Scientific Discoveries: Real and Imagined

Abstract

The history of science reveals a consistent undercurrent of data manipulation and self-aggrandizement, even among some of the most famous scientists. Alterations of data may be innocuous much of the time, but some false reports influence science for decades. Beyond data manipulation, there are known historical examples of scientific fraud and extreme bias. While systematic alteration or intentional cover-up of a distortion of the record is relatively rare, it can cause us to question certain areas of scientific inquiry. Nonetheless, science is a collective endeavor with robust review and cross checking. Because of this contradiction, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish a visionary, bold thinker from someone who is creating a false narrative of a breakthrough. The scientific community must confront the fact that a certain number of apparent advances or breakthroughs are either self-deceptions or even fabrications. As statistical analysis, post-publication peer review and retraction monitoring have become more common an astonishing number of falsified reports has been revealed. Gaussian or frequentist statistics is an ethical minefield becase of the all-of-nothing nature of the evaluations. Bayesian statistics is a more natural way to evaluate experimental outcomes and is gaining favor. While I will argue that the great majority of scientists are scrupulously honest, the small minority that has started down the slippery slope of self-deception can still do great harm to the scientific community. There is an evident need for a new approach to evaluating science in a more objective manner.

For the ideologists of science, fraud is taboo, a scandal whose significance must be ritually denied on every occasion. For those who see science as a human endeavor to make sense of the world, fraud is merely evidence that science flies on the wings of rhetoric as well as reason.

–William Broad and Nicholas Wade, Betrayers of the Truth, 1983