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+--- Thread: Is the scientific paper still a fraud? (/thread-21117.html)
Is the scientific paper still a fraud? - C C - Aug 17, 2026
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3003912
ABSTRACT: How we write scientific papers does not reflect how we do science. Their formal structure infers a pre-ordained linear process rather than reflecting the messy creativity of research. This matters in the AI age because it masks the human in the process.
EXCERPT: In 1963, Nobel Prize-winning immunologist Peter Medawar presented a controversial idea on BBC radio, that the scientific paper was a fraud. But he did not mean it in the way you might think. Scientific fraud does happen (both then and now), but he meant something more fundamental about the format of the scientific paper. His argument was that the structure of papers tells a false story about how science is done.
Papers state the problem to be investigated, the way it was investigated, and the investigations performed, and arrive at the conclusion(s) drawn. Medawar argued that this structure implies scientific research is purely inductive (drawing general conclusions from specific data), leaving almost no role for the scientist except as a neutral note taker. The scientific paper is a very sanitized version of how research works, but it remains the main method by which we communicate science. In the age of artificial intelligence (AI) are Medawar’s arguments about papers still valid, and what can we learn about how we (humans) do science?
We seldom talk about the craft of science, choosing to focus on the data rather than the journey by which it arose. [...] scientific papers tell a story about the order in which the research was allegedly undertaken. And again, the reported progression from data to narrative is not always true. Often, the data presented in the first figure was the last experiment to be performed. Sometimes, data comes from independent studies undertaken by different people at different times. [...] Papers, as usually written, remove the agency of the authors. Writing in a uniform “scientific” voice often requires masking any and all personal viewpoints. The formal voice also flattens the prose, removing any of the excitement the researcher feels about the research...
[...] So was Medawar right and is he still right? In many ways, yes, he was. The paper incorrectly reflects scientific research. As identified by Howitt and Wilson in a previous response to Medawar, the structure can give students a false picture of the research process. It also affects the whole endeavor of science. In an age where we risk being overwhelmed by AI slop, we need to think about the process as much as the product... (MORE - details)
Peter Medawar: Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be, and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed, because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare. . . . . If the purpose of scientific methodology is to prescribe or expound a system of enquiry or even a code of practice for scientific behavior, then scientists seem to be able to get on very well without it. Most scientists receive no tuition in scientific method, but those who have been instructed perform no better as scientists than those who have not. Of what other branch of learning can it be said that it gives its proficients no advantage; that it need not be taught or, if taught, need not be learned? --Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought
RE: Is the scientific paper still a fraud? - Syne - Aug 17, 2026
Seems the methodologies of science exist to avoid the "messy creativity" of humans, which includes cognitive bias, fallacious reasoning, etc.. Reinjecting those into published papers, merely to avoid the impression of AI slop, doesn't seem like a proper motive.