On the bias of science: Part three

Okay, we have established that universities, as a class, do not have any agenda or preference for that the outcome of scientific investigations will be. The exceptions, obviously, are institutions like Liberty University, Bob Jones, and Oral Roberts, that deny evolution and cosmologya priori. But at colleges and universities that are not run by religious fanatics, faculty investigators are independent and they pursue their own lines of research, conduct investigations of their design, and interpret the results as they understand them. We have also established that the government does not have any agenda or preference for what the outcome of the research it funds may be. Well, of course people who conduct biomedical research are hoping they ' ll find the cure for cancer or Alzheimer ' s or whatever, but if they don ' t, they don ' t. Can they try to fake it? Sure, not everyone is ethically scrupulous, and there have been plenty of examples of scientific fraud. People want fame, tenure, promotions, and sometimes they think they need a big discovery to get it. There are basically two reasons why frauds usually don ' t survive for long, however, at least not in areas that are consequential. (Obviously a finding that nobody much cares about won ' t attract a lot of attention. We ' ll get to that.) By the way, just so we ' re clear, fraud is not all that common.The scientific publication process is the first screen. It isn ' t actually very effective at detecting sophisticated...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs