Many Scientists Admit Unethical Practices 610
jangobongo writes "A surprising number of scientists engage in questionable research practices says a story at the Washington Post. According to a large-scale survey of scientific misbehavior, 15% admit to changing a study under pressure from a funding source. Other reasons for altering data include dropping data from a study based on a gut feeling and failing to include data that contradicts one's own research. This chart gives a quick rundown of the percentage of U.S. based scientists who reported having engaged in questionable research practices according to the survey."
Yay, lots of science isn't. (Score:5, Informative)
Already covered (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I for one (Score:2, Informative)
The study used loaded questions (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Fortunately... (Score:3, Informative)
Take Christianity, for instance. It started off as a sect of Judaism, and remained largely so until a Roman Emperor, Constantine, made it the official religion of Rome, transfusing it with practices for the surrounding pagan religions (e.g. Sunday worship named after Constantine's former sun-worshipping ways, the Easter/Ishtar festivals, Lent/Tammuz festivals, even Christmas was borrowed from Babylonian myths).
The difference between science and religion is one is dealing largely with the concrete, physical world, another with the spirtual world. I don't necessarily think the two ideas are exclusive; they can by all means co-exist.
As seen on Fark (Score:2, Informative)
School and relativity (Score:5, Informative)
Also, if graders at university level care more about how a paper is formatted and (nicely) written, than if the experiments were properly conducted, bad behaviour is encouraged.
I know people who made one good measurement, made up the rest and spend the remaining part of the time on the paper due at the end of the day. While others spend their time on the experiments and had to write their papers quickly and hasty, forgoing a nice layout.
You didn't had time to do both.
Guess who had the better grade?
Sure, measuring the period of a swinging pendulum may not be groundbreaking, but it's all about instilling the correct work habit.
Perhaps what they did was good for getting a good grade, and they were the smarter of the rest of us. But it was damned lousy science.
Yes, after all these years, I am still "upset" about it.
Re:Ethics (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Changing a study is not necessarily unethical (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I realized this when.. (Score:1, Informative)
In fact, many dictators are admirers of art and culture. It seems entirely within reason that they might care for a certain plant more than the humans under their reign.
The cause of cancer is a coverup. (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe this article would shed some light [preventcancer.com] on how the plastics and pesticide industry owns the media and covers it up. They actually control the American Cancer Society which they use skillfully use to control anything that might hurt business.
We know the cause of cancer. More here on cause of breast cancer and organochlorides. [fwhc.org] We just can't stop the industry that owns our government.
One more link on the frontline investigation that industry tried to stop on pestcide effects on children. [cjog.net]
Re:Creationism (Score:5, Informative)
Starting in the 1960s, and just reaching a fever pitch, we have millions of christians who swear that their bible/religion/church says that the Earth is only 6000 years old.
Wow. You never heard of the Scopes Monkey Trials, huh?
(Hint: That was back in 1925, and along with the failure of prohibition signaled the winding down of a "revivalist" period which goes back to the 1890s, and the radical abolitionist movements several decades before that. Fundamentalism in America is a lot older than you seem to think it is.)
Didn't your High School force you to sit through the movie versionof that shitty play?
Survey not representative of all scientists (Score:5, Informative)
Physics Today has a good story [aip.org] on ethics issues in physics. It seems that data falsification is relatively rare (the few high-profile cases demonstrate that it is generally a career-ending move), but other ethical problems certainly do occur. In particular, Physics Today talks about the abuse of graduate students (a problem that's probably not limited to physics).
As a graduate student myself, I've got things pretty good, but some of my friends are definitely being mistreated. One guy is working 70-hour weeks and is still getting told by his supervisor that he's not working hard enough. I'm sure that if he protested he'd quickly find himself tossed out of the group and having to start his thesis research again from scratch.
And when it does fork... (Score:3, Informative)
A correlation between scientists and the media? (Score:2, Informative)
A scientists or news media group who must obtain their funding via commercial means will never have reliable information as their first goal.
Their first goal will always be to obtain further funding. In the scientific world this leads to falsified results and very unscientific behavior. Similarly, in the American corporate news world, the focus is not so much on presenting the truth, but rather it is on maintaining advertisers (by not publishing articles that may "offend" such advertisers), increasing reader-/viewership by appealing to fundamentalist views, and other non-integrity related issues.
On the other hand, when money is not a problem, the reporting is often far better. We can see examples of this in the state-funded news broadcasters such as the CBC and BBC. The reporting and journalistic integrity of such broadcasters is extremely high, as they do not need to grovel for financial support. When it comes to scientists, those who need do not need to fight tooth and nail for funding will far more often be able to produce high-quality results. That is just the nature of the game.
Re:Fortunately... (Score:4, Informative)
Constantine wanted order in the Church which was wracked with controversy over a particular theological issue, so he called the council. After convening it, he left the discussions up to the bishops, who ended up condemning Arius. Constantine was so uninterested in the theological determination that he was actually baptized on his deathbed by an Arian bishop, a fact that cannot be reconciled with the notion that he was responsible for the council's decision. It actually took a second council to finally put an end to the schism.
Easter wasn't invented at Nicaea. It had been celebrated since the second century at least -- probably earlier; this is just when the avaiable documentary evidence was written. Of course, it wasn't called Easter, and wouldn't be until a few hundred years later when some obscure Germanic tribes were converted. It still isn't called that in most parts of the world. It's ancient and proper name by which it was known to the Fathers at Nicaea is Pascha, the Greek adaptation of the Hebrew Pesach: Passover. "Passover" and "Easter" are the same word in the Greek Bible. (What actually was done at Nicaea relative to Pascha was that a consistent method of determining when it should fall was decided upon. Before that there were a variety of methods, and different local churches were celebrating it on different days. But they were celebrating it.)
There's no credible cultural or etymological link between "Ishtar" (whom Constantine did not worship at any point in his life) and "Easter". "Easter" comes from the Anglo-Saxon month "Eostremonath", of obscure meaning. Bede claimed it referred to a goddess named Eostre, but he is writing generations after his people converted and not from living memory. There's no contemporary mention of this goddess at all, and modern scholars have concluded that he was just guessing [religionnewsblog.com] and was probably wrong.
Christianity always had a distinctive organization from Judaism -- note from Acts 15 that questions were not referred to the Sanhedrin but to a Christian council, with the decision announced not by a kohan or rabbi, but by the local bishop. It grew even moreso after the destruction of the Temple in 70 and the levelling of Jerusalem in 120 when the Jewish population was scattered. It was clearly not Jewish by the time Nicaea was held, even among its Semitic adherents.
If this is your myth, you can live with it if you want, but please don't try to present it as fact. It just isn't.
Re:The cause of cancer is a coverup. (Score:2, Informative)
Most of what he says may (or may not) be exactly right, but the one area of his essay that I have some (personal, studied, non-internet derived) expertise in, was definitely inaccurate and misleading.
He may be complete honest. It is possible that the inaccuracies are perpetrated unconciously. What matters to me is that the only part of the essay that I'm sure about is wrong, so I can't trust the rest.
Re:http://www.phrma.org/ (Score:1, Informative)
Re:The cause of cancer is a coverup. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Creationism (Score:3, Informative)
"So much for peer review..." (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Creationism (Score:5, Informative)
As the other poster tried to point out to you, fundamentalism is *much* older than you seem to think. It's influence has waxed and waned over the centuries, but it's never been absent and rarely insignificant.
Re:Yay, lots of science isn't. (Score:3, Informative)
No, it isn't. Generally reviewers get the manuscript with names attached. I don't know of any journal that does "blind" reviews.
So they fudge research but confess in a survey? (Score:2, Informative)