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Uncategorized Monday, October 1st 2012 at 7:10 pm

Scientists Aren’t Dumb; They’re Just Liars, Say Totally Reputable Scientists

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Scientific papers being retracted after publication isn’t some kind of new phenomenon. The age of press releases might have made such snafus a more widely-known event, but it’s one of those things that happens from time to time. Common wisdom was that the majority of retractions were due to errors present in the work, but a new study has concluded that it’s actually misconduct like fraud or plagiarism that causes most retractions. In other words, scientists aren’t dumb; they’re just liars.

PhysOrg breaks down how the new study came to this conclusion:

The study reviewed 2,047 papers retracted from the biomedical literature through May 2012. To determine the reasons for the retractions, the researchers consulted several secondary sources, such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research Integrity and Retractionwatch.com, which investigate scientific misconduct.

The researchers found that about 21 percent of the retractions were attributable to error, while 67 percent were due to misconduct, including fraud or suspected fraud (43 percent), duplicate publication (14 percent), and plagiarism (10 percent). Miscellaneous or unknown reasons accounted for the remaining 12 percent.

The studies that investigated this issue previously only took into account the official retractions by the scientific journals — which are written by the authors of the paper being retracted. It’s not like they’re going to come right out and say, “We totally copied this bit from someone else,” or anything like that.

(via PhysOrg, image via mars_discovery_district)

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  • Jack Bond

    I could have told you that. Maybe NOW evolution and global warming can be brought into question, no?

  • gnashing teeth

    Some scientists are liars. You are just dumb.

  • Jack Bond

    Nobody cares about your opinion. Bring in some facts or GTFO.

  • klem

    Evolution and global warming ARE in question, every day. Evolution stands the test of time, it holds up under scrutiny. Global warming collapses like a house of cards under the most cursory investigation.

    Global warming is a dead theory.

  • Idlethoughts

    If like me he recognizes you, then he already knows that presenting facts to you doesn’t actually change your opinion. Also, seriously you turned this into another evolution and global warming argument? Can you please just stop picking this fight, believe what you like but I don’t really see how it harms you if poeple try to cut down on carbon emissions or don’t believe in a divine creator who created humans from scratch. Where is your beef in these fights, what do you gain from them?

  • Anonymous

    I just did a “cursory” investigation of climate change (global warming) and it didn’t collapse. You seem to not know what you are saying.

  • Idlethoughts

    Last time I checked its actually still pretty universally acepted by climatologists. Whats dead virtually all argument against it, it’s just that people keep being zombing them up long after they have been refuted. Much like with evolution, having the a large amount of people choose not to believe it, despite the scientific evidence in its favor, does not make any less legitimate of a theory.

  • http://twitter.com/rayban5016 Ray O.

    Jack, that was my first thought when reading this. So many people have been fooled by so few. Scientist need grant money, so who’s going to notice if we give politicians the data they want, just as long as we get our grants.

  • Jack Bond

    Clearly none of us are actually willing to drudge up any reputable scientific evidence to support our points. Suffice it to say, we both believe our point of view is backed by scientific evidence, and this conversation isn’t going to go anywhere.

  • Jack Bond

    When companies “go green” they sacrifice quality in favor of a mythical crisis cure. Now people are proposing drastic measures that will completely backfire if in fact global warming doesn’t exist.

  • debunker

    The majority of science based business startups are frauds, trying to take advantage of “dumb” investors. The pharmaceutical industry is rife with such examples. Most “green tech” startups are frauds, take algae for example. Sociopaths are attracted to the pursuit of a PhD, and most “scientists” get them by just hanging around in grad school long enough