Why is trust in scientific research at an all-time low?

[C C]

Part I — Viewpoint: Why is trust in scientific research at an all-time low?
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2024/...-time-low/

INTRO: The validity of much published scientific research is questionable – so how much trust should we place in it?

An aphorism called the Einstein Effect” holds that, “People find nonsense credible if they think a scientist said it.”

We agree, and it’s a major concern as trust in science is near an all-time low. There is a lot of nonsense masquerading as science circulating these days. Unfortunately, as a PEW study released last November indicates, it’s getting worse.

Almost five years ago, we wrote about the unreliability of much of the peer-reviewed scientific literature, especially in biomedicine and agriculture. Since then, according to a recent news article in the journal Nature that quantified the problem, the problem is far bigger than even the pessimists had posited.

Corruption is rife. Just last week, the journal Science related that even publishers of prominent scientific journals feel they are “under siege.”: “A spokesperson for Elsevier said every week its editors are offered cash in return for accepting manuscripts. Sabina Alam, director of publishing ethics and integrity at Taylor & Francis, said bribery attempts have also been directed at journal editors there and are ‘a very real area of concern.’”

In 2022, the co-chair of the editorial board of the Wiley publication Chemistry–A European Journal received an email from someone claiming to be working with “young scholars” in China and offering to pay him $3000 for each paper he helped publish in his journal. Such dealings have become big business.

This article, and a Part II to follow, address several ways unreliability can occur, either purposefully or unintentionally... (MORE - details)

[Zinjanthropos]

My opinion isn’t worth much but if more and more people believe it’s all a simulation then perhaps they’re thinking what is the point of investigating anything? Who wants to study that which isn’t real? Nobody really dies, no one really born, just shadows thinking we belong to some great universal consciousness collective. Has that paranormal existence feel to it. The end of the road for science unless we want to see how far the simulation takes us.

[Yazata]

Part I — Viewpoint: Why is trust in scientific research at an all-time low?

Trust by whom? Other scientists or by the general public?

If we are talking about the general public, I think that the biggest driver in declining trust in science and scientists is the rapidly disappearing distinction between objective and dispassionate science on one hand, and political advocacy and moral exhortation on the other.

When judgments of true and false start to be replaced by judgments of good and evil, it's increasingly obvious that extra-scientific value judgments are squirming their way into scientific results.

Members of the public are increasingly aware that scientists often start their research with their preferred results already in mind, and then massage their methods and data to produce results that conform to whatever they already believe.

Just look at today's Scientific American. Look at all the COVID rhetoric. Look at the Climate Change hysteria. Look at just about any scientific paper on the topic of "race" or "gender".