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Ask Slashdot: Why Does Science Appear To Be Getting Things Increasingly Wrong?
azaris writes: Recent revelations of heavily policy-driven or even falsified science have raised concern in the general public, but especially in the scientific community itself. It's not purely a question of political or commercial interference either (as is often claimed when it comes to e.g. climate research) — scientists themselves are increasingly incentivized to game the system for improved career prospects, more funding, or simply because they perceive everyone else to do it, too. Even discounting outright fraud or manipulation of data, the widespread use of methodologies known to be invalid plagues many fields and is leading to an increasing inability to reproduce recent findings (the so-called crisis of reproducibility) that puts the very basis of our reliance on scientific research results at risk. Of course, one could claim that science is by nature self-correcting, but the problem appears to be getting worse before it gets better.
Is it time for more scientists to speak out openly about raising the level of transparency and honesty in their field?
Is it time for more scientists to speak out openly about raising the level of transparency and honesty in their field?
I think we are just beginning, more and more, to recognize the inherent limitations of terms like 'scientist'. Media outlets have to struggle to be the most clicked-on, first to break every story no matter how poorly researched or even conceived. The average citizen has access to resources that can verify the accuracy of almost anything. Unfortunately this tends to get lost among the increasingly noisy media. It also requires discipline, patience, and focus to actually apply such methods to anything. Most of the time we just take what we hear at face value - this has always been the way of things. Now, however, we feel somehow betrayed by our own conceptions when they turn out to be wrong.
... short term thinking. The mindset of our era is corporate heads wanting quick turn around for profit. This is what Harper did to canada, he re-oriented the science division towards the oil sands "supporting industry" any serious research that requires any length or depth gets cut.
just like in the private sector we have seen more and more engineering called R&D, in academia there is more non-research people pushing for research that produces practical results. The result is actually less true research in major research universities. This combined with shrinking tenure track positions, older researchers staying longer in their positions, more and more post docs with no ability to get research money because it all goes to people that are proven Principal Investigators means that very few recent graduates of MS or PhD programs can actually follow their research instincts. Instead they do work on the projects of people who want to make safe decisions. I saw this in the large corporations world wide and in major research universities in the US over the last decade two decades.
The real issue is science journalism.
... it's the media messing things up. The endless race to publish something, anything, leads to headlines like "XYZ is bad for you!" Then you read the actual study, and it turns out the "reporter" is talking about a minor study on a different topic that had a mere handful of study participants. Of course, no effort is made to actually interview the study authors, or "the authors did not respond to our request for an interview." I find that Gawker and HuffPo are among the worst offenders.
As a publishing scientist, I can completely agree with your assessment. If you have followed anything in science recently, especially the life sciences, then you'll know that we are doing things routinely that were impossible just 10 to 15 years ago, with excellent reliability and reproducibility. Take whole genome sequencing as just one of many examples. There is a lot more science being done around the world now, and a lot more bad science along with it. I don't know of studies that have looked at trends on this, but my guess is that the percentage of bad science probably has not changed too much. But countries like China have entered basic research in a big way, and that means lots more scientists working at more projects. However, the squeeze on scientific funding in places like the US, which has become increasingly difficult to obtain even for very worthwhile projects, has certainly increased pressure on scientists, with negative results in terms of quality and reliability.
A brain is a terrible thing to waste... Mind? That's debatable.
Someone (I forget where) once claimed that editors are disinclined to actually use these suggestions - instead, they'll remember the names for the next time they receive a manuscript on a similar topic from a different group. I doubt most scientists would complain if these recommendations disappeared entirely. What we're usually much more worried about, instead, is that the editor will send our paper to our arch-enemy who constantly bad-mouths us at meetings and is working on a similar project. (Or a notorious pedant who will dismiss any research that doesn't conform to his ideas about theory.)
As long as these goals are present and more important to scientists and the scientific community at large than doing actual science, this will always be a serious problem.
Having worked in academia for a while, I don't entirely disagree with your diagnosis, but I think you're mischaracterizing the motives of scientists. Most of us really want to do actual science and not have to worry about money, and no one actually gets excited about grant writing the way they do about a successful experiment. The problem is that our incentive system is so screwed up that dealing with it occupies an increasing amount of our time. Even very thoughtful, scrupulous, and dedicated scientists whom I greatly respect get sidetracked by these practical concerns. It's incredibly depressing to watch, and one reason why I desperately want out.
I've done biomedical research in the US and Sweden. The incentive structure is totally different. Swedish scientiests take baby steps and reproduce results repeatedly before moving on. American scientists are all trying to win the Nobel prize. They shoot for the big result and nobody gets a grant in the US for repeating results of someone else. Is it a surprise that people respond to the incentives before them?
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
I'll add to this.
We have to separate 'science' from 'scientists' in a similar way you have to separate any practice from its practitioners.
Science is a really good methodology to get at the *truth* mainly by testing your hypothesis (scientific method).
In the end though, scientists are just people, as in any other group. They can and will be influenced by pride, status, money, power, politics...as any other group of people.
It's a tough line of argument where people end up talking about 'true science'
It's not just scientific journals, people will sometimes dismiss entire areas of 'science', especially in the social sciences/economics. Yet, from the outside perspective, its the same voices of experts touting studies and reports to get at the *truth*.
In the end though from a social perspective, how can we guarantee scientists adhere to the scientific method and search for truth, any more than catholic priests adhere to their creed (while raping little children).
I don't they will as scientists are just people. Put more power, money, politics, institutions under the scientific banner, and I think human behavior will take precedence over the adherence to the scientific theory.
I tend to blame the modern political mindset rather than capitalism. I think the problem is that politicians tend to treat "science" as just another political party. I better explain that a little...
There seems to be an idea in political circules that perception == reality. i.e. whatever people believe to be true is effectively true, at least for purposes of governemnt and re-election. Because of this, politicians tend to state as truth whatever they want the truth to be, in the hope and expectation that if they convince enough people then that statement will become true, for political criteria of truth, anyway.
So when a scientist finds evidence for something that that works against a politician's aims, the politician tends react as if it was a political statement. It's automatically held to be false (because perception == truth) and the politican immediately move to discredit the offending notion by whatever means necessary. It's a fundamental clash of mindsets.
Lately, I think science as a whole must have been causing more than the usual amount of headaches in some quarters, because the we seem to have moved from attempting to discredit particular scientific opinions to discrediting science as a whole. So we have attempts to apply moral relativism to scientific opinion, attempts to paint scientists as basically corrupt and venal, etc, etc.
That's my take on it anyway.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!