Althouse: "People think of scientists as monks in a monastery looking out for the truth."

April 28, 2013

"People think of scientists as monks in a monastery looking out for the truth."

"People have lost faith in the church, but they haven’t lost faith in science. My behavior shows that science is not holy."

43 comments:

Æthelflæd said...: Well, duh. Look at the white robes. They are our modern priestly caste.; 4/28/13, 8:47 PM
Bleach Drinkers Curing Coronavirus Together said...: It makes you feel relieved to know that religious leaders would never lie to us.; 4/28/13, 8:55 PM
Sorun said...: I'm not comfortable using an example from psychology to make some general statements about science.; 4/28/13, 8:58 PM
Sorun said...: "He insisted that he loved social psychology but had been frustrated by the messiness of experimental data, which rarely led to clear conclusions."

In other words, minimal mathematics is involved.

"His lifelong obsession with elegance and order, he said, led him to concoct sexy results that journals found attractive."

Sexy to social science academics: white people are racist. Certainly not edgy, but apparently still sexy.; 4/28/13, 9:11 PM
Unknown said...: “When you live your life and suddenly something extreme happens,” he said, “your whole life becomes a bag of possible explanations for why you are here now.”

Maybe because he's a demonstrated liar? He's a scientist and he doesn't get the relationship between actions and consequences?
I had to quit reading after that quote. The lengths people go to to excuse their own bad behavior is absurd.; 4/28/13, 9:15 PM
Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...: This guy is the complete narcissistic fucker. They should sue him for his salary for the last fifteen years. The soft sciences are particularly susceptible to this kind of fraud but there was a similar case in material physics a few years back. It is not possible to completely eliminate these pricks from the system but the good news is that they generally get caught, although it can take a while.

"He could have retreated from active research to focus on administration, but, he told me, he couldn’t resist the allure of fabricating new results." - There is some deep pathology here and in some of the other cases I have read about. He could have gotten away with the con but needed the buzz, like an addict.; 4/28/13, 9:30 PM
Paul said...: Scientist as monks?

Hahaha.. NO.

Some are honest and do search for the truth. Some are fanatics and try to make the truth. And others are just greedy liars and fake the truth (as in Global Warming.)

But please, don't think being a scientist has a halo or anything like that.

With them, you do 'trust but verify'.; 4/28/13, 10:09 PM
n.n said...: It is only science when limited to a frame where a hypothesis can be tested and an experiment reproduced. Outside that frame it is no longer properly science but philosophy.; 4/28/13, 10:10 PM
David said...: 1. This man was never a scientist.
2. It is unclear whether his field is science, even if done with integrity. The questions being asked seem not susceptible to answers of scientific clarity. The methods are inevitably flawed, the questions are inevitably biased of colored with unstated assumptions and the data is necessarily fragmentary and incomplete.

I think n.n said the same thing, though with more precision and clarity than I can.

One more reason to mistrust experts.; 4/28/13, 10:18 PM
RecChief said...: "The professor consulted a senior colleague in the United States, who told him he shouldn’t feel any obligation to report the matter."

WTF?

It doesn't surprise me that it was an American in the fuzzy sciences who would have no problem with fake data that supports an already decided on conlusion.; 4/28/13, 10:30 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: But the scientific misconduct that has come to light in recent years suggests at the very least that the number of bad actors in science isn’t as insignificant as many would like to believe. And considered from a more cynical point of view, figures like Hwang and Hauser are not outliers so much as one end on a continuum of dishonest behaviors that extend from the cherry-picking of data to fit a chosen hypothesis — which many researchers admit is commonplace — to outright fabrication.

Call me naïve, but I still believe Al Gore.; 4/28/13, 10:34 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: The car let out a warning beep to indicate that we had exceeded the speed limit. Stapel slowed down. I asked him if he wished there had been some sort of alarm system for his career before it unraveled. “That would have been helpful, sure,” he said. “I think I need shocks, though. This is not enough.” Some friends, he said, asked him what could have made him stop. “I am not sure,” he told me. “I don’t think there was going to be an end. There was no stop button.

No fiscal cliff.; 4/28/13, 10:39 PM
bagoh20 said...: I think what we see here is an "inconvenient truth".; 4/28/13, 10:41 PM
Biff said...: I've spent my adult life either as a scientist or surrounded by them on a near daily basis. One thing of which I am certain: scientists are people, too, and they are subject to all of the foibles, biases, pressures, and yes, venalities that other people struggle with. Worse, even the most disciplined of scientists can start easily on the path of self delusion by throwing out "just a little bit" of data that "doesn't quite make sense" or that doesn't match expectations. "There must have been something wrong with that trial." "There must have been a problem with the reagents." ...and on, and on. Most scientists try their best to stay honest and objective, but for more scientists than anyone would like to admit, there is a very slippery slope towards self-deception.; 4/28/13, 10:47 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: And yet as part of a graduate seminar he taught on research ethics, Stapel would ask his students to dig back into their own research and look for things that might have been unethical. “They got back with terrible lapses,” he told me. “No informed consent, no debriefing of subjects, then of course in data analysis, looking only at some data and not all the data.” He didn’t see the same problems in his own work, he said, because there were no real data to contend with.

Wow.; 4/28/13, 10:58 PM
n.n said...: David:

The danger of conflating science and philosophy is the same posed when traditional religions, cults, etc., usurp the scientific enterprise for political expediency.

A secular or democratic society is just as vulnerable, perhaps more so (since a secular society adheres to selective standards), to have its institutions and government subverted by "scientists" and "experts" to advance a minority class's political, economic, and social ambitions.

With the commission of fraud, especially for personal benefit, there will be progressive corruption, and it will entail negative progressive for the society.

Whether it is theists, atheists, or philosophers, they should take care to distinguish between their faith and scientifically rigorous discipline.; 4/29/13, 12:57 AM
rcocean said...: I dunno. The Communist and Nazi scientists were pretty gosh darn objective.; 4/29/13, 12:58 AM
Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...: The fraud was perpetrated by the NYT - suggesting psychology is a science.; 4/29/13, 12:59 AM
tim maguire said...: I've used up my "10 free articles a month" entirely through links on blogs. I thought that wasn't supposed to happen.

Fewer Times links, please.; 4/29/13, 5:53 AM
edutcher said...: I lost the "scientists as monks" stereotype when I heard James Watson say he liked to go out and hit the bars after a long day of work.

But it's quite a little insight into all the "brights" who sneer at religion, but tell us they "believe" in evolution.

AnUnreasonableTroll said...

This guy is the complete narcissistic fucker.

The expert speaks.; 4/29/13, 6:00 AM
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Trashhauler said...: Apparently everyone needs a 12-step program. If you cannot face the past and proceed with rigorous honesty, you will not be able to find any sort of happiness in the future.; 4/29/13, 7:20 AM
Trashhauler said...: Apparently everyone needs a 12-step program. If you cannot face the past and proceed with rigorous honesty, you will not be able to find any sort of happiness in the future.; 4/29/13, 7:20 AM
Larry J said...: Sorun said...
I'm not comfortable using an example from psychology to make some general statements about science.

It isn't limited to psychology.; 4/29/13, 7:44 AM
John said...: Obviously the schmuck should have been a lawyer...; 4/29/13, 8:09 AM
Anonymous said...: "faith in science" - an interesting concept. Those who place faith in science likely don't understand science and are likely to placed their faith in any hokum that is called science if it supports other desires or beliefs. Once that belief has been placed in "science" that is proven wrong, it will be hard to change the belief and believe the proof of error.; 4/29/13, 8:21 AM
Anonymous said...: there is no such thing as a "soft" science. Either it is science that is based on facts, theories, proof, prediction and testing, or it is not science.; 4/29/13, 8:24 AM
Anonymous said...: psychology is to science
as
phrenology is to physics; 4/29/13, 8:26 AM
TMink said...: Karl Popper was writing about this in 1963.

Trey; 4/29/13, 8:47 AM
TMink said...: While I agree with much of the critique of psychology as science, there are people in the field who do good, numbers based work. They are wonderful wonks who provide a great service to those of us who appreciate that sort of thing.

Sadly, there are not many of us!

Trey; 4/29/13, 8:49 AM
Aridog said...: Sorun said...

I'm not comfortable using an example from psychology to make some general statements about science.

Frankly, I'm of the opinion that Psychology is NOT science at all. Not-even-slightly.

@ n.n., @ David, and @ LarsPorcena said it better.; 4/29/13, 9:02 AM
kcom said...: "When asked for the raw data, Stapel initially said he no longer had it."

Where have we heard that one before?

Link

Is it any wonder people are suspicious of the global warmists when they employ the same obfuscatory techniques as a known perpetrator of academic fraud?

This sounds familiar, too:

"The field of psychology was indicted, too, with a finding that Stapel’s fraud went undetected for so long because of “a general culture of careless, selective and uncritical handling of research and data.” If Stapel was solely to blame for making stuff up, the report stated, his peers, journal editors and reviewers of the field’s top journals were to blame for letting him get away with it. The committees identified several practices as “sloppy science” — misuse of statistics, ignoring of data that do not conform to a desired hypothesis and the pursuit of a compelling story no matter how scientifically unsupported it may be."

The compelling, simplistic story seems to drown out actual science in far too many cases.; 4/29/13, 9:06 AM
Aridog said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 4/29/13, 9:18 AM
Astro said...: This is hilarious. 'Social Science' isn't science. It's numerology. It's using math and dubious statistics to reach conclusions that have no physical underpinnings.; 4/29/13, 9:26 AM
Aridog said...: TMink ... I'm not *against* all forms of *psychology* , in fact I find behavioral analysis worthwhile, especially with horses, dogs, and between human social groups...just so long as you/we don't conflate it to "science" per se. AND we listen and observe with an open mind so that a dog, or horse, for example, can tell us what is going on with him/her and not strive to prove our conclusion based upon not being a dog or horse. Hello?

I'd put B. F. Skinner in the out-class [crazy loons] group because he built experiments to sponsor his conclusions.

Example: I cannot prove scientifically why positive reinforcement works best with high level competition horses...but I CAN demonstrate it. Use excessive compulsion on a horse you ride over solid brick walls at 30 mph and you will likely have great performance, maybe, one out of a half dozen rides. Use a symbiotic positive method and you will have great rides somewhere around 25 to 1 times. I can't prove scientifically how *trust* works, but if you don't have it with a horse in a 3 day event, you are going to crash, and maybe get killed. You figure out what works better...it is immaterial if you can prove it.; 4/29/13, 9:27 AM
sinz52 said...: There have been worse examples than Dr. Stapel's fraud--scientific frauds that actually killed people.

A recent example is the clinical trial conducted on the then experimental antibiotic Ketek (telithromycin). Ketek was going to be this new wonder drug which would make it tougher for bacteria to develop resistance to it.

Based on the clinical trial conducted by a Dr. Anne Kirkman Campbell in Georgia, in 2004 the FDA approved Ketek for use.

And then the problems started. Patients who were prescribed Ketek for simple respiratory infections began dying of irreversible liver failure or myasthenia gravis.

After an investigation, it was found that Dr. Campbell had never conducted any clinical trial, but instead had fabricated all the "test results" out of thin air. She went to prison for five years.

A real clinical trial might have discovered that Ketek is toxic to the liver. But Dr. Campbell's "trial" did not.

It was also found that prior to this "clinical trial," Dr. Campbell had done six other fraudulent "clinical trials" of several other drugs that are now widely prescribed. (AFAIK, the FDA has never stated which drugs those were.)

You have to wonder if you've been prescribed any of those other drugs yourself.; 4/29/13, 9:41 AM
Robert Cook said...: "And others are just greedy liars and fake the truth (as in Global Warming.)"

Yep, because we know that all those scientists who say the evidence supports the idea that the earth's temperature is warming and humankind's activity is contributing to this warming are all simply lying dogs who are getting very, very rich from their lies.; 4/29/13, 9:41 AM
Robert Cook said...: "I lost the 'scientists as monks' stereotype when I heard James Watson say he liked to go out and hit the bars after a long day of work."

Where is the discrepancy? Monks are known for brewing good beer!; 4/29/13, 9:43 AM
sinz52 said...: Besides outright fraud, there is the problem of bias.

This is especially true in medical research, where there is a well-known preponderance of papers reporting positive results, and comparatively few papers reporting negative results.

Which makes sense. Researchers do medical research in order to help patients. Few doctors want to go to the effort and publicity to publish a paper that reports: "Our Experimental Treatment Didn't Work At All". And no doctor wants to publish a paper that reports: "My Experimental Treatment Killed Six of My Patients." So those kinds of papers don't get published.

As a result, there are plenty of papers that report that "Medication XYZ Had Significant Benefit," fewer papers that report "Medication XYZ Had No Significant Benefits," and almost no papers that report "Medication XYZ Killed Four of My Patients."; 4/29/13, 9:46 AM
Old RPM Daddy said...: After reading the Times article, I don't think we can get away with claiming that social science isn't really science, and for that reason doesn't count. That's beside the point. The idea that scientists are just as corruptible as anyone else, and as likely to betray their own professions as anyone else, seems to be the takeaway here.; 4/29/13, 9:47 AM
Æthelflæd said...: Robert Cook said...

"Where is the discrepancy? Monks are known for brewing good beer!"

St. Arnold approves this message.; 4/29/13, 10:49 AM
virgil xenophon said...: When I was an undergrad at LSU in the early 60s I visited a fraternity brother who was working on his masters in Chem E. when he was working late in the lab to discuss some now forgotten matter. While there I observed another grad student injecting some fluids via syringe into a mass spectrometer and asked him a few questions about his work while waiting to talk to my guy. As we left the lab my friend said to me: "You don't know how privileged you are, very few of us have EVER seen him doing any work." Years later the man (who by then was a PhD and widely respected in both academia and industry) was exposed as a fraud when other grad students tried to replicate his work, but not before he did industry much harm as his "findings" were widely propagated and followed. LOL, little did I know I was in on the ground-floor..; 4/29/13, 11:54 AM
SGT Ted said...: Note how the fraudulence was in experiments that "confirmed" Progressive political/cultural notions about society adhered to by the left and they lapped it up uncritically.

I specifically remember the paper on red meat eating making one more selfish when it came out. It was obvious to anybody with any common sense that it was such obviously Progressive flavored political bullshit on its face.

Anybody that grew up in an actual Cow Town, like me, and primarily ate beef growing up knew from experience that the study was BS. Not just 'mistaken", but obviously politically inspired fraud. Where else would the fraudster even get an idea that red meat eating is bad, but from the progressive, anti-meat eating fellow travellers that have been telling lies about red meat consumption for the past 40 years.

But, the Progressives provincials that hate meat eating and the meat industry lapped it up uncritically, and then use the info to attack the industry. Because it was "too good to check". Much like how the press repeats political lies about non-progressives without checking them.

This is one of the real problems with the leftward political corruption of the Academy.

Confirmation Bias becomes the problem all the way up the food chain when they all think alike politically and culturally and there's no intellectual diversity that would put a check on it, like, say, a non-progressive employed at the University who's bullshit meter would trigger and who might check his work before he built an entire career out of it, instead of nodding their head in bovine agreement because "everybody knows red meat is bad for you."; 4/30/13, 8:39 AM