs to change in the way scientists are produced. I don't pretend to know what the best solution would be, but one idea I've been throwing around is to train more M.S. level people than Ph.D. level people. These would be employed as staff scientists rather than independent principal investigators, such that there would be enough of a labor pool to actually do the work, but without having one's career constantly in jeopardy.
NO CARRIER
Well said. Further evidence of religions/churches (they're not the same thing) changing: the modern creationist movement.
A century ago, virtually all christian sects had no problem with the scientific conclusion that the Earth is several billion years old.
Starting in the 1960s, and just reaching a fever pitch, we have millions of christians who swear that their bible/religion/church says that the Earth is only 6000 years old.
Sure, religion changes all the time. It's just that science generally changes in response to *evidence*. Religion changes in response to someone's agenda.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
That said, I'm not a big fan of scientists who don't make a stand. If the most educated of us won't cry foul when something is wrong, who will?
Did you even read the link provided?
Here in Canada it was all over the news... The white house changed the wording of scientific research to make it sound like there was a great doubt on the climate change and its link to human activity.
I guess that would confirm the affirmation "encouraged by the Bush Administration"
If you want to see the biggest coverup in science it has to be the rising incidence of cancer and noone knows why.
Maybe this article would shed some light on how the plastics and pesticide industry owns the media and covers it up. They actually control the American Cancer Society which they use skillfully use to control anything that might hurt business.
We know the cause of cancer. More here on cause of breast cancer and organochlorides. We just can't stop the industry that owns our government.
One more link on the frontline investigation that industry tried to stop on pestcide effects on children.
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.
I'd like to point out that this is a survey only of scientists funded by the NIH (National Institutes of Health). It has no bearing on conduct of scientists in other life sciences or in the physical sciences. I would imagine that given the closer industry ties of human health-related research, there would be different, and perhaps greater, pressure to falsify data. There is also clearly no opportunity to violate human subject research standards when you're studying subatomic particles.
Physics Today has a good story on ethics issues in physics. It seems that data falsification is relatively rare (the few high-profile cases demonstrate that it is generally a career-ending move), but other ethical problems certainly do occur. In particular, Physics Today talks about the abuse of graduate students (a problem that's probably not limited to physics).
As a graduate student myself, I've got things pretty good, but some of my friends are definitely being mistreated. One guy is working 70-hour weeks and is still getting told by his supervisor that he's not working hard enough. I'm sure that if he protested he'd quickly find himself tossed out of the group and having to start his thesis research again from scratch.
Scientists, however, are still believed to be objective. No study of the lives of the great scientists will confirm this. They were as passionate, and hence as prejudiced, as any assembly of great painters or great musicians. It was not just the Church but also the established astronomers of the time who condemned Galileo. The majority of physicists rejected Einstein's Special Relativity Theory in 1905. Einstein himself would not accept anything in quantum theory after 1920 no matter how many experiments supported it. Edison's commitment to direct current (DC) electrical generators led him to insist alternating current (AC) generators were unsafe for years after their safety had been proved to everyone else. [Edison's pigheadedness on this matter was partly the result of his jealousy against Nikola Tesla, inventor of AC generators. Tesla, on the other hand, refused the Nobel Prize when it was offered to him and Edison jointly because he refused to appear on the same platform with Edison. Both of these geniuses were only capable of "objectivity" and science in certain limited laboratory conditions. If you think you have a higher "objectivity quotient" than either of them, why haven't you been nominated for a Nobel prize?]
Science achieves, or approximates, objectivity not because the individual scientist is immune from the psychological laws that govern the rest of us, but because scientific method--a group creation--eventually overrides individual prejudices, in the long run.
linky
According to a large-scale survey of scientific misbehavior, 15% admit to changing a study under pressure from a funding source.
In other news, the scientists who conducted the survey are now admitting they fabricated the survey results.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Many forms of cancers are caused by eating animal protein. Which is why every study I have seen on diet and cancer showed that reducing your intake of animal protein lowers your risk of cancer, especially cancer of the abdominal organs and digestive tract. A place to start looking:
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/48/3/739
...the procedure tends to be very messy.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
This situation seems very similar to that of the news media, namely due to the sources of funding.
A scientists or news media group who must obtain their funding via commercial means will never have reliable information as their first goal.
Their first goal will always be to obtain further funding. In the scientific world this leads to falsified results and very unscientific behavior. Similarly, in the American corporate news world, the focus is not so much on presenting the truth, but rather it is on maintaining advertisers (by not publishing articles that may "offend" such advertisers), increasing reader-/viewership by appealing to fundamentalist views, and other non-integrity related issues.
On the other hand, when money is not a problem, the reporting is often far better. We can see examples of this in the state-funded news broadcasters such as the CBC and BBC. The reporting and journalistic integrity of such broadcasters is extremely high, as they do not need to grovel for financial support. When it comes to scientists, those who need do not need to fight tooth and nail for funding will far more often be able to produce high-quality results. That is just the nature of the game.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I agree with you in general.
But I think your "don't just blame the Bushies" sounds too much like "accept what the Bush administration does wrong because the democrats do it to." I think when any administration is caught editing scientific reports to support their point of view they should have the crap kicked out of them (metaphorically, that is).
And, for what it's worth, the whistleblower in this case has been in a number of administrations, democratic and republican, and says he's never seen anything like this kind of political manipulation of science before.
Yes, I have seen those studies too. Cooking meat at high temp and grilling can create changes in the meat.
Even those studies may be flawed if they didn't check for toxins in the fish or animal meat.
These organochlorines do NOT decompose and accumulate in the breast area.
It explains everything. The plastics and pesticide industry are very corrupt just like cigarette industry.
I work in science department at a large university and what srikes me is the degree to which scientists here are ethical about science, but only science. In all other aspects - lying to their employees, misdirecting funding, fudging non-scientific reports- they are devious lying weasels. But they are adamantly against fudging data, I have never seen it or even suspected.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
Supposed liberals do , Real liberals should find it appalling . In-fact Real conservatives find it appealing too , having just spoken to a friend on the issue who is thoroughly to the right .
Its the Sudo corrupt people who find it acceptable , those who are unwilling to change and only wish to have their world vies justified . This is not an issue of Right vs. left but Right(as in correct) vs. wrong.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
Is there anybody out there that scored an 85 in physics or chemistry that didn't get an A?
I'll ignore the anti-religious flamebait and move on to point out that the same pressures which cause one group of scientists to fudge data may exist across an entire field.
Read this Slashdot article. In the second linked article, on the forth page, the scientist who initially got a furor started about the effects of cell phones on DNA states:
The problem may be that many people reproduce the results but many other people don't. Sometimes a powerful moneyed interest throws up all sorts of funding into research with strings attached to deliberately muddy the waters. As long as there are contradicting studies, those very people's lobbyists can say, "But look! Scientists can't all come to the same conclusion on the issue! Clearly there's more to it than what your scientists are saying!"
You see this in global warming research. You see this in research on the effects of cell phones and high-tension power lines on people. You see this in research about the toxicity of industrial chemicals. You see this in pharmaceutical research on drugs like Vioxx and Celebrex. We saw this with tobacco's effects on health. As long as tainted money is the only source of money for science, results will be reproduceably deceptive. This is a tool of modern industry to prevent the public from learning facts that would get in the way of their agenda.
This is effecting the people of our nation, and it's helping to shape policy in our government. The EPA has not made coal power plant treat mercury as a pollutant to clean up to meet standards set by the Clean Air Act. A senior White House environment official (and former American Petroleum Institute lobbyist) has been caught deleting findings from environmental science reports. There is a concerted effort right now to hide the truth from the American people to avoid hurting the profits of certain wealthy people in power, and science is losing.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
We just can't stop the industry that owns our government.
Oh, jeez. Stop it already! The voters own the gov't! Quit trying to pass the buck. If all you're going to do is view spoon fed info and vote for for the major party, then you don't deserve to have a democracy(democratic republic to you nit pickers). Is this continued voter ignorance just another attempt to avoid responsibility for the actions of the people YOU voted for? If all of you can divert your attention away from American Idol or whatever for ten minutes, you might find that you can own the media also. The cause of your mis-fortunes is completely self contained within your own cranium. Accept it. Them move on to step 2.
What?
Read Cecil's take.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
I work near a local Ag. school and a friend of mine did some research (in Ag. Economics) of the effect of having all the meat major packing companies subcontract purchasing to one company. His conclusion was that it was a defacto monopoly. The paper was funded by the Dept. of Agriculture and so prior to publication they reviewed it.
After review he was warned that if he published it he would lose all current and future funding. Apparently the meat packers did not appreciate the information. AFAIK it has never been released toa journal.
In general, Ag. research was subverted long ago, as was probably Economics. What is new is that ideology is now playing a major role, including things such as 'Intelligent design', not just money. In general, it is starting to look more like Germany circa early 30's where only ideologically pure research could be done. If I were a reasearcher I would be looking for a research friendlier country.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Is this really a democracy ?
Is my vote the equal of some lobbyist for a megacorporation donating big $$$ ?
Fact is, you're gonna die of something. In my opinion, cancer is a natural cause of death. Now, it may be abberant concerning the human system, but I wouldn't go and say it is unnatural. I do acknowledge that there are environmemtal factors that will increase the likely hood of developing cancer, but I just don't feel comfortable with out human definitions of what is and isn't natural.
If it exists, it seems to be natural, because it exists in nature. Even if it is an environment that we transformed around us. Ant's build anthills, and we consider that nature, yet our own houses are not considered in the same light.The issue isn't science vs religion. The issue is truth and honesty vs dogma (or political correctness.)
Religious and non-religious groups have been guilty of supressing truth to support their agenda. Ditto for big, wealthy groups and small activists.
Should be pointed out that many famous scientists were Christians. Isaac Newton, Bacon, Galileo, etc. Their stand for truth wasn't against religion, it was against political forces.
Should also be pointed out that those founding fathers of modern science based it on princples taught in the Bible. Check out the introduction of 1 John 1. (It's toward the back.) Look at the intruduction to Luke. Note the scientific method.
One has to wonder... if they were dishonest enough to fudge research data, what was their motivation to give an honest response to this survey? Were they perhaps paid under the table to participate? Were those selected to participate conveniently all lapsed Catholics with guilty consciences?