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Scientific integrity & the ethics of 'utter honesty' (sci community)

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https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/scien...r-honesty/

EXCERPT: . . . In the early 2000s, Jan Hendrik Schön was a rising star in physics. His research was at the intersection of condensed matter physics, nanotechnology, and materials science. While working at Bell Labs he published a series of papers — an incredible 16 articles as first author in Science and Nature, the top science journals in the world, over a two-year period — giving results of work using organic molecules as transistors. One of his papers was recognized by Science in 2001 as a “breakthrough of the year.” He received several prestigious prizes, including the Outstanding Young Investigator Award by the Materials Research Society. His research looked like it would revolutionize the semiconductor industry, allowing computer chips to continue to shrink in size beyond the limits of traditional materials. The only problem was that none of it was true.

Other researchers tried to build on Schön’s findings but were unable to replicate his results. One scientist then noticed that two of Schön’s papers included graphs with the same noise in the reported data, which was extraordinarily unlikely to happen by chance. This was suspicious, but Schön explained it away as an accidental inclusion of the same graph. But then other scientists noticed similar duplications in other papers. It began to appear that at least some of the data were fraudulent. Bell Labs launched a formal investigation and discovered multiple cases of misconduct, including outright fabrication of data. All of Schön’s Nature and Science publications had to be withdrawn, plus a dozen or so more in other journals. Schön was fired from his job, his prizes were rescinded, he was banned from receiving research grants, and in 2004 the University of Konstanz stripped him of his PhD because of his dishonorable conduct.

Schön’s fraud was an especially egregious example of scientific misconduct, but unfortunately it is not unique. Every few years there is some case of scientific misconduct that makes headline news. Are these exceptions? It is hard to get good data, but a 2009 analysis of published studies on the issue found that an average of 1 percent of scientists admitted to having fabricated or falsified research data at least once in their career, and about 12 percent reported knowing of a colleague who had. What is one to make of such cases where honesty breaks down in science?

The Schön case is demoralizing as a breach of scientific ethics, but it also leads one to question how 16 fraudulent papers could have made it through the peer review process of the two premier science journals in the world, and 12 more in other top journals. Peer review is an imperfect process. It generally weeds out papers where the presented evidence is inadequate to support the offered conclusion, though, shockingly, there have even been a few papers with creationist elements that somehow made it through the peer-review filter when reviewers were not paying attention. However, even a careful reviewer is likely to miss individual cases where someone fabricated the presented data.

The naturalist methodology of science is predicated on the idea that findings are replicable — that is implied by the idea of a world governed by causal laws — but for obvious practical reasons it is impossible for a journal reviewer to actually repeat an experiment to check the accuracy of the data. Journals very rarely require that a lab demonstrate its data-production process; mostly they trust researchers to have collected and reported their data accurately. Trust is the operative term here.

There are various circumstances that can justify trust. One is history — trust can be earned through experience. Another is trust based on interests — knowing that someone shares your interests means that you can count on their actions. A third is character — knowing that someone has certain character traits means you can count on their intentions. In general, scientists assume these common values with other researchers. In the vast majority of cases, it is completely reasonable to do so. Of course, this kind of prima facie trust provides an opening for the unscrupulous, which is why someone like Schön could infiltrate science the way he did. In the short term, it is hard to prevent such intentional deceptions, but science has a built-in safeguard. Reality is the secret sauce.

Adhering to scientific methods can help one avoid or correct one’s own errors. But even if one fails to self-correct in an individual case, science has a way of self-correcting such deceptions, intentional or unintentional, in the aggregate. This is because true scientific discoveries make a difference. The first difference is the difference one sees in a controlled experiment, which is a basic test for the truth of some individual causal hypothesis. They also make a difference to the fabric of science as a whole, adding an interlinking strand to the network of confirmed hypotheses. Because of the interdependencies within science, any discovery will be connected to many others that came before and others yet to come.

That means that fraudulent claims will not remain unnoticed. Other scientists pursuing investigations in the same field will at some point try to use that finding as part of some other study... (MORE - details)
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Fatala Crapehanger: In the social sciences, however, you have utopia-driven conceptions originally falling out of exo-scientific scholarly pursuits (humanities, political orientations, etc) that affect both the lines of inquiry and how results are interpreted. These philanthropic holy cows are far less critically scrutinized -- they're taken for granted almost is if they were operating guidelines for studies (a priori and sacrosanct), and even instituted in the policy-makeup of research administrations (that regulate the scientists, regardless of the latter's own personal misgivings).
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