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."
so (Score:4, Funny)
I want my mommie.
Scientists of course deny this... (Score:2)
Re:Scientists of course deny this... (Score:3, Insightful)
That said, I'm not a big fan of scientists who don't make a stand. If the most educated of us won't cry foul when som
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:The cause of cancer is a coverup. (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/abstract/48/3/739 [ajcn.org]
Re:The cause of cancer is a coverup. (Score:3, Insightful)
Even those studies may be flawed if they didn't check for toxins in the fish or animal meat. [allenpress.com]
These organochlorines do NOT decompose and accumulate in the breast area.
It explains everything. The plastics and pesticide industry are very corrupt just like cigarette industry.
Re:The cause of cancer is a coverup. (Score:3, Informative)
Ethics (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ethics (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Ethics (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, science is by nature self-correcting, but when the errors are endemically embedded in the existing systems it can take a lot of time and convict a lot of Gallileos before it gets around to it.
In the meantime time, money and even lives are lost over bullcrap.
The practice of "science," as she is spoke, has become just another job undertaken by people who happened to go for a science degree instead of an MBA or joining the plumbers union.
I have come to empathize with Heinlein, who, through the mouth of Lazarus Long, said something along the lines of "I stopped calling myself doctor when they started handing out PhDs to anyone."
KFG
Re:Ethics (Score:3, Funny)
I've got one thing going for me! (Score:5, Funny)
This was an undergraduate ornithology project that was supposed to take six weeks, according to my advisor. Every professor I've told about it since then has said, that's graduate level at least...
Re:I've got one thing going for me! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I've got one thing going for me! (Score:5, Insightful)
I for one (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I for one (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I for one (Score:3, Insightful)
Fortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Fortunately... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fortunately... (Score:2)
WHAT??? Religion is about unchanging absolutes, it is not supposed to change. If your religion is the one true religion ("true" being the key word), how can it have changed at all, even after 2000 years?
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,
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:Fortunately... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. Religion never reviews its own practices, views, and procedures, and changes them. That's why Catholic masses are still spoken in Latin, women must wear hats in church, women can't be deacons or altar servers, diabetics are forced not to eat on Fridays, the church condemns homosexuality as an abberation (actually, some Christian churches do this, but Catholic Canon Law states that homosexuality is not chosen by the individual, the causes of it are unknown, and a man cannot be condemned for being something that is not of his choosing).
I'd posit that religion is much slower to change than science, but no less capable of it.
For the record, I am not a practicing religious person of any kind and generally distrust organized religion in general. I did, however, think your post was predictable backlash against what you believe to be Christian hegemony.
Re:Fortunately... (Score:2)
Re:Fortunately... (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, religion doesn't change as much as it forks.
Re:Fortunately... (Score:2)
And when it does fork... (Score:3, Informative)
Creationism (Score:4, Insightful)
A century ago, virtually all christian sects had no problem with the scientific conclusion that the Earth is several billion years old.
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.
Sure, religion changes all the time. It's just that science generally changes in response to *evidence*. Religion changes in response to someone's agenda.
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?
Re:Creationism (Score:5, Insightful)
The recent "Earth is only 6000 years old" movement really needs a better name, because while it's tied to creationism, it isn't exactly the same thing. The fundies started up with the insistence on 6000 years simply because it pretty much dismisses the possibility of any evolutionary processes. By the 60s, with the overwhelming majority of science pointing to evolutionary theory as correct, they needed *something* as evidence against it.
But you're right, by the proper definition of the word, creationism has been around for a long, long time. We really need a term to separate the two. Ussherism, named for the bishop who originally calculated the 6000 years back in the 17th century?
(And no, I didn't see the movie. Maybe it's an American thing only? Got a link?
Re:Creationism (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Creationism (Score:3, Interesting)
That doesn't even explain it though. At best you can claim 'civilization' is 6000 years old. Even if you take the Bible literally (which I do) there is a good part of Genesis that doesn't give a timeframe. Adam and Eve were in the Garden, but for how long. Genesis 4:16 - " And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived". If Adam and Eve were the only two people, where the heck did Cain get a Wife??? Obviou
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:Fortunately... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Fortunately... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Fortunately... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unlike religion? How can somebody on the side of science feel comfortable making statements about something they only have vague stereotypical impressions of?
Re:Fortunately... (Score:2)
Re:Fortunately... (Score:3, Funny)
Eventually. You gotta admit that having the earth open up and swallow those who get it wrong is a lot quicker method of getting the right result though.
When Many People Fudge Data (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll ignore the anti-religious flamebait and move on to point out that the same pressures which cause one group of scientists to fudge data may exist across an entire field.
Read this Slashdot article [slashdot.org]. In the second linked article, on the forth page, the scientist who initially got a furor started about the effects of cell phones on DNA states:
Yay, lots of science isn't. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Yay, lots of science isn't. (Score:5, Insightful)
As a graduate student, I feel pressure from my advisor to not mention discrepant data or those conclusions/questions which detract from my overall hypotheses. It is unfortunate that such should occur, but I can see why it does happen. People want to be proven correct. If they set out to prove a hypothesis with a scientific experiment, and then after a few months or years of research, they discover that the evidence points against their hypothesis or that the method which they employed doesn't provide a conclusive solution, it can be tempting to 'throw out' some data. After all, they put in all of that effort, and they want their recognition. Usually, it means more papers, which oftentimes means more notoriety, job security, money, etc.
I'm not justifying this behavior because science should be done for the sake of understanding nature, not for making a paycheck, but I see where these scientists might be coming from.
Re:Yay, lots of science isn't. (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, that, but I think the biggest reason is that negative results are (almost always) unpublishable.
That's one of the many reasons I find research in industry so much more pleasureable than in academia. I'm given a problem, do the study and get paid whether the result is positive or negative, as long as it's right. There is so much less stress and so much less temptation to cut corners than when
Re:Yay, lots of science isn't. (Score:5, Interesting)
One of them was doing his dissertation on stellar pressure gradients. He was having this huge block writing his thesis, because his results contradicted a previously published paper's conclusions, and he couldn't figure out where he went wrong. After some digging and calculating, he realized that the prior paper's data contradicted their conclusion as well, and they had just faked the diagrams to match their predicted result.
So much for peer review...
Re:Yay, lots of science isn't. (Score:3, Interesting)
That's true. Not to mention the pressure of not to challenge mainstream ideas. That would be a career suicide. This is why scientists tried to fudge their data / experiments so that it looks like they agree on mainstream ideas and add things a little bit. This is quite common.
When you have something controversial that contradicts mainstream ideas, you will be frowned upon during the peer reviews and most likely will receive really really bad review that your paper get rejected almost immediately without
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.
Re:Yay, lots of science isn't. (Score:2)
"The reality is, however, that most scientific experiments are not reproduced."
Really, and I suppose you have data which backs that statement up?
Lets add Scientific Scepticism to the list as well.
Re:Yay, lots of science isn't. (Score:2)
1) Marketing - Cigerett company commisions someone to do a scientific study on the health problems associated with smokeing. Data altered to favor cigeretts could be a good reason for bad science.
2) Funding - Saying that results were successful in a pre test to someone you are trying to get funding from. This I would think of as the first step over the line of bad science. Unless you are pocketing the money rathe
Most Famous Unethical Scientist (Score:5, Funny)
In truth he just liked the attention of hanging out with Ginger, the movie star and Maryanne, the girl next door.
Re:Most Famous Unethical Scientist (Score:2)
Some scientist.
Re:Most Famous Unethical Scientist (Score:5, Funny)
He could have fixed the boat anytime he wanted...but then they would have gone back to civilization, where he was just a nerdy little nobody.
On that island, the Professor was God.
Re:Most Famous Unethical Scientist (Score:3, Funny)
My vote's for Professor Farnsworth:
Already covered (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Already covered (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not as simple as that. Many research actually are reproducible. However, in most cases, they only show specific datasets that highlight of their research without mentioning that for other datasets the result of their research would be abysmal.
Another common misuse is that they handwave intermediary processes so that it's completely impossible to duplicate. The scientists have the alibi for the limit on the number of pages imposed by the scientific journal.
Both of these need an immediate attention
Is there any way... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Is there any way... (Score:2)
Re:Is there any way... (Score:2)
Re:Is there any way... (Score:2, Funny)
Please mod the parent as a troll. Thank You.
Don't listen to this. (Score:5, Funny)
This just goes to show... (Score:2)
Just a tweak (Score:3, Interesting)
government pressured unethical scientific behavior (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:government pressured unethical scientific behav (Score:2, Insightful)
While I agree that the current administration appears to be most guilty of fudgin
Re:government pressured unethical scientific behav (Score:5, Insightful)
Take a look at the various reactions to studies that show different ethnic groups, nationalities, and other genetically-similar categories of people (including men vs. women) have different intelligence distributions. The less-controversial results are the ones that say "Men are better at this type of abstract task, women are better at this other type of brain use," and even these get attacked by people who simply don't want to believe that their could be built-in differences.
And then you have "The Bell Curve" and similar studies. That specific study is questionable (not wrong, but it has issues), but other studies have repeatedly confirmed that different ethnicities can have markedly differing average IQs. The differences are statistically significant (meaning that they're not attributable to mere chance), though they're probably not practically all that significant. And it's not like saying "I'm Chinese, you're African, therefore I'm smarter than you," it's just saying that Chinese people tend to be smarter.
Strangely enough, the Left attacks these results bulldog-style. And most of the attacks aren't about the methodology, or the validity of the results. Most of the attacks seem to be "How could you possibly say such a thing?" It's like the reactions to Kinsey's sexuality studies: people base their values on assumed truths about the world, and when careful study reveals that the assumptions are false, people don't want to discard the basis of their value systems.
The point is, ANYbody, regardless of politics, can fall victim to resisting the truth because it's intellectually convenient to do so. Don't just blame the Bushies.
Re:government pressured unethical scientific behav (Score:4, Insightful)
Its the Sudo corrupt people who find it acceptable , those who are unwilling to change and only wish to have their world vies justified . This is not an issue of Right vs. left but Right(as in correct) vs. wrong.
Re:government pressured unethical scientific behav (Score:3, Insightful)
Here in Canada it was all over the news... The white house changed the wording of scientific research to make it sound like there was a great doubt on the climate change and its link to human activity.
I guess that would confirm the affirmation "encouraged by the Bush Administration"
They missed one! (Score:2)
Unethical?!? (Score:2)
There's nothing unethical about my practices....I tell you those sharks wanted those frickin' laser beams grafted to their heads...they pretty much begged for them!
^_^
Quote board at Northwestern... (Score:3, Funny)
Dr. Strangelove... (Score:2, Funny)
The study used loaded questions (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The study used loaded questions (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The study used loaded questions (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The study used loaded questions (Score:3, Insightful)
It is perfectly legitimate to toss out data in the early stages when you are working the bugs out of an experimental method. But you have to toss all of it, not just the part you don't like. But at some point, you ha
Sciencology (Score:5, Interesting)
Questionable... (Score:2)
Well, I find the chart about 15% suspect, because as we know, surveys are manipulated by scientists...
I think my head just exploded from circular logic... *OUCH*
Surprise, surprise ! (Score:3, Interesting)
I posted that story twelve hours ago and it was rejected. Maybe because the link was in the Baltimore Sun (only link I found with Google, I read the story in a French webnewspaper) and not in Yahoo News / Washington Post ?..
</rant>
here [baltimoresun.com] is a additional link from the Baltimore Sun.
The full original article is in Nature.
As seen on Fark (Score:2, Informative)
In other news... (Score:3, Insightful)
white house response (Score:2, Insightful)
What are the odds that the Republicans are going to use this report to try to smear scientists even more than they have?
Although if you look at the original Nature article...
...it actually sounds an awful lot like the Bush White House [bbc.co.uk].
Triple-blind study (Score:4, Interesting)
As such, I feel that this type of study needs what I've coined a "triple-blind study" in which a neutral party is placed between the funder and the researcher.
This neutral party would then choose researcher(s) at random from a pool of candidates qualified to do the research and frame the question in a neutral way. The funding source and desired outcome would be withheld from the researcher.
How about this study? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How about this study? (Score:2)
In academia . . . (Score:2)
http://www.phrma.org/ (Score:5, Interesting)
The story is right here [npr.org] and it outlines a major problem with all scientific research, but most acutely in the pharmaceutical industry, where the Bush administration has gutted the FDA and made them the lapdog of the drug companies. Capital markets use science and statistics as weapons, and objective evidence of problems exists only when other drug companies that compete fund research to show problems.
Bush said last week that he still wasn't interested in a Kyoto like treaty, because global warming needed more "research" and study. And, of course, the report that shows that an employee of the American Petroleum Council was sitting inside the EPA censoring reports that showed any causality between burning fossil fuels and global warming. Can't have that.
Corrupt scientists. No objective sources of information. And people wonder why there is a skyrocketing reliance on religion by our political leaders, who pander and are willing to teach nonsense like "Intelligent Creation" alongside scientific evidence of darwinism and natural selection. Divinity sells. And a assailable scientific community only makes it easier.
We seem to be leaving an age of reason, and entering a new Dark age. Instead of Thomas Aquinas we have Dr. Phil.
Dept. of Agriculture too. (Score:5, Interesting)
After review he was warned that if he published it he would lose all current and future funding. Apparently the meat packers did not appreciate the information. AFAIK it has never been released toa journal.
In general, Ag. research was subverted long ago, as was probably Economics. What is new is that ideology is now playing a major role, including things such as 'Intelligent design', not just money. In general, it is starting to look more like Germany circa early 30's where only ideologically pure research could be done. If I were a reasearcher I would be looking for a research friendlier country.
So who did THIS study? (Score:2)
I suppsoe we're supposed to believe this number hasnt been inflated since the study was done by a ethics evaluation company?
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.
Understand science better... (Score:2, Funny)
Changing a study is not necessarily unethical (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Changing a study is not necessarily unethical (Score:2, Informative)
And we should trust these numbers? (Score:5, Funny)
Reached for comment, the researchers admitted that the actual number was 9%, but they felt some scientists were not willing to admit their wrong-doing, and their editor wasn't going to publish the story unless the number was at least 15%.
there are too many scientists! (Score:5, Interesting)
None of what I just said excuses scientific misconduct. But I think why it happens is just a symptom of a bigger problem (at least in biology). There are too many Ph.D. level scientists! The incessant cranking out of these highly educated people is creating an oversupply of researchers. Every Ph.D. who gets a tenure-track research position (these positions are highly competitive; typically 50-100 highly qualified individuals who have equally impressive CVs compete for one spot) has to stake out their little project and protect it like a lioness protects her cubs. If they're not careful and blink the wrong way, they could be scooped by competitors (i.e. beaten to publication); a good chunk of their career just went down the drain. This after a completely unreasonable length of postgraduate training (6-7 years for a Ph.D. and 4-5 years postdoctoral training after that is quite typical), poor pay and lousy hours. All because IMO there are too many people working on the same shit.
I think that to fix the problem, something fundamental needs to change in the way scientists are produced. I don't pretend to know what the best solution would be, but one idea I've been throwing around is to train more M.S. level people than Ph.D. level people. These would be employed as staff scientists rather than independent principal investigators, such that there would be enough of a labor pool to actually do the work, but without having one's career constantly in jeopardy.
real science (Score:2)
Funding Considerations (Score:2)
After all, why would anyone grant you additional funding if all you have to say is that everything is A-OK?
The other side of the coin (Score:2)
84.5% are lying.
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.
The irony (Score:3, Funny)
In other news, the scientists who conducted the survey are now admitting they fabricated the survey results.
Limited Dishonesty (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Reminds me... (Score:2)
Re:This is news? (Score:2)