Scientific Dishonesty

[Fisherking]

It just is not in one field and it has been known and ongoing for decades.

This comes from what would normally be termed, left leaning scientist: http://quillette.com/2015/12/04/rebe...t-stereotypes/

Studies that support a preconceived agenda or the funding sources perceived leanings?

[Fragony]

Always been that way

[Beskar]

A good website on this topic - http://www.badscience.net/
If you want to look at research, I recommend tools such as CASP - http://www.casp-uk.net/

[Montmorency]

What you're thinking of is a long-standing problem in the social sciences, but the deeper truth is really much more uncomfortable: scientists in general are frequently just not good at evaluating and adapting methodologies, analyzing data, and elaborating the interconnected questions and scholarship that make single projects on very specific questions meaningful.

[rory_20_uk]

The other big problem is that journals like publishing positive findings. So often studies that fail to show anything aren't published and that information is then not available to everyone - so on a topic only 1 in 10 studies might show significance but no one will know about the other 9.

[wooly_mammoth]

Psychology isn't even a science. Sciences are things like physics, chemistry or engineering. Psychology, philosophy and other such nonsense is just having some random nobodies talking willy-nilly about nothing, as is the case of everyone involved in the article above.

[Beskar]

Psychology is a science. It applies scientific methodology to human behaviour.
Pseudo-Psychology is not a science though, and it is not even Psychology.

[Fisherking]

There is little money and no glory in proving the work of others in any field.

Even larger, there is risk in disproving the established “consensus”. Not only for the researcher but also for the publisher. Personal attacks and ruining of reputation are more that order of the day than is questioning the data.

Data is often merely accepted without verification if a study or experiment renders results favourable to the established line of thinking.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Psychology isn't even a science. Sciences are things like physics, chemistry or engineering. Psychology, philosophy and other such nonsense is just having some random nobodies talking willy-nilly about nothing, as is the case of everyone involved in the article above.

Engineering is not a science, merely the application of scientific knowledge.

Psychology is a science. It applies scientific methodology to human behaviour.
Pseudo-Psychology is not a science though, and it is not even Psychology.

Errrrrr....

Going back to the other topic you created for a moment... you're both right and both wrong. In broad strokes, experiments in Physics are easier to control with fewer unknown variables than those in Psychology.

[Pannonian]

There is little money and no glory in proving the work of others in any field.

Even larger, there is risk in disproving the established “consensus”. Not only for the researcher but also for the publisher. Personal attacks and ruining of reputation are more that order of the day than is questioning the data.

Data is often merely accepted without verification if a study or experiment renders results favourable to the established line of thinking.

Funnily enough, a trip to further establish the findings of prior scientists turned out to inspire the answer to one of the most asked questions in the history of science.

[Papewaio]

There is little money and no glory in proving the work of others in any field.

Even larger, there is risk in disproving the established “consensus”. Not only for the researcher but also for the publisher. Personal attacks and ruining of reputation are more that order of the day than is questioning the data.

Data is often merely accepted without verification if a study or experiment renders results favourable to the established line of thinking.

Actually disproving theories is one of the key functions of science. People get paid and glory too for butchering the current scared cow in science.

[Fisherking]

Actually disproving theories is one of the key functions of science. People get paid and glory too for butchering the current scared cow in science.

That is what is supposed to happen, ideally. In practice, it never quite goes so smoothly. It usually has to wait until the beast is dead.
You had best be very careful who's cow you go after.
Politics and money had best be on your side.

[Pannonian]

That is what is supposed to happen, ideally. In practice, it never quite goes so smoothly. It usually has to wait until the beast is dead.
You had best be very careful who's cow you go after.
Politics and money had best be on your side.

A student in uniformitarianism, on a field trip to reinforce the doctrine, turned out to be a pioneering advocate of catastrophism. In his particular case at least, his initially derided theory is now the almost universally accepted explanation.

[wooly_mammoth]

There is little money and no glory in proving the work of others in any field.

Even larger, there is risk in disproving the established “consensus”. Not only for the researcher but also for the publisher. Personal attacks and ruining of reputation are more that order of the day than is questioning the data.

Data is often merely accepted without verification if a study or experiment renders results favourable to the established line of thinking.

These are very gross generalizations. I would say they are applicable to nonsense fields (I don't mean to offend anyone, but that's how I see it and I like to speak plainly) like psychology or social "sciences". In fields like physics, chemistry or engineering and technology development (I see technology development as much of a science as fundamental research), a peer-reviewed and reputable journal will never accept a letter dealing with empirical data unless the source of the data is specified and it is an equally reputable one. A large part of the scientific community dedicates their careers to making sure that the numbers other use in their research are correct.

When somebody does forge data they are usually caught since many independent groups must reproduce a result before it is accepted by the community. As in the famous Pons & Fleischmann cold fusion experiment, or Ninov's discovery of superheavy elements, dishonest scientists are ostracized by the community and must pretty much quit and do something else with their lives.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

There are plenty of instances of "serious" scientists who refused to accept valid research.

Sir Fred Hoyle is an excellent example - he refused to accept the theory of the "Big Bang" due to his anti-religious prejudice.

He was a hugeley respected scientist in his day but when it came down to it the "rational" atheist was unable to accept anything that threatened his established world-view.

To believe that "hard" science has no bias is to buy into the myth that because you are dealing with "pure" numbers that the Science is "pure". All Science is enquiry carried out by human beings and therefore all Science is flawed and biased.

[Fisherking]

These are very gross generalizations. I would say they are applicable to nonsense fields (I don't mean to offend anyone, but that's how I see it and I like to speak plainly) like psychology or social "sciences". In fields like physics, chemistry or engineering and technology development (I see technology development as much of a science as fundamental research), a peer-reviewed and reputable journal will never accept a letter dealing with empirical data unless the source of the data is specified and it is an equally reputable one. A large part of the scientific community dedicates their careers to making sure that the numbers other use in their research are correct.

When somebody does forge data they are usually caught since many independent groups must reproduce a result before it is accepted by the community. As in the famous Pons & Fleischmann cold fusion experiment, or Ninov's discovery of superheavy elements, dishonest scientists are ostracized by the community and must pretty much quit and do something else with their lives.

In most every field there are orthodoxies which hold researchers back. These are not always in the soft sciences.

Pharmaceuticals are chemistry and we know money bias plays a role.

Conversely, many developments and discoveries receive short shrift simply because the don’t match consensus. Consensus is not science.

One of you examples “cold fusion” was declared bunk by consensus rather than experimentation, and anyone doing further work in the field is shut down, at least in the west. Yet there are enough experiments that show enough promise that it would seem further investigations are worthy.

Then again, we have the politically charged Consensus on global warming in climatology. We find deliberate manipulation of data presented to prove an agenda. Those pointing out errors in methodology are decried as shills or worse. Even at best we are left with computer modelling that can’t replicate the past, is at variance with current data but we are to believe it will predict the future.

There is a lack of openminded exploration and a number of institutional biases at play. It is in most fields. It is a human endeavour and will never be perfect.

It, to me, is better to approach all with a degree of openminded scepticism as with anything else.

[wooly_mammoth]

@PFH

Ideally, a scientist shouldn't let his own prejudice darken his judgement, but it does happen in the real world, I agree with that. Einstein is probably an even greater example of a scientist that refused to accept facts when they contradicted his beliefs. For example, even though he laid the foundations of quantum mechanics with his explanation of the photo-electric effect, he never considered it to be a valid physical theory since it contradicted with his belief that the world simply must be a fully deterministic system. While current evidence suggests otherwise, I guess it's sensible to realize that scientific inquiry will never provide ultimate answers to any questions and that our knowledge (at least in the foreseeable future) will constantly change and improve, provided we don't blow ourselves back into the Dark Ages.

@Fisherking

Just to touch a bit more on the cold fusion problem. To my limited knowledge on the subject, the problem has been turned inside out for a long time by many independent groups. For it to work in the way Pons & Fleishmann suggest doesn't make sense due to the fact that in room temperature conditions, the energy and length scales at which electromagnetic and nuclear forces manifest are by many orders of magnitude different. Unless our entire background of physical knowledge is completely wrong (unlikely), I don't think that turning research down in this field is completely unjustifiable. There's no reason to waste even more resources in a direction for which you have some pretty compelling counter-arguments. At the same time, there has been some considerable progress made in the field of plasma fusion, so I guess it makes sense to fund research that at least holds some promise for useful results in the future.

[Gilrandir]

These are very gross generalizations. I would say they are applicable to nonsense fields (I don't mean to offend anyone, but that's how I see it and I like to speak plainly) like psychology or social "sciences".

Ironically, the latter (namely political science aka politology) has more influence on the modern world than some "serious" sciences, mathematics, for instance.

All Science is enquiry carried out by human beings and therefore all Science is flawed and biased.

Yet since this enquiry is FOR human beings and only about the things humans CAN EXPERIENCE, it seems to be quite adequate for all purposes humans may have in mind.

[Fisherking]

@wooly_mammoth
I am not going to give you a catalog of the data proving that the effect is real. There is evidence if you choose to pursue it. The scientists were inquiring and asking for physicists to examine the phenomenon they discovered. They were chemists and could not explain what they found.
The branch of physics to which the phenomenon applies was one with little research since its discovery. Namely weak force physics.

The discovery was made by chemists asking physicists to verify. The physicists not being chemists botched the job and there were also problems replicating due to quality of the Palladium Lattice electrodes used.

There was no theory to explain what was occurring. It was a discovery that needed repetition and theory to explain what had occurred.

Instead there was a vendetta launched and the scientists were accused of fraud. It was decided by consensus.

[wooly_mammoth]

To my knowledge, the topic was given an extremely serious scientific scrutiny. The excess heat detected in some experiments (not only the original one) can easily be explained by standard solid-state heat transfer theory. Nuclear energy scales are about a million times larger than molecular & atomic energies in ordinary solids, and the length scale at which nuclear forces manifest are about a hundred thousand times smaller than the typical lattice constant in an ordinary metal (i.e., the separation distance between nuclei in the lattice). You need those energies and length scales for a reasonable chance that two nuclei will fuse. These are well established and basic facts of nuclear physics. Since there is no other experiment so far to suggest other scales at which the phenomenon takes place, it seems a bit unreasonable that they change only in this particular situation. So, as far as empirical evidence and established theories go, in order to trigger nuclear reactions you need to operate at those length & energy scales, but some people claim to be doing that indirectly from the electromagnetic scale only in this particular circumstance and no other. Which is weird. Furthermore, assuming that it is indeed nuclear fusion we are speaking about there, one simple question that comes to mind is, where is all the gamma radiation that should be emitted? We see gamma rays coming from stars when hydrogen fuses into helium over there, why don't we see it in such experiments?

These are just a few of the many very sensible questions that have been asked and to which no clear answer was ever given. For some reason, people like to assume that politics and conspiracies are involved, but I think that if you sit down and do a proper analysis of the subject, you discover that this particular phenomenon doesn't happen in this particular context, given the laws of physics in this Universe.

@Gilrandir

The very unserious (to my perception at least) philosophers are actually debating if mathematics is a science or not, heh. Meanwhile, we would still be in prehistory without it (just think of your existence without having the ability to count things). Otherwise I agree with what you mean by that.

[Fisherking]

@wooly_mammoth

I think you just inadvertently, proved the point I was making.

For some reason, people like to assume that politics and conspiracies are involved, but I think that if you sit down and do a proper analysis of the subject, you discover that this particular phenomenon doesn't happen in this particular context, given the laws of physics in this Universe.

The use of conspiracies is an attempt to justify your own bias an draw attention to what must be crackpot ideas.

Bias exists. Politics often intrude on world views and intrudes in to data. That was what the article showed.

Science is investigation. We are attempting to explain the laws of the Universe. They are not all known nor proven. Most of science deals in theory, not law.

Closed-mindedness and dogmatic adherence to the established order retard exploration not enhance it.

As for the short shrift you give philosophy, it was philosophy that gave us the principals of reason and the scientific method of research. It is also, to an extent, ignoring the philosophy behind it that helps introduce the very bias we are discussing.

[wooly_mammoth]

So, if you investigate something thoroughly and it doesn't work, it doesn't work because it doesn't work or because politicians are scheming behind our backs day & night? I mean, in the particular example we are discussing, having the thing work would mean that pretty much everything that is currently known about electromagnetism, atomic & molecular physics and nuclear forces is completely and utterly wrong. Which isn't impossible, mind you, but it sounds reasonably unlikely.

[Gilrandir]

As for the short shrift you give philosophy, it was philosophy that gave us the principals of reason and the scientific method of research.

I'm afraid this is all credit philosophy can claim. In 2500 years it is too little a harvest. So it is as good as extinct.

[Fisherking]

So, if you investigate something thoroughly and it doesn't work, it doesn't work because it doesn't work or because politicians are scheming behind our backs day & night? I mean, in the particular example we are discussing, having the thing work would mean that pretty much everything that is currently known about electromagnetism, atomic & molecular physics and nuclear forces is completely and utterly wrong. Which isn't impossible, mind you, but it sounds reasonably unlikely.

This is a red herring. As you well know.

There are any number of variables to consider. If you are still speaking of Pons and Fleischmann, the effect has been replicated and there is more than one method of achieving results.

It was not the fact that several labs failed to reproduce the effect. As I said there was no theory attached to what they reported. I do recall at least on lab reporting a reaction but of much lesser significance to the original.

It was more the reaction. They were held up to ridicule. To what scientific purpose?
Show me where ridicule fits into the scientific method. Show me where votes of consensus fits into the scientific method.

It is not the only example, naturally. There are any number of once suppressed theories which are today in the mainstream. Yet even so, some may yet be miss-proven or revised and other theories take their place. To think otherwise is to arrest development.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Judging from the first few replies, I initially just wanted a quick post so I could get thanked by Papewaio. But then I read everything...

Psychology isn't even a science. Sciences are things like physics, chemistry or engineering. Psychology, philosophy and other such nonsense is just having some random nobodies talking willy-nilly about nothing, as is the case of everyone involved in the article above.

Engineering isn't a science. The vast majority of engineering "knowledge" has been and probably continues to be, haphazard trial and error where something goes wrong, bridges collapse, people die and we find some fix that ends up getting explained in detail by physicists.

The entire United States electrical system is built off of the bodies of civilians, electrical workers and dogs who ended up being inadvertent test subjects on how to make a safe electrical system. Today's comfort is possible because of completely uncontrolled "experiments" performed when some poor Irishman in 1880s New York touched the wrong wire and 1,000 New Yorkers watched his skin fry before their very eyes.

Also, you don't understand what Philosophy does at all.

These are very gross generalizations. I would say they are applicable to nonsense fields (I don't mean to offend anyone, but that's how I see it and I like to speak plainly) like psychology or social "sciences". In fields like physics, chemistry or engineering and technology development (I see technology development as much of a science as fundamental research), a peer-reviewed and reputable journal will never accept a letter dealing with empirical data unless the source of the data is specified and it is an equally reputable one. A large part of the scientific community dedicates their careers to making sure that the numbers other use in their research are correct.

What the above article describes about Psychology, is not that much different from science. Peer Review in science fails much more often then you would expect...

I'm afraid this is all credit philosophy can claim. In 2500 years it is too little a harvest. So it is as good as extinct.

Again, how much philosophy have you read? What distinguishes between science and pseudo-science? Is String Theory science? Is multi-verse theory? Why does a sizable portion of the scientific community seem to trust either of these ideas, when at this juncture they cannot be empirically tested and thus are completely unfalsifiable? If String Theory can be derived mathematically (but not seen empirically) as an branch of the Standard Model, which does have empirical evidence to support it, does that lend a lot, a little or no credibility to the notion of strings?

I don't know why I get so upset when people trash Philosophy. It just seems to Orwellian to be a champion of TRUTH THRU SCIENCE and then lead this anti-intellectual campaign against philosophy. Science rests on assumed answers to philosophical questions that are actually still open, and somehow it has deluded itself into thinking it has done away with philosophy entirely.

[Husar]

Science rests on assumed answers to philosophical questions that are actually still open, and somehow it has deluded itself into thinking it has done away with philosophy entirely.

That seems correct to me.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Ironically, the latter (namely political science aka politology) has more influence on the modern world than some "serious" sciences, mathematics, for instance.

Yet since this enquiry is FOR human beings and only about the things humans CAN EXPERIENCE, it seems to be quite adequate for all purposes humans may have in mind.

Yes, Scientific Enquiry is eminently useful, as is logic. However, so is Newtonian Physics.

Newtonian Physics is also, technically, wrong.

I'm afraid this is all credit philosophy can claim. In 2500 years it is too little a harvest. So it is as good as extinct.

Philosophy is there to give you an answer late at night when you finally realise you can't prove that 1+1 =2.

Actual example.

Now, with my tongue entirely out of my cheekpad, I would say that the actual purpose of philosophy is to guard against the Socratic fallacy - the belief being an expert in something gives you the right or qualifications to speak on any and every topic.

[Montmorency]

Philosophy is there to give you an answer late at night when you finally realise you can't prove that 1+1 =2.

Moreover, you can't demonstrate the necessity of proof, or even the possibility of proof in itself.

Now, with my tongue entirely out of my cheekpad, I would say that the actual purpose of philosophy is to guard against the Socratic fallacy

Of course, to give a purpose for philosophy is to saddle down with a number of philosophical premises. For example, Ray Brassier takes a similar position to yours by determining that the purpose of philosophy is to "impede stupidity".

[Gilrandir]

Again, how much philosophy have you read?

I had philosophy at the University and studied it for a year after which had an exam. Plus I took an exam in philosophy manadatory as a part of post-graduate studies (the so-called candidate's minimum - since a person who gets his first post-graduate degree in Ukraine is called a candidate of sciences). So I have read some. Of course, it wasn't my major, nor my field of further studies (or interests), yet I may conclude that philosophers of yore posed some questions and then they (and all generations of others after them up till nowadays) tried to answer. They did offer the answers, but all of them were unproved (or indeed unprovable), so it is just chewing the same gum for two and a half millenia.

What distinguishes between science and pseudo-science?

I have given my vision of the difference, but I can reiterate: the absence of palpable results of the age-long studies which "the science" may offer urbi et orbi.

Is String Theory science? Is multi-verse theory?

Being unaware of either I would refrain from making any statement.

Philosophy is there to give you an answer late at night when you finally realise you can't prove that 1+1 =2.

The best proof of anything is practice. You don't have to wait until late at night to put one apple beside another and start counting them together. If one starts ruminating about it for so long, he must be drunk. A supposition: could the first philosophers have been toss pots?

Now, with my tongue entirely out of my cheekpad, I would say that the actual purpose of philosophy is to guard against the Socratic fallacy - the belief being an expert in something gives you the right or qualifications to speak on any and every topic.

If you mean me - well, could be an appropriate warning. But most people (including - or especially - the ones on these boards) indulge in doing what philosophy is so vehemently against. So it kind of becomes one more proof that it is a science (almost) no one has a use for.

If yours is a universal statement, then a sceptic would remark: "Ok, I will try to bear it in mind, but is this all philosophy is there for - to tell the people to mind their Ps and Qs? One doesn't need a whole science to teach others just a most general tenet."

[Montmorency]

I'll reprint part of a relevant piece that basically organizes the confusion of the various perspectives presented here:

The ‘Death of Philosophy’ is something that circulates through arterial underbelly of culture with quite some regularity, a theme periodically goosed whenever high-profile scientific figures bother to express their attitudes on the subject. Scholars in the humanities react the same way stakeholders in any institution react when their authority and privilege are called into question: they muster rationalizations, counterarguments, and pejoratives. They rally troops with whooping war-cries of “positivism” or “scientism,” list all the fields of inquiry where science holds no sway, and within short order the whole question of whether philosophy is dead begins to look very philosophical, and the debate itself becomes evidence that philosophy is alive and well—in some respects at least.

The problem with this pattern, of course, is that the terms like ‘philosophy’ or ‘science’ are so overdetermined that no one ends up talking about the same thing. For physicists like Stephen Hawking or Lawrence Krauss or Neil deGrasse Tyson, the death of philosophy is obvious insofar as the institution has become almost entirely irrelevant to their debates. There are other debates, they understand, debates where scientists are the hapless ones, but they see the process of science as an inexorable, and yes, imperialistic one. More and more debates fall within its purview as the technical capacities of science improve. They presume the institution of philosophy will become irrelevant to more and more debates as this process continues. For them, philosophy has always been something to chase away. Since the presence of philosophers in a given domain of inquiry reliably indicates scientific ignorance to important features of that domain, the relevance of philosophers is directly related to the maturity of a science.

They have history on their side.

There will always be speculation—science is our only reliable provender of theoretical cognition, after all. The question of the death of philosophy cannot be the question of the death of theoretical speculation. The death of philosophy as I see it is the death of a particular institution, a discourse anchored in the tradition of using intentional idioms and metacognitive deliverances to provide theoretical solutions. I think science is killing that philosophy as we speak.