Entitled 'Global Trend: More Science, More Fraud', it's inspired mainly by the South Korean cloning scandal, but highlights this as part of a global explosion in research that is outstripping the mechanisms meant to guard against error and fraud.
The article goes on to suggest an initially reassuring triple safety net to catch dishonesty and bad research comprising peer review, which starts with experts advising governments about what research to finance [I think I could raise a cynical eyebrow on how effective that is in the real world]. Then comes the referee system, which has journals ask reviewers to judge if manuscripts merit publication. The last is replication, whereby independent scientists see if the work holds up.
Equating the rarified world of medical research with tabloid TV journalism is a leap, but I was pondering this last night as I watched a programme about what we'll be eating this Christmas. Fortunately I have never been fussed about turkey, but any vestige of desire to try was snuffed out by what I saw.
Frankly I think I'd have been down to a spout omlette by the end, because they even had guys (you know you're getting old when Professors look like grad students) in white coats showing us our Xmas pud was a toxic wasteland.
And that's just the organic brigade hooking up with a media industry on the hunt for a quick max yuk-rating ratings-fest. But soem of these academics were pretty cred-worthy. And post-CSI, show me a bit of whirly lab kit and I'm convinced.
So it's hard to imagine the goings-on when it comes to getting objective information of things like climate change.
As the piece ended: 'While millions of articles are never read or cited - and some are written simply to pad résumés - others enter the pressure cooker of scientific [and biomedical] promotion, becoming lucrative elements of companies' [to which I could add any interest group from governments with a target looming to pressure groups with a fighting fund to fill] business strategies.
Quite. Makes it hard to know who to trust, doesn't it?
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