Is Scientific Research Integrity Dead?
I am often shocked how people consider science to be 100% true without recognizing that our understanding is constantly evolving and scientific facts have continually been proven wrong and corrected as more evidence and understanding is gained.
I'm not saying that we cannot trust science - not by a long shot. Instead, I'm saying we need to be more critical of scientific researcher's findings.
It seems more and more scientific discovery is being fueled by funding resources with preconceived ideas/opinions that lead to "expected" results regardless of the real scientific research findings. In other words, if you want next year's research funded, you better have findings that conform to the funding resource's goals/expectations or you'll be out of work next year.
Also, more and more, scientific research seems to be a popularity or shock contest with the goal to be published in a journal regardless if you actually discovered or proved anything.
I like what John Arnold's foundation is doing.
http://www.arnoldfoundation.org/initiative/research-integrity/
https://www.wired.com/2017/01/john-arnold-waging-war-on-bad-science/
LJAF’s Research Integrity initiative aims to improve the reliability and validity of scientific research across fields that inform governmental policy, philanthropic endeavors, and individual decision making. When research is accurate, thorough, and accessible, it can have tremendously beneficial consequences for individuals and society. However, when research is flawed or hidden from public view, there is the potential for great harm. People often believe that if research is published in an academic journal, it is scientifically sound. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. A substantial portion of research does not adhere to rigorous standards for quality and transparency.
I think that you generalize a little bit. Most scientists are not as bad as one may think of after reading your post.
Science is in constant evolution. That is what is called the scientific method. What is thought to be correct today may become incorrect or just a bad approximation tomorrow. The idea is to try to learn to understand the world better. And a good scientist is always asking questions...
I now take my field as a good counterexample. Even if it is true you can be published very easily (there are publishers proposing to publish any article ask for a few hundreds of dollars), established researchers don't pay attention to those. They are just meaningless. Only well recognized journals matter and being published in those is not as easy.
First, I'm honored to have a scientist in both training and profession respond to my article. Secondly, I mean no disrespect to your profession, I'm obviously scientifically curious and enjoy reading about new discoveries made each day.
To your point, I absolutely am over generalizing in this article. And on purpose. Even more so, the article title is absolutely outrageous. My intention being to draw attention to the situation. Just as in any field, there will be both good and bad actors, science is not exempt.
As a general population, we too often assume scientists draw conclusions that are above argument. Most people accept scientific findings, regardless if it is from a reputable or junk source, with the same regard as religious instruction from their religious leaders. Some of the bad actors in scientific community are taking advantage of this and it's quite concerning. We live in a new era where fake news is everywhere and scientific findings are bundled in with the rest of the fake news out there. I believe most scientists understand and recognize bad science when they see it, that's not my concern at all. It's the general public, and worse the various journalists who overblow or misstate findings, who don't have the wherewithal to make this recognition and provides the rationale for me having written this article.
Hi @xerxes612,
It is my pleasure to answer, even if I disagree (you opened a debate, I guess :) )
One of the major problem of scientists is communication. Even if efforts are made (and this more and more).
Another problem is the connection with the media. You could for instance, explain to a journalist that A implies B or C, but that the chances C is realized are 1000 times larger. As a result, you got a press release explaining how chocking is the fact than A implies B. Period. End of the story. And for this sort of issues, we have little control (except writing our own press release, which some institutes like CERN actually does.
And finally, it is also true that for the general audience, a scientific publication is a scientific publication, which is not the case for us (it may strongly depend on the journal where it has been published, as I said above).
So to sum up, I very agree with you on many point, but I was a bit chocked by the generalization :)
By the way, we have a channel on the steemit chat, the steemSTEM channel, where science lovers can discuss science (and scientists are among them). Maybe will you be interested to pay us a visit ^^
I was unaware of the SteemIt chat service, I'm registering now.
Thanks!
Please join us, although i will be away for a few days :)
I think that the problem is in how the mainstream media interpret evidence without evaluating the study at all- all published articles are flawed and a good researcher will be transparent about this.
Nailed it.
Science continues and remains the answer, not the problem.
We are living in an era of "fake news". Reporting on scientfic findings are not exempt.
I would add that the funding angle only exacerbates the problem.
Nice article- would be good to hear more on the subject. Have you heard of Ben Goldacre?
http://www.badscience.net/
He's my hero :)
Thanks Shammy! I'll definitely put up another article or two.
BTW, had never heard of Ben Goldacre, but what an ace. Just finished reading an article on his site on a company paying authors for citations in their journal articles - http://www.badscience.net/2015/08/so-this-company-cyagen-is-paying-authors-for-citations-in-academic-papers/
horrible... but interesting... Thanks for the referral.