June 11, 2005
DETECTION OR ERECTION?:
The Scientific Contrarian: a review of SCIENCE FRICTION: Where the Known Meets the Unknown By Michael Shermer (George Scialabba, washington Post)
"Science," Michael Shermer writes, "is a great Baloney Detection Kit." Founder of the Skeptics Society, publisher of Skeptic magazine, columnist for Scientific American, editor of "The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience" and author of "Why People Believe Weird Things," Shermer is a veteran baloney detector. Fortunately, that is not all science is, or Shermer is.
Many Scientists Admit to Misconduct: Degrees of Deception Vary in Poll; Researchers Say Findings Could Hurt the Field (Rick Weiss, June 9, 2005, Washington Post)
Few scientists fabricate results from scratch or flatly plagiarize the work of others, but a surprising number engage in troubling degrees of fact-bending or deceit, according to the first large-scale survey of scientific misbehavior.Posted by Orrin Judd at June 11, 2005 7:19 PMMore than 5 percent of scientists answering a confidential questionnaire admitted to having tossed out data because the information contradicted their previous research or said they had circumvented some human research protections.
Ten percent admitted they had inappropriately included their names or those of others as authors on published research reports.
And more than 15 percent admitted they had changed a study's design or results to satisfy a sponsor, or ignored observations because they had a "gut feeling" they were inaccurate.
Wow...those are just the ones who admit it, to either pollsters or themselves.
Still, it seems a little harsh to say this proves that science isn't a good baloney-detection kit (which I believe is Carl Sagan's formulation...did Shermer lift it without attribution?). Presumably, science properly conducted is reasonably good at weeding out the truth, or else fraudulent results wouldn't be problematic.
Posted by: Matt Murphy at June 12, 2005 12:36 AMNo, it's just good at deriving fraudulent results that we can assign truth values to.
Posted by: oj at June 12, 2005 12:39 AMThis is why we can only trust scientific results that have been replicated.
Posted by: Joseph Hertzlinger at June 12, 2005 2:21 AMNo, it's just good at deriving fraudulent results that we can assign truth values to.
Which you can only say with a straight face because you take everything about science that works and label it "technology", and then claim that technology is something other than applied science.
Posted by: Michael Herdegen at June 12, 2005 6:35 AMTechnology faces the most skeptical lot going, consumers. Science just has to convince the credulous, scientists.
Posted by: oj at June 12, 2005 8:29 AMOJ, if that is the case, you would make a good scientist.
Posted by: Robert Duquette at June 12, 2005 9:39 PMI'm a great scientist. I don't believe in science.
Posted by: oj at June 13, 2005 7:23 AMWhat does that mean?
Posted by: Brit at June 13, 2005 11:16 AMBelievers don't test science scientifically, they just take it on faith.
Posted by: oj at June 13, 2005 11:56 AMSo if science isn't scientific, what is?
Posted by: Brit at June 16, 2005 8:06 AM