21 sats \ 3 replies \ @quark 28 Jun \ parent \ on: How To Deprogram Yourself alter_native
Could have been a scientist or two caught forging data? Ok. But all of them? I don't think so. That's why the experiments need to be verified many before it is considered truth. It is like bitcoin blocks confirmations. The more confirmations you get, the safer your transactions is.
No need to catch people faking anything, you select them through grants and promotions and researchers know what they need to give to their funders/admins if they want to stay in the game. In fields so complex the reproducibility is difficult and accountability close to none
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On a project I'm currently working on a colleague said to me "Can you imagine if we find _____?" Context withheld to protect the innocent, but everyone knows what the acceptable findings are going into a research project, when you're in certain fields.
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Climate Gate, as it's called, was a huge scandal and the researchers faced essentially no consequences for their misconduct. In fact, Judith Curry, another prominent climate scientist was essentially driven out of academia for calling out the malfeasance.
The Replication Crisis has revealed that most scientific findings don't replicate, that's not always due to malfeasance, but it often is. Replication studies don't publish well, so nobody does that vital work. People are also afraid of criticizing their colleagues.
I'm telling you from inside the science machine that it doesn't work the way you think it does. There's lots of political bias, group think, censorship, and outright fraud. I was a research assistant in climate science for years and now I'm an economist. I've seen how the sausage is made, so to speak, and it isn't what people think it is.
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