http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/1\/hi\/world\/asia-pacific\/4824486.stm<\/a>).\u00c2\u00a0 They were found to have faked stem cell research from cloned embryos.<\/p>\nA scientist who claims to have created bubble fusion in the lab is also facing an investigation this week by an American\u00c2\u00a0 university, which is looking at his colleagues’ claims that he won’t let them\u00c2\u00a0look at his data or challenge his claims.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n
In many of the currently fashionable research fields (stem cell research, cloning, nanotechnology) there are examples of\u00c2\u00a0 exaggerated claims or results that can’t be replicated. These are all the big money topics and must be very tempting to the greedy and those who want to make a global reputation quickly.\u00c2\u00a0Should we care if duff scientists want to rip off the big corporations who fund this stuff? It suggests the old saying that you can never con an honest person.\u00c2\u00a0 Classic cons\u00c2\u00a0play on the victim’s greed. Clearly, the funding for most of these fakeries comes from organisations that expect to get even richer than they are already.<\/p>\n
However, quite apart from the arguments that government and big business only get their resources from the rest of us and only have finite amounts to invest so aren’t putting money into other projects and so on, most of these phoney projects play on sick people’s desperation, just like predatory mediums and faith healers.<\/p>\n
They make huge promises for what their research will achieve – cures for cancer, heart disease, arthritis, Alzheimers or an end to dependence on fossil fuels and global warming.<\/p>\n
A shady alternative mystical crystal aromatherapy hoeopathic flower remedy diet guru can usually only raise false hopes in a limited number of not very bright people. Most of us have enough basic\u00c2\u00a0sense of cause and effect\u00c2\u00a0to suspect the logic behind their claims.\u00c2\u00a0What does this say about the people who commission research? \u00c2\u00a0More charitably, very few people have the knowledge to challenge\u00c2\u00a0claims\u00c2\u00a0for genetic and nano-technologies. (That’s supposed to be the point of peer evaluation.)<\/p>\n
MY particular rant here is that we do have ethical standards. We are so used to assuming we can’t understand what scientists are doing that we also assume that they are just pursuing knowledge for its own sake.\u00c2\u00a0Research scientists are somehow nobler than everybody else and wouldn’t do experiments that might be socially disastrous or\u00c2\u00a0unspeakably cruel\u00c2\u00a0or even just pointless. We\u00c2\u00a0tend to assume the ethical goodness of pure research despite knowing intellectually that much research is funded by people we would saw off our left foot rather than buy a used car from and scientists are as greedy, manipulative and dishonest as non-scientists.<\/p>\n
So this rant is basically saying that formal highbrow opera science can be as spurious as the soap opera science that Bad Science identifies.<\/p>\n
How do we counteract this sort of thing? Not accepting a claim on the basis of the authority of the person who’s making it.\u00c2\u00a0Questioning and testing every “fact” that we are told. Questioning our own assumptions. Abandoning ideas when they prove to be mistaken. Accepting that no one learns except by making mistakes.<\/p>\n
Science teaching is in a particular bind here. The nature of science is supposed to be experimentation but science education necessarily mainly consists of learning lots of “facts” and memorising them. \u00c2\u00a0Even arts and social science\u00c2\u00a0courses currently reward students most for\u00c2\u00a0citing endless authorities like so many medieval monks.<\/p>\n