"Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science" by Stuart Ritchie was published this year. I'm reading a review here, and there is some stunning info:

"Increasing numbers of [scientific] papers are retracted. Ritchie reports that only around forty percent of the retractions are due to honest error. Many are tainted by unethical behaviour such as duplicate publications and plagiarism. About 20% of the retractions are due to fraud. Indeed, an anonymous survey found that one in fifty scientists admitted to faking data at least once. But, Richie notes, people may be reluctant to admit faking data even when anonymous."

So it is not just the Joseph Smiths of the world who produce fake works.

Elsewhere the review says:
"Science projects an aura of robust, reliable rationality. Reproducibility, for example, ensures the finding is real and not due to chance or human or technical error. But researchers 'subjectively rated' that they replicated the results from 39% of 100 studies published in three leading psychology journals. On average, the replicated effect was only half that in the original study. Moreover 97% had statistically significant results: there was a less than one in twenty chance that the results were a fluke... This declined to 36% in the replicated studies."

Which is why we have peer review.

Beth Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> https://randysrandom.com/wp-content/uploads/eviden
> ce-based-science.jpg

That's as it should be. :)

Human science is weird though. Somewhere out there (maybe) there are aliens watching us wondering why humans spend more money on researching missiles and cosmetics than saving coral reefs and curing arthritis.

I used to work in pharmaceutical litigation defense. Always research who is sponsoring the study, who they're using as thought leaders, and if they're trying to extend or create a patent by giving a drug a new name based on treating a different condition.

An unexpected side effect of Wellbutrin is that a lot of people who are on it stop smoking. GlaxoSmithKline was like, Winner! Zyban is Wellbutrin.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2020 02:48PM by Beth.

Or as Deep Throat succinctly put it: follow the money.

I totally agree with this. You can end up with happy accidents, like Viagra or unhappy ones like Thalidomide which can wreck people's entire lives. When Viagra and Thalidomide were researched originally, I don't think erectile dysfunction or fetal development were factored in at all, but the rest is history.

You should have titled your post "Science Factions." Makes more factual sense than painting Science with your broad brush strokes.

I want to be crystal clear:

1. I never worked on a GSK case.
2. It is 100% legal to apply for a patent for a drug that has shown efficacy treating other conditions not listed under the original patent.
3. GSK didn't do anything shady when applying for a Zyban patent.
4. It 100% legal for medical professionals to prescribe drugs off-label (i.e. prescribe Wellbutrin as a smoking cessation drug before the FDA approved it for that purpose).

What is NOT okay is for drug reps to promote off-label use. <-- That's what will get a company in trouble. Off-label *marketing* is a no-no. AGAIN I AM NOT TALKING ABOUT GSK, WELLBUTRIN, and ZYBAN.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2020 02:38PM by Beth.

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Which is why we have peer review.

As the article points out, the peer review system often doesn't work/isn't working as it should. Peer reviews should be taking place on a ratio of one-to-one, but that doesn't appear to be happening. Laypeople have a highly idealized view of science as it should be, not as it is.

Richie further points out that it is one thing when someone alters data on star formation or the behavior of starfish, but it is a whole different ball game when it involves medicine because people may die. That's a very relevant question this year when we have various Covid vaccines being rushed out.

If peer review doesn't work, there is one more important arrow in the quiver:

Some other scientist is going to try to replicate findings. The more fishy, the more the more some grad student might look into it. Sometimes they want to build on what the study found and it turns out the study was flawed. If the data doesn't support the conclusion, there will be some explaining to do and probably someone's job or reputation will be on the line.

When the person who paid for the research (e.g. big pharma) usually gets a favorable outcome, that's a tip that someone else is going to be suspicious and look closer. It's not like these companies are going to "peer review" each other. Committees for grad student research can be hit and miss.

At least that is my experience.

This looks like a good book on the subject!

Peer review probably reduces the bad studies by 90% (since there are a lot of questionable publications). But the results remain subject to question and critique, and a ton of Ph.D. candidates will make their career by identifying the flaws in others work. And if bad medical results, the perpetrators can be sued as well as imprisoned. That's what makes science more rigorous than most other fields: the system is set up to cull shoddy or fraudulent work.

Perfect? No. But vastly better than you suggest.

Probably? Richie's argument, AFAIK (and I haven't read the book) is that it isn't as much as you might think. The ideal and reality seem divorced from one another.

I can see how peer review can be a logistical problem before it even begins. There are many more researchers than reviewers, and some of the review and duplication could take years. If you have a ten year study which has just concluded, are you supposed to study the same issue for another ten years to ensure the first long term study was correct? If so, then that's potentially twenty years studying a notion which may have been wrong in the first place.

If you question the methodology of a study, that can be done quickly. But if you want to verify long term aging processes, for example, then that takes years of study. A lot of science doesn't yield quick results. Even the CERN experiments, which take under a second in some cases, need months of analysis.

You are advancing arguments from a book you haven't read?

Lot's Wife Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You are advancing arguments from a book you
> haven't read?

I discussed this earlier. This is from a lengthy review of the book including extracts. I've been open about this from the beginning.

"It is crucial that tomorrow's scientists learn to have faith in the scientific yearnings of their predecessors hearts, because man does not live on facts alone!"

--Judic West, author of "Alchemy for Fun & Prophets"

"Those are alternative facts"

Here's an excerpt from the book discussing the Wakefield study:

https://behavioralscientist.org/how-fraud-and-a-broken-publishing-system-fueled-the-vaccine-autism-myth/

I had some limited experience with that world in grad school in the late 1980's. The competition for federal grant money was fierce, and they even had courses and seminars on how to write grant proposals. It's easy to believe that some people would fake a few data points to get a piece of the pie.
Fortunately for me, I got back into industrial and pharmacological research and finished up in teaching,

If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.

Okay, that's better than my answer for falling down or dropping something in public: "Just testing if gravity's still working."

"If science tells you to wear a mask, don't drink bleach, and maybe don't drill three holes in your head and call yourself a bowling ball, you don't have to immediately do the opposite just to prove the eggheads wrong. "

Dave the Atheist Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "If science tells you to wear a mask, don't drink
> bleach, and maybe don't drill three holes in your
> head and call yourself a bowling ball, you don't
> have to immediately do the opposite just to prove
> the eggheads wrong. "

The eggheads told people not to wear masks earlier this year. Cynical people might say this was because they were in short supply back then. It sometimes depends which scientists you listen to. The ones who say masks are a kind of ineffective placebo, or the ones who think they are the most practical solution, or the ones who think herd immunity is the answer... all three varieties are still out there.

I'm not going to debate the bleach point though. :D

Science is golden.

Utah of course figures prominently in one of the all-time great science miscarriages: Cold fusion.

This doesn’t help:

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/06/two-elite-medical-journals-retract-coronavirus-papers-over-data-integrity-questions

Snippet:

***For Steven Tong, an infectious disease physician at the Doherty Institutex in Melbourne, Australia, and an investigator on a hydroxychloroquine trial—the AustralaSian COVID-19 Trial (ASCOT)—which paused last week in response to the Lancet results, the retractions have produced “a mix of frustration and anger … [and] a feeling that our system in research has let us all down, from the authors of the papers, obviously, thorough to the peer reviewers and up to the journal editors. They’ve all done a great disservice to the research world.”***

Some might call this “science working” because it “self-corrects.”


A big problem is the easy assumption by too many that scientists, researchers, etc, and those that write their cheques, are somehow impervious to normal, everyday human corruption, and think that competition and ambition in others somehow corrects the problem. Or they think that somehow the system works even if people are corrupt because the theory of the system is sound.

There are hundreds of billions of dollars at stake in all things covid, and similar amounts for other scientific research endeavours as well. It is extreme folly, to say the least, to believe this isn’t corrupting. And just plain silly to believe that there aren’t other corrupting forces at work. Scientists are just as human as politicians and religious leaders.

There’s also a myriad of logistical problems with the peer review process that has been well documented these past ten years. Peer Review has been reviewed and has been found wanting, some would say extremely wanting.

What’s the alternative?

I don’t have one and haven’t seen one. But surely part of the solution is more common sense and scepticism among engaged lay people.

Human

+Greener Mark:
“leading psychology journals”

==Oh, psychology journals.
Do you know how research in psychology is conducted most of the time? They ask the people questions, collect the answers and put it into a bar graph form.
It’s not exactly solid science.

~~~~iceman9090