What would motivate scientists to act like this?

Question

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/29/academias-seamier-side-lying-cheating-and-fraud/

I'm assuming that these are not bad people but are educated and experienced. So what motivation would there be to risk your entire career by acting in such a manner?

Answer 1

Elizabeth, I have worked in pharma for some time and have asked my colleagues if they were ever asked to change the numbers. You may think pharma is worse, but it is far better than you think or the general perception of most. Our work is so scrutinized by the FDA, that it would be extremely difficult to get away with falsifying data. Its not a few people working in a lab publishing a paper with data only they see.



Don't believe me? Look at how many drugs are being developed in a year and then look at those drugs pulled off the market. Most all of the drugs pulled off the market are pulled off for long-term side effects. The very same side-effects that we do not test for until after they are placed onto the market.



Now why do we not test for long-term side effects? Getting a group to come into the clinic for testing for more than a year is difficult enough. Getting them to stay conplaint with taking the drug and coming in for visits for 5 years, would be impossible. Not to mention that it would delay the process of approval by an additional 8 years at least in a system where everyone already complains about the length of the approval process. People want the best medication, especially when their life is at stake.



I'll agree that the number of retractions mentioned in the article is not concerning. In fact, the increase may just be due to computer power allowing easier access to the data. But I will also say, that since you do not know about pharma, you should not make claims.



For all of the crap Pharma gets, I have not seen any area of science that is more scientifically rigorous.



Edit

Elizabeth. The motivation was high in the pharma industry due to the amount of money flow, but with the oversight having been increased to where it currently is, getting away with fraud is nearly impossible, and even if you do, when the drug goes public, something is going to show up in the phase 4 trials. There are many more cases of fraud in earlier trials before the FDA established all of its standards.

Answer 2

Elizabeth has provided a very good explanation as to why some errors occur and why some scientists are motivated to act in unprofessional and unethical manner. I won’t reiterate what she’s already said.



However, shall we take an objective look at all the works associated with climate change that have been retracted. I haven’t cherry-picked these, I searched the database for all papers relating to climate change and look at every one of them.



• A skeptic paper promoting the economic benefits of climate change retracted.



• Paper linking climate change skeptics with conspiracy theorists retracted, apparently after objections from skeptics.



• Skeptical journal shut down following malpractice.



• Journal of Climate article showing temperatures higher in the last 60 years than preceding 1,000 years put on hold whilst data recalculated.



• Skeptical article withdrawn after significant number of errors highlighted and the authors refused to correct them. The journal subsequently listed all the errors.



• Skeptical paper questioning climate change science retracted after author reprimanded for misconduct and plagiarism.



• Skeptical article that reproduced work from the Competitive Enterprise Institute (skeptics) retracted after publishers were sued.



• Paper claiming behaviour of ants has been affected by climate change retracted as claims couldn’t be verified.



• Paper retracted after it was found to have exaggerated effects of global warming and couldn’t support the statements made.



SUMMARY



Nine papers retracted in total. One was more to do with psychology than climate change. Of the remaining eight, five were from skeptics. Of the three that supported the global warming theory one was put on hold, two were retracted.



There are infinitely more papers that support the global warming theory than oppose it, but more skeptical papers get retracted.



There’s probably no more than 500 skeptical papers, 5 are retracted – that’s 1.000% or 1 in 100.



At the absolute minimum, there’s 12,000 papers supporting global warming (this is just the number that the IPCC have referenced, there are many more besides), of which 2 are retracted – that’s 0.000167% or 1 in 6,000.

Answer 3

Being able to suck on the taxpayer money teet would be the prime motivation. The peer review process is completely flawed. Mainly it's "Pal Review" where a scientist's peers do a cursory glance at the study and give it their thumbs up.

Answer 4

Well, I think the issue is complicated. And probably more complicated than the article suggests.



In recent times there has been increasing scrutiny of universities by 'the public'. In Ireland, for example, all our universities are funded primarily by the taxpayer. They want to know they're getting 'value for money'. Which, for a university, is pretty hard to define. So the focus of university is no longer primarily to do with education, but research because that's tangible. It can be quantified and used as a 'metric' to satisfy the bean counters.



So, what ends up happening is that universities try to employ 'research staff'. There are 'academics' who do very little (if any) teaching. They come in, set up a lab, generate papers, apply for research funding, produce IP or patents, setup spin-off companies ... everything the public likes. The pressure to perform is enormous. Papers published, cited, and in which journal are key to a scientist's career. And so, what we have are a number of scientists (probably young) who will do anything to 'get ahead'. They, like people in any other career will lie, cheat, and steal to advance themselves.



More often than not, they're discovered, kicked out, and never work in a university again. I suspect that scientific fraud depends on the area. In medicine, where there are potentially lucrative careers working with Big Pharma, I'd imagine there's a higher percentage of fraud than in, for example, solid state physics where people study some interesting property of a semiconductor at low temperatures for the purpose of understanding the process.



The fact that fraud occurs in science is due to scientists being human beings. But, as Zippi tries to infer, the fact that fraud takes place doesn't allow you to simply make some blanket statement about climatology or climatologists. It's a bit of a silly argument to say 'because there was fraud in biomedical sciences that means I can't trust scientists in general and AGW must therefore be wrong' is a *bit* of a leap!



Raisin Caine: My point wasn't specifically about the pharma industry - I was just saying that in areas of research where there are large amounts of cash available, I'd imagine the temptation and incidence of fraud are higher. Basically if some topic is sexy, that'll attract the best researchers, competition will be higher, and the conditions are such that fraud may be something someone resorts to to get ahead. I was more thinking biochemical research in university labs at a fundamental level (rather than human trial levels) where the aim of researchers would be to *get* the pharma companies involved, form public-private partnerships, spin-offs, etc. Apologies ... I wasn't throwing stones at Big Pharma itself. I'm a nurse. I know how useful the drugs are!

Answer 5

Well what you have to understand is scientists and researchers are just mere humans like the rest of us, and there has always been a proportion of humans who are willing to cheat lie and steal.

Answer 6

Scientists are humans like other people, so there will be dishonest ones. You should already know this--if all scientists were honest, where would the Heartland Institute get their experts?

Answer 7

http://townhall.com/columnists/patrickmichaels/2014/07/21/the-threat-to-the-scientific-method-n1864397/page/full



I linked to this article a while back and it clearly got under the skins of the alarmists because it didn't have a left wing slant IMO.



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Basically the article describes how many of the scientists careers are governed by the reports they publish. I think they think they can get away with it and "hey" they say to themselves, "it is probably true anyway".

Answer 8

From your link : " ... A 2012 review of more than 2,000 articles in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that in biomedical and life-science research, the majority of retractions (67 percent) were actually attributable to misconduct and that “the percentage of scientific articles retracted because of fraud has increased 10-fold since 1975.” ... "



The pride of Climate Science (National Academy of Sciences) is the Mercedes-Benz that turned into a mo-ped.

Answer 9

The same thing that motivates the greenies on this site to fabricate data, logic and science.

Answer 10

Simple, it all boils down to money. Scientists are pushed to publish, publish, publish. In order to do that you have to cram a lot of research and lab time along with your writing. No publications, no research, no grants....Ergo, make crap up..

Answer 11

Showing signs of certain projects to our Government for new FUNDS. Mike

Answer 12

The article talks about the motivation behind it.

Answer 13

And what does this question have to do with global warming?