Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

Science Fraud

The rules of science are meticulous. They mix poorly with the rules of business and politics. The result is usually frustrated scientists and shabby science. The following article describes a study that reveals some of the problems:

Many Scientists Admit to Misconduct

Few scientists fabricate results from scratch or flatly plagiarize the work of others, but a surprising number engage in troubling degrees of fact-bending or deceit, according to the first large-scale survey of scientific misbehavior.

More than 5 percent of scientists answering a confidential questionnaire admitted to having tossed out data because the information contradicted their previous research or said they had circumvented some human research protections.



Not only does this suggest that we really need to revise the way science is funded, published, and otherwise handled ... it also hints at wider problems. If following the rules does not meet people's needs, if the rules are stupid or arbitrary or unevenly enforced, and/or if people hate the ones responsible for making and enforcing the rules, then the rules will be broken. Not once or twice, not by spectacular troublemakers or poorly disciplined failures, but frequently and by large numbers of people. Sometimes they just bend the rules a little in ways that are pervasively damaging. Other times they ignore the rules and do what works for them. It doesn't matter, really, because the mess at the end is similar. If the rules are a mess, they don't work and people don't follow them.

We have a lot of rule systems that are a mess, and people aren't following them. We should work on fixing that before so many people get so far into the habit of ignoring the rules that they can't follow even the good ones.
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  • 7 comments
je_reviens

je_reviens

April 28 2009, 00:13:45 UTC 12 years ago

It's 5% -- there's no need ot throw the baby out with the bathwater. 95% of scientists are ethical and the scientific method works. This doesn't say the rules are not meeting peoples' needs -- it says that 5% of scientists are unethical and need to find another job.
ysabetwordsmith

No...

ysabetwordsmith

April 28 2009, 00:31:02 UTC 12 years ago

... that's an excerpt, not the whole article. Numbers in some other sections are substantially higher.

Furthermore, some scientists said that they tampered with the design or results of studies to please sponsors. That's closely related to sponsor-caused problems in other fields, as when sponsors threaten journalists or get them fired to prevent embarrassing stories from emerging.

The end result is flawed data. Flawed data leads to flawed decisions. That's a problem.
christinaathena

Re: No...

christinaathena

April 28 2009, 00:59:02 UTC 12 years ago Edited:  April 28 2009, 01:00:18 UTC

Most scientists are still highly ethical and honest, but, yes, there are a lot of problems. Unfortunately, scientists have a tendency to assume the best of their colleagues, a trust that is normally warranted, but from time to time can be problematic. Like the recent case of the anesthesiologist who was discovered to have falsified dozens of studies.

Science is self-correcting. Frauds and errors are detected. Unfortunately, it can be a slow process, and with the rapid advancement of science and technology today, those delays in discovering fraud can be increasingly costly.

Deleted comment

ysabetwordsmith

Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

April 28 2009, 02:55:38 UTC 12 years ago

The principles of science are meticulous. The application ... varies. Many systems buckle in places under the weight of human elements.

Deleted comment

ysabetwordsmith

Re: Hmm...

ysabetwordsmith

April 28 2009, 05:03:11 UTC 12 years ago

At its core, science is an ideal. Ideals don't always fit well in the real world -- but they are goals to strive for, and when people deliberately distort them, that causes problems. Plus of course I'm sensitive to anything that distorts information.

Anonymous

April 28 2009, 08:35:28 UTC 12 years ago

Scientific research is a business like anything else. Scientists must compete very hard for grant funds to sustain research and it is a dog eat dog world out there. Although in theory scientists should be more objective, few researchers would be granted tenure or receive grant funds if their research results didn't promise to deliver on something. Under that kind of pressure, it is very easy to bend the truth.
marina_bonomi

marina_bonomi

April 28 2009, 10:20:37 UTC 12 years ago

+It's not a matter of rules themselves, IMO (as in safety rules or priciples of research), a lot of it is money.

Take, for instance, the debate on on embryo stem cell research: I've seen opponents treated as people blinded by a debatable ethical system to the wonders of progress, when even the father of embryo stem cell research does not pursue it anymore since he discovered a way to 'program' adult stem cell as pluripotent.
Since a few years already, adult stem cell research has done great progress in giving medical advances with no risk of rejection and at a fraction of the cost (and that's the crux of the matter, less money involved for the pharma businness).