Over the past year or so (coinciding with the advent of COVID-19), there has been a concerted effort by the nation’s elite institutions to portray “the Science” as infallible. Ignored, however, are the systemic flaws existing within academia that highlight the experts’ fallibility.
A meta-analysis examining a broad range of survey data found that 33.7% of scientists admit to engaging in questionable research practices, with 14.2% admitting to having observed colleagues outright fabricate results. Rates of misconduct are even higher among medical and pharmacological researchers, the work of whom considerably influenced the way governments reacted to COVID-19.
Malpractice this rampant makes sense when considering that many fields have found themselves amid a replication crisis. In other words, it is common for researchers to replicate the procedures of their colleagues only to churn out totally different and often contradictory results. Replicability is one of the pillars of scientific validity, its diminished presence in modern academia ought to set off a degree of skepticism among the general public.
Perhaps it would be reassuring if this were simply a case of a few bad apples, however, dishonesty appears to be ingrained in the structure of modern research.
Career trajectory in academia is in large part determined by how often an individual gets published, and whether or not an individual’s work gets published is not independent of what he or she finds. Studies that return a statistically significant result confirming the hypotheses of their authors are more likely to be published than research that comes to any other kind of conclusion.
This creates an incentive for scientists to manipulate their findings to generate evidence in support of conclusions that may not be borne out in reality.
Bad science presents a danger to the public interest. When policymakers draw on the opinions of experts to craft solutions to the problems of our times, they presume said experts to be operating in good faith. Far too often, however, this is not the case.
Even when scientists are not being deliberately misleading, their behavior can be harmful.
Consider the theory that the genesis of COVID-19 was an instance of gain-of-function research gone awry. The hubris of scientists could have unleashed the most severe pandemic of our lifetimes, that’s no small feat.
The scientists’ public reaction to the whole question was even worse. From the onset, scientific authorities told us that it wasn’t even conceivable that such a thing could occur, only to backpedal a few months into a new administration. What’s more, many of the scientists who so adamantly sought to “debunk” the notion that COVID-19 may have been man-made were themselves involved in coronavirus-related gain-of-function research, presenting a clear conflict of interests.
Science is no substitute for good judgment.
None of this is to say that we should eschew science. Empirical evidence documented by academics is, in many cases, the best resource we have for understanding the world around us. Such evidence, however, should not be regarded as gospel truth as the process that produces it is deeply flawed.
