The Science-Is-Self-Correcting Myth
October 17th, 2013The scientific method sounds great on paper. Mix in grant swindling, incompetence and fraud and the “science” you get out the other side can turn into a bunch of bullshit.
But don’t worry, science is self correcting!
Via: The Economist:
Academic scientists readily acknowledge that they often get things wrong. But they also hold fast to the idea that these errors get corrected over time as other scientists try to take the work further. Evidence that many more dodgy results are published than are subsequently corrected or withdrawn calls that much-vaunted capacity for self-correction into question. There are errors in a lot more of the scientific papers being published, written about and acted on than anyone would normally suppose, or like to think.
Various factors contribute to the problem. Statistical mistakes are widespread. The peer reviewers who evaluate papers before journals commit to publishing them are much worse at spotting mistakes than they or others appreciate. Professional pressure, competition and ambition push scientists to publish more quickly than would be wise. A career structure which lays great stress on publishing copious papers exacerbates all these problems. “There is no cost to getting things wrong,” says Brian Nosek, a psychologist at the University of Virginia who has taken an interest in his discipline’s persistent errors. “The cost is not getting them published.”
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Fraud is very likely second to incompetence in generating erroneous results, though it is hard to tell for certain. Dr Fanelli has looked at 21 different surveys of academics (mostly in the biomedical sciences but also in civil engineering, chemistry and economics) carried out between 1987 and 2008. Only 2% of respondents admitted falsifying or fabricating data, but 28% of respondents claimed to know of colleagues who engaged in questionable research practices.
Good post. I’m always amazed at the various myths surrounding “Science” in our culture, and how those myths are blindly embraced by so many.
Fact: the only practitioners of Science (as far as we know) are deeply flawed creatures known as Humans; specifically, their actions are very often driven by greed and vanity — as opposed to the quest for truth. The idea that these deep and long-standing flaws would not effect the conclusions and results they achieve when (allegedly) practicing Science is of course ludicrous. And yet all you have to do is say the word “Science” and millions of people simply bow down and accept the pronouncement-du-jour without question.
And that’s another reason we home school: nothing crushes the spirit of independent thought like the drone factories we call “public schools”.
Slightly tangential, but T.S. Kuhn’s ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ is a good read on how scientific consensus actually changes, rather than how we like to imagine it does.
zeke
@zeke Thanks for reminding me of that book! We read that in school, really enjoyed it.
Epic fraud: How to succeed in science (without doing any)–Envy those who succeed by making up their data? Here’s how you can, too!
http://arstechnica.com/science/2012/07/epic-fraud-how-to-succeed-in-science-without-doing-any/