BBC RADIO 4
Episode 1
Saving Science from the Scientists
Episode 1 of 2
Is science quite as scientific as it's supposed to be?
After years of covering science in the news, Alok Jha began to wonder whether science is as rigorous as it should be, and in this two-part series, he will try to find out.
Many of us might be forgiven for assuming that the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a precise and controlled process, one that involves detailed experiments, careful analysis, peer review and demonstrable evidence. But what if it's not as simple as that?
Scientists are human beings after all, so what if they are prone to the same weaknesses, failings and uncertainties as everyone else? And what would that mean for their findings?
Alok delves into dodgy data, questionable practices and genuine ambiguity to ask if human decision making is impeding scientific progress, and if anything can be done about it.
Along the way he hears from academics who think almost all science is wrong, scientists who think the system is in crisis and those who say error and uncertainty are actually an integral part of science's creative process. He'll also talk to a former professor caught out after going to the ultimate extreme - faking his data - to find out what drives someone to betray their entire field.
AUDIO
Episode 1, Saving Science from the Scientists - BBC Radio 4
It would be nice if those radio broadcasts were in text. But maybe I can get to listening to the program. Anyway, thanks for posting this. I know the Christian faith is often under attack for some phenomena where the scientific facts of the object are reported on yet doubted because it does not line up with a natural explanation.
Well, there are other reasons science labs or scientists need to be monitored or questioned as well. Just looking for funding for their projects is reason enough some may falsify data. Here is an old article from 2014 I believe which also makes mention of this issue.
How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research?
How many scientists fabricate or falsify research? Daniele Fanelli
The image of scientists as objective seekers of truth is periodically jeopardized by the discovery of a major scientific fraud. Recent scandals like Hwang Woo-Suk’s fake stem-cell lines [1] or Jan Hendrik Schön’s duplicated graphs [2] showed how easy it can be for a scientist to publish fabricated data in the most prestigious journals, and how this can cause a waste of financial and human resources and might pose a risk to human health. How frequent are scientific frauds? The question is obviously crucial, yet the answer is a matter of great debate [3], [4].
A popular view propagated by the media [5] and by many scientists (e.g. [6]) sees fraudsters as just a “few bad apples” [7]. This pristine image of
science is based on the theory that the scientific community is guided by norms including disinterestedness and organized scepticism, which are incompatible with misconduct [8], [9]. Increasing evidence, however, suggests that known frauds are just the “tip of the iceberg”, and that many cases are never discovered. The debate, therefore, has moved on to defining the forms, causes and frequency of scientific misconduct [4].
What constitutes scientific misconduct? Different definitions are adopted by different institutions, but they all agree that fabrication (invention of data or cases), falsification (wilful distortion of data or results) and plagiarism (copying of ideas, data, or words without attribution) are serious forms of scientific misconduct [7], [10]. Plagiarism is qualitatively different from the other two because it does not distort scientific knowledge, although it has important consequences for the careers of the people involved, and thus for the whole scientific enterprise [11].
There can be little doubt about the fraudulent nature of fabrication, but falsification is a more problematic category. Scientific results can be distorted in several ways, which can often be very subtle and/or elude researchers’ conscious control. Data, for example, can be “cooked” (a process which mathematician Charles Babbage in 1830 defined as “an art of various forms, the object of which is to give to ordinary observations the appearance and character of those of the highest degree of accuracy”[12]); it can be “mined” to find a statistically significant relationship that is then presented as the original target of the study; it can be selectively published only when it supports one’s expectations; it can conceal conflicts of interest, etc… [10], [11], [13], [14], [15]. Depending on factors specific to each case, these misbehaviours lie somewhere on a continuum between scientific fraud, bias, and simple carelessness, so their direct inclusion in the “falsification” category is debatable, although their negative impact on research can be dramatic [11], [14], [16]. Henceforth, these misbehaviours will be indicated as “questionable research practices” (QRP, but for a technical definition of the term see [11]).
Read more…
How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data
