Search This Blog

Sunday, 13 August 2023

Science: the one enterprise that is better than those administering it?

 Science Is Self-Correcting? Time for a Reality Check


Many of us grew up with the claim “Science — unlike religion — is self-correcting!” Why so many science boosters dragged religion into it was never clear to me. It sounded too much like saying “The chemistry department, unlike the (stupid) philosophy department, is self-correcting!”

Oh? Well, Let’s See Then

Self-absorbed nonsense often followed, which only heightened suspicion. 

The recent resignation of neuroscientist Marc Tessier-Lavigne, president of Stanford University, over yet another peer-reviewed research scandal has forced science thinkers to accept a, perhaps unaccustomed, moment of serious self-reflection. Here’s a sampling from recent news, first from veteran whistleblower Ivan Oransky:

You may have thought, given the voluminous coverage of this case, that Tessier-Lavigne’s defenestration demonstrates such failures are highly unusual and typically lead to significant sanctions.

Neither is true. If — and given the history of such episodes, that’s a big if — journals end up retracting the three papers Tessier-Lavigne has said he has agreed to retract (two in Science and one in Cell), the number will represent less than a tenth of a percent of the retractions we expect to see this year. We at Retraction Watch, which tracks retracted papers, estimate that figure to be about 5,000 — a tiny fraction of how many retractions should happen but don’t. And the careers of most researchers whose names are on the retractions that do happen haven’t suffered a scratch. The ones whose papers haven’t been retracted have even fewer worries.

IVAN ORANSKY, “SCIENCE CORRECTS ITSELF, RIGHT? A SCANDAL AT STANFORD SAYS IT DOESN’T,“ SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, AUGUST 1, 2023.

Oransky reasonably wonders, why do prestigious journals suffer no loss of reputation as these incidents multiply? You know they are having problems in this area when, as he reports, it is often volunteer sleuths whose efforts bring down questionable papers. Tessier-Lavigne was brought down by student journalist Theo Baker.

But It’s Worse than That

As he and fellow Retraction Watch whistleblower Adam Marcus note at The Guardian, journals passively enable flawed work:

Journals and publishers also fail to do their part, finding ways to ignore criticism of what they have published, leaving fatally flawed work unflagged. They let foxes guard the henhouse, by limiting critics to brief letters to the editor that must be approved by the authors of the work being criticized. Other times, they delay corrections and retractions for years, or never get to them at all.

IVAN ORANSKY AND ADAM MARCUS, “THERE’S FAR MORE SCIENTIFIC FRAUD THAN ANYONE WANTS TO ADMIT, THE GUARDIAN, AUGUST 9, 2023.

Veteran science journalist Matt Ridley surveys the scene:

Gloriously, in June this year, a study of honesty itself was accused of being dishonest. Professor Francesca Gino of Harvard Business School had claimed that people who signed truthfulness declarations relating to tax or insurance at the top of a page were more honest than those who signed at the bottom of a page. Her co-author says he has been shown ‘compelling evidence’ of data falsification. Gino denies the accusation and filed a lawsuit against Harvard last week.

MATT RIDLEY, “SCIENCE FICTION: THE CRISIS IN RESEARCH,” SPECTATOR, 12 AUGUST 2023.

Yes, That’s Another Factor

Increasingly, researchers facing retraction and possible consequences have begun resorting to lawsuits. Their chances of winning may be small but if accusers must run up a big legal bill defending themselves, they may well back off and let the whole matter drop. 

Flawed but accepted research has even attracted a parody paper, a Sokal hoax-style entry that attempted to test just how bad the situation really is:

In 2015 John Bohannon published a deliberately misleading study showing that chocolate could cause weight loss and submitted it to multiple journals from a fake institute to see how many would publish it. It was a real study but its design, with a small sample size and a large number of variables tested, was a ‘recipe for false positives’. It was accepted within 24 hours by a journal that boasts that it ‘reviews all papers in a rigorous way’ and published unchanged. With the help of a press release, it was soon all over the media, for which any diet story is irresistible clickbait.

MATT RIDLEY, “SCIENCE FICTION: THE CRISIS IN RESEARCH,” SPECTATOR, 12 AUGUST 2023 HERE’S MORE ON THAT PAPER. 

Reading about proposed remedies in Times Higher Education is dispiriting (i.e, when the ship is on fire, rearrange the deck chairs). It’s as if Top People don’t understand how serious the problem is.

Here’s How Serious It Is

Stanford statistician John Ioannidis pointed out in 2005, “most published research findings are false.” And not much has changed. Spurious correlations, data mining, and data torturing, etc. go on as before because there is no true incentive to tackle the problem at the root. The incentive is simply to slap the wrists of the worst offenders. For example, Tessier-Lavigne is expected to remain a tenured professor at Stanford.

Here’s what may be changing though. Decades ago, it was the better informed people who trusted ongoing science research. Less well-informed people relied on unexamined truisms, folk beliefs, etc. Today, especially in the wake of utter debacles like the official response to COVID-19, “Trust the Science!” is becoming, in many places, a jibe — and for good reason.

Time will tell if the problem is even fixable in a world of philosophical and political wars on math and wars on science. Stay tuned.

The caste system is impeding the rise of India?

 

A blow for the right to repair?

 

Building a Cathedral to chance and necessity?

 Is the Cosmos One Big Happy Accident?


And are science and religion mortal enemies? On a classic episode of ID the Future, Casey Luskin talks with Discovery Institute Senior Fellow Jay Richards about distortions and outright falsehoods presented in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s reboot of the Cosmos TV series. Dr. Richards discusses how Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey presents science and religion as enemies by misrepresenting the lives of key figures in the history of modern science. “If you’re going to tell that story of the warfare between Christianity and science, you absolutely have to have a martyr,” says Richards. Both Copernicus and Galileo died peacefully, so the show spends an unusual amount of time animating the story of Dominican friar and mystic Giordano Bruno and his persecution by the Catholic Church. The problem? Bruno isn’t a central character in the story of modern science, and he was executed for alleged theological crimes, not scientific ones. Richards goes on to discuss the show’s misrepresentation of scientific giant Isaac Newton and even of the monotheistic ideas of the ancient Chinese philosopher Mozi. “What you get is the sense that religion and Christianity were either an enemy of science or at best they were incidental beliefs to early modern science that made no difference to scientific discovery. It’s just not true.” Download the podcast or listen to it here.

A house more divided than ever?

 Right-wing Catholics interrupt Mass for LGBTQ World Youth Day pilgrims

Christopher White

The same day Pope Francis told half a million Catholics gathered in the Portuguese capital for a major youth festival that the church must be a home for everyone, ultra-traditionalist Catholics interrupted a Mass for LGBTQ pilgrims in protest of the organizer's efforts to put the pope's message into action. 


When some two dozen Catholics gathered for Mass on Aug. 3 at the Church of Our Lady of the Incarnation here in Lisbon, a group of protesters began to chant "a reparatory prayer" in an effort to disrupt the gathering. 


According to noted British theologian Fr. James Alison, an openly gay priest who was one of three concelebrants of the Mass, the group of a dozen protesters wore long mantillas and held crucifixes and increasingly raised their voices in an effort to drown out the priests and congregants during Mass. 


Police who had already been notified of a potential disturbance were soon on the scene to escort the protesters out of the church, and the Mass continued without further incident. Alison told NCR that the interruption highlights the challenges that LGBTQ Catholics face in trying to practice their faith. 


Those roadblocks began several days earlier, when the organizers of the Mass, the Global Network of Rainbow Catholics and a local Portuguese LGBTQ Catholic group, had to scramble to find a new location to hold the Mass after their original hosts grew anxious after calls for protests began to circulate online. 


Much of the protesters' motivation, Alison said, was their mistaken belief that Jesuit Fr. James Martin would concelebrate the Mass. While Martin — a prominent LGBTQ Catholic advocate — had been in Portugal for Jesuit-related events ahead of World Youth Day, he had already left the country. 


Despite the forced change of venue and the interruption, Alison said that he has no ill will toward the protesters. 


"I was terribly sorry to see these people who have been led to this terrible ideology of hatred," he said. "They live in a weird, alienated world and did not look happy. We were principally sad for them." 


"I don't blame them," Alison added. "I blame the intellectual authors who seem to bear the responsibility for this." 


Alison said that the fact that the protest occurred on the same days that Francis — who arrived in Portugal Aug. 2 for a five-day visit for World Youth Day — used three speeches to repeatedly emphasize that everyone has a home in the Catholic Church, showed that the Mass for LGBTQ Catholics was "clearly in line with the Holy Father's message." 

Since the start of his pontificate in 2013, Francis has walked a tightrope on LGBTQ issues — continuing to uphold traditional church teaching, which prohibits gay relations, while repeatedly offering calls for everyone to be welcomed in the church and personally befriending a number of openly gay Catholics. 


On Aug. 4, the Spanish Catholic news weekly, Vida Nueva, published an interview with Francis, in which the pope reflected on his meetings with transgender people.


"The first time a group of transsexuals came to the Vatican and they saw me, they came out crying, saying that I had given them a hand, a kiss … as if I had done something exceptional with them," he told the magazine. "But they are DAUGHTERS(?) of God!"

An ancient superpower remembered.