

Why Scientific Fraud is on the Rise - dreambird
http://thefastertimes.com/healthinvestigations/2009/12/04/why-scientific-fraud-is-on-the-rise/

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billswift
>a fourth reason is an appalling lack of enforcement by federal and state
agencies that are supposed to monitoring scientific misconduct. According to
The New York Times, a new Congressional report shows that the FDA takes years
to investigate researchers accused of scientific fraud, which means that many
of these scientists remain eligible to conduct research

Riiight. Like the gov't's witch-hunt against a researcher, Thereza Imanishi-
Kari, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Baltimore#Imanishi-
Kari_c...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Baltimore#Imanishi-Kari_case) ,
and documented more extensively in Kevles book, "The Baltimore Case".

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akamaka
This article is a complete waste of time. It follows the same pattern as the
exploitative "Violence is on the rise!" articles we see in the mainstream
news.

There's no examination of the fact that the number of scientists has exploded,
or that information sharing and public access to research are going through a
revolution, and absolutely no consideration of the wider problem of the
public's lack of understanding of science and the dismal state of science
journalism.

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ggchappell
> ... research shows an increase in the incidence of data manipulation in
> published papers ....

This does not necessarily mean that scientific fraud is on the rise, only that
a particular kind of fraud is on the rise. Is it possible that dishonest
scientists are simply turning more to data manipulation than to other kinds of
fraud? (And how would one tell?)

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xtho
Maybe because more??? people draw bold conclusions from insufficient data
sources (one expert interview + own reasoning) just to get that damn (blog)
article published?

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michael_dorfman
The presence of one expert + reasoning would put this in the top .01% of all
blog posts, by my reckoning.

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pwnstigator
_A third reason Garner didn’t mention is the increasing commercialization of
science and medicine, which has spawned an army of researchers on the take
from health product companies._

Science is a method of discovering truth about the natural world despite human
imperfections, misperceptions, and (more rarely) malevolence and fraud. It's a
process-- a system, if you will-- and one that few human cultures have been
able to implement.

Science requires a certain outcome-indifference. This is why it's hard-to-
impossible to study questions such as life after death (a universal concern
where everyone cares deeply about the answer) or whether there's a God. On the
other hand, one can scientifically study the mechanics of how the body dies,
because for most people, having the correct answer is more important than what
the answer (e.g. the precise biological processes through which it happens)
is.

The problem is that science, as a system, is under attack from commercial
pressures as well as the rapid pace of technological society. Technology and
industry continue to advance, but the regulation and verification of knowledge
(e.g. science) is being backlogged a bit, which allows a lot of fraud to get
through. Tack on the pressures on the individual to remain employed or get
tenure, and you get scientific fraud.

~~~
nollidge
The reason why God and the afterlife are impossible to study scientifically is
because they are unfalsifiable hypotheses, not because of anyone's attitude
toward them.

~~~
pwnstigator
Also true, and more correct than my claim from a philosophy-of-science
perspective. I am taking the science-as-process perspective.

