So you are suggesting that established PhD scientists would risk their career by trying to publish "shoddy" research? At that level any "frauds" as you term it wouldn't have got their PhD in the first place, let alone have continued on.

Why not? Does the ability to gain a PhD magically turn scientists immune to committing fraud? Of course not. A PhD just means you attained the highest level of academic training possible. It means you are a full fledged academic researcher with an assumed high degree of knowledge in a specific field. And it opens up the path for a career in academic research. But non of those things are by any means a deterrent to fraud. And the more established your reputation becomes, the easier it is to commit fraud and get away with it, especially in fields like social science and psychology.

Now of course that doesn't mean that every scientist is therefor committing fraud. Of course not. I'm just saying that just like in any other field of work, there are good honest people and there are people that take short cuts and that commit fraud. Scientists are just humans like the rest of us, and they are not infallible or better than everyone else. The only problem is that science likes to pretend it is infallible and pure, and that any mistakes it makes are simply honest mistakes born out of an incomplete or misunderstanding of pure objective facts. Now this is an image that is just not true.

As stated before, a conservative estimate is that between 2 and 14% of the scientists are deliberately committing fraud, and that means that science is not 100% reliable at any given moment. Science will eventually correct itself, but some degree of skepticism from the public is required.

Fortunately, quite often the fraudulent nonsense is pretty easy to pick out. Again, I would refer to one of the Dutch scientists that got caught committing fraud as one of the scientific 'studies' he had supposedly done concluded that people that eat meat are ***holes. Thats literally what his study suggested. Now any person with even the slightest degree of common sense can tell you that such a thing is just utter bovine excrement. The other guy that got caught (the South Korean guy) should also have been easy to catch, as he pretty much claimed that stem cells were miracle cures. Anyone with even the slightest degree of skepticism would have noted that his claims were good to be true, and again, common sense dictates that if something sounds to good to be true, it is because it is to good to be true.

There are a number of reasons why its hard to catch them as frauds though. The first is the fact that the scientific output is simply greater than science capacity to check itself. There is basically a backlog of stuff that needs to be peer reviewed. Secondly, a number of peer reviewed journals are just utter crap. They say they are peer reviewed but in reality they will publish just about anything as long as its sounds sciency enough. Some scientist have proven this by sending utter nonsense filled with technical jargon and made it sound like actual science and it got published without question in whats supposedly a peer reviewed journal. Thirdly, some forms of science are really hard to peer review. Social sciences especially, hardly depend on experiments that can be reproduced simply because of the subject matter they study. So it becomes extra difficult to check whether the numbers are actually true and not made up or altered.

And finally, sometimes its just very convenient to pass of frauds as scientists. This becomes especially true if the subject matter of the science is highly politicized. The scientists that deny climate change are for the most part frauds, simple as that. But yet, there is a huge group of politicians that does not like the idea of having to take certain measures against climate change so its awfully convenient for them to pass of these frauds as actual scientists, so it looks like their side of the debate has some actual scientific legitimacy. The supposed science (who again, was exposed to be one big fraud) that supported the idea that autism is caused by vaccines is still passed around by the anti vaccination groups because it makes them appear to have a legitimate point when it comes to not vaccinating their children. And the study I mentioned earlier, that supposedly proved people who eat meat are ***holes got instant popular support from outspoken veganists and animal welfare groups, because it suited their interests.

Its not just scientists that can be crooked, it is also the institution of science thats not always going in the right direction

Scientists depend on the budget their government is providing them.

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Its not just scientists that can be crooked, it is also the institution of science thats not always going in the right direction

Scientists depend on the budget their government is providing them.

Unless they work for private enterprise.

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Its not just scientists that can be crooked, it is also the institution of science thats not always going in the right direction

Scientists depend on the budget their government is providing them.

Money = Ethics?

Two opposites when it comes to the 'Evil' side of men... Money is a dangerous 'thing' and so much improvements of our evolution depend on it, money makes the world go round, remember? Forged upon us by the greediness of mankind.

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rOZZ
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Pictures

Its not just scientists that can be crooked, it is also the institution of science thats not always going in the right direction

Scientists depend on the budget their government is providing them.

Money = Ethics?

Two opposites when it comes to the 'Evil' side of men... Money is a dangerous 'thing' and so much improvements of our evolution depend on it, money makes the world go round, remember? Forged upon us by the greediness of mankind.

So... Scientists, depending where their funding comes from (Big Corporate or Big Green), CAN be crooked, as everyone else.

Of course, crooked people all over the world man! One thing, without Science, we would've known nothing of where we came from and where we're going, and the true facts of it is our most major back up! It's the knowledge that brings us afar. Political knowledge is also a must these days, also a true fact, which brings us back to economics...

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rOZZ
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Its not just scientists that can be crooked, it is also the institution of science thats not always going in the right direction

Scientists depend on the budget their government is providing them.

This has little to do with money or ethics. Its just that there is little fame to be had in checking other peoples work, so people rather focus on doing their own new research which allows flawed or bad research to remain undetected for a very long time.

You would have to be very naive to think that there arn't 1 or 2 crooked scientists out there .

Fame , Riches , Awards , Accolades .......isn't most crime done with 1 or 2 of these things as the prize .

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Some of the scientists even get awarded:)
Maybe not crooks but they get fundings for their "research".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ig_Nobel_Prize

Like everything Jan only takes 1 or 2 bad apples to spoil the bag . It may take time but they always end up getting caught out after someone reviews it even if it takes a few years , not so smart i guess.

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Like everything Jan only takes 1 or 2 bad apples to spoil the bag . It may take time but they always end up getting caught out after someone reviews it even if it takes a few years , not so smart i guess.

They dont spoil the bag. Most scientists dont work that way.
However taxpayers have to pay for nonsense science...

Why do I have the feeling Nicolaus Copernicus would have been given an igNobel?

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Why do I have the feeling Nicolaus Copernicus would have been given an igNobel?

A real Nobel, only for achieving in breaking through Ptolemaes' 'silly' view of our solar system!

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Why do I have the feeling Nicolaus Copernicus would have been given an igNobel?

Well...

Did go against 'Settled Science'.

Yeah but they don't give igNobel prices just because you go against settled science. More like because the research you do seems completely ridiculous at first glance. Like studying Moose reactions to seeing polar bears by dressing yourself up as one.

Why do I have the feeling Nicolaus Copernicus would have been given an igNobel?

Well...

Did go against 'Settled Science'.

Yeah but they don't give igNobel prices just because you go against settled science. More like because the research you do seems completely ridiculous at first glance. Like studying Moose reactions to seeing polar bears by dressing yourself up as one.

Everyone knows the earth is flat and at the center of the universe ........ how silly that you think it is round, going around the sun and the sun is going around in a galaxy. Stop with the jokes.

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'Settled Science' does believe, anyone giving a different interpretation of what most believe, is ridiculous. 'Settled Scientists' then ridicule these people and call them 'unscientific' names.

Sound familiar?

But the people that won the price for wearing polar bear costumes weren't going against any kind of settled science. They were trying to research if and how Moose adapt to seeing polar bears, now that the North Pole is melting and polar bears are more often going to get in contact with moose herds. The people that win this price are doing legitimate research, only the way they go about it might seem strange at a first glance.

'Settled Science' does believe, anyone giving a different interpretation of what most believe, is ridiculous. 'Settled Scientists' then ridicule these people and call them 'unscientific' names.

Sound familiar?

But the people that won the price for wearing polar bear costumes weren't going against any kind of settled science. They were trying to research if and how Moose adapt to seeing polar bears, now that the North Pole is melting and polar bears are more often going to get in contact with moose herds. The people that win this price are doing legitimate research, only the way they go about it might seem strange at a first glance.

There is no such thing as moose herds. They live in families.
Polar bear getting contact with mooses are no problem.
First of all polar bear live near the ocean above the Arctic Circle. Mooses dont.
And in at least Scandinavia there are too many mooses. The few attacked by Polar bears makes no difference.

Reindeers however could perhaps be attacked.
I dont see any problem with that either.

So where is the 'legitimate' science wearing polar bear costumes?
We already have bears here who sometimes meet mooses.

Are scientists crooked? In general, I don't think so. However, financially? A definite YES!

Modern technology is a scientist's dream - all that lovely data just so that they can create studies where they can sit on their butts staring at a computer screen & draw a nice paycheck & once the studies are complete, bamboozle everyone with their "science".

Short men aare more likely to die from dementia than tall men

I'm safe at 5'9½" :-)

Are scientists crooked? In general, I don't think so. However, financially? A definite YES!

Modern technology is a scientist's dream - all that lovely data just so that they can create studies where they can sit on their butts staring at a computer screen & draw a nice paycheck & once the studies are complete, bamboozle everyone with their "science".

Short men aare more likely to die from dementia than tall men

I'm safe at 5'9½" :-)

Even better...

Can we put scientists in a circle, so we can study them?

"However, this type of behaviour needs to be scientifically studied, in a controlled environment, to see if the majority of cats would behave this way."