[Irtalk] Ask Slashdot: Why Does Science Appear To Be Getting Things Increasingly Wrong? - Slashdot

[Hilton Gibson]

*Recent revelations of heavily policy-driven or even falsified science have
raised concern in the general public, but especially in the scientific
community itself.* It's not purely a question of political or commercial
interference either (as is often claimed when it comes to e.g. climate
research) — scientists themselves are increasingly incentivized to game the
system for improved career prospects, more funding, or simply because they
perceive everyone else to do it, too.

*Even discounting outright fraud or manipulation of data, the widespread
use of methodologies known to be invalid plagues many fields and is leading
to an increasing inability to reproduce recent findings (the so-called
crisis of reproducibility*) that puts the very basis of our reliance on
scientific research results at risk. Of course, one could claim that
science is by nature self-correcting, but the problem appears to be getting
worse before it gets better.

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/15/03/13/2053227/ask-slashdot-why-does-science-appear-to-be-getting-things-increasingly-wrong
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