Dysfunction In Modern Science?

eldavojohn writes "The editors of Infection and Immunity are sending a warning signal about modern science. Two editorials (1 and 2) published in the journal have given other biomedical researchers pause to ask if modern science is dysfunctional. Readers familiar with the state of academia may not be surprised but the claims have been presented today to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) that level the following allegations: 'Incentives have evolved over the decades to encourage some behaviors that are detrimental to good science' and 'The surest ticket to getting a grant or job is getting published in a high profile journal, this is an unhealthy belief that can lead a scientist to engage in sensationalism and sometimes even dishonest behavior to salvage their career.' The data to back up such slanderous claims? 'In the past decade the number of retraction notices for scientific journals has increased more than 10-fold while the number of journals articles published has only increased by 44%.' At least a few of such retractions have been covered here."

Comments

Re:Grant whores and PR scientists

[argStyopa]

Good thing this doesn't apply to Global Warming science.

Re:Grant whores and PR scientists

[cpu6502]

You probably also believe the government's lies about Iran trying to nuke the U.S.
- Scientists are human beings.
- Human beings lie.
- Especially when there are rewards for lying.

"A social network of authorships in temperature reconstruction is described of at least 43 authors with direct ties to Mann by virtue of having coauthored papers with him. The findings from this analysis suggest that authors in the area of paleoclimate studies are closely connected and thus âindependent studiesâ(TM) may not be as independent as they might appear on the surface."