BAD SCIENCE GETS REWARDED: Stanford’s president is not the only researcher pushing unfounded and incorrect conclusions.
Some of these things were said recently, when the Stanford University president resigned to spend more time doing research (which, ironically, was the problem).
Yet, these same people routinely use false studies to push for conclusions they like. In fact, the majority of scientists conduct research that is false, not useful or not helpful. Only a tiny fraction of scientists stick to true and useful.
While fraud is the worst conduct— using false studies to support your views is hardly better. The Figure illustrates the spectrum of bad science from Fraud to Truth. Let me give some examples of people using bad science to further their agenda, and argue for strategies to solve the problem.
Just in the last two years, we have seen bad science repeated widely.
Black doctors have half the risk of death when they care for black babies vs white doctors. That is an incredible claim, and the underlying PNAS paper is completely flawed, as I explain in the link. Sadly the flawed study was cited in the dissenting opinion of the Supreme Court.
During the pandemic, public health ‘experts’ amplified flawed mask studies and, those who routinely promoted flawed studies or flawed interpretations were bizarrely promoted to public health dean.
Much more at the link. Related: Retract “Proximal Origin?” No, says Nature Medicine editor.
We now have contemporaneous Slack messages and emails where the authors not only express doubts that what they were writing was true, but that prove they thought that the claim they were making–that COVID arose naturally without human interference and that it spread from an animal to a human being via natural processes–was likely not true. . . .
There is now a near consensus that at the very least a lab leak is quite plausible, which has raised the question: why hasn’t Nature Medicine, the journal that published this paper that spawned a million censorships, looked into retracting the paper given its clear contradiction with both reality and with the now apparent opinions of the authors as they wrote the paper?
If the authors lied in the paper, shouldn’t it be retracted?
No. Because Nature Medicine is now rewriting history. The editor now claims that the paper wasn’t research at all, but an expression of an opinion. Just a “point of view.” It wasn’t definitive research, but an Op/Ed or something.
Also related: CDC boss’ utterly laughable exit warning on politicized ‘science.’