Follow the Science as Science Follows the Partyline
Hat-tip to Instrapundit
From the Wall Street Journal:
How ‘Preapproved Narratives’ Corrupt Science: Especially in climate and Covid research.
Scientists were aghast last month when Patrick Brown, climate director at the Breakthrough Institute in Berkeley, Calif., acknowledged that he’d censored one of his studies to increase his odds of getting published. Credit to him for being honest about something his peers also do but are loath to admit.
In an essay for the Free Press, Mr. Brown explained that he omitted “key aspects other than climate change” from a paper on California wildfires because such details would “dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell.” Editors of scientific journals, he wrote, “have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives.”
Nature’s editor, Magdalena Skipper, denied that the journal has “a preferred narrative.” No doubt the editors at the New York Times and ProPublica would say the same of their own pages.
Mr. Brown’s criticisms aren’t new. In 2005 Stanford epidemiologist John Ioannidis wrote an essay titled “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.” He contended that scientists “may be prejudiced purely because of their belief in a scientific theory or commitment to their own findings.” . . .
Journals often don’t compensate peer reviewers, which can result in perfunctory work. The bigger problem is that reviewers often disregard a study’s flaws when its conclusions reinforce their own biases. One result is that “a large share of what is published may not be replicable or is obviously false,” Dr. Ioannidis notes. “Even outright fraud may be becoming more common.” . . .
Scientific journals and preprint servers aren’t selective about research quality. They’re selective about the conclusions. If experts want to know why so many Americans don’t trust “science,” they have their answer.
Too many scientists no longer care about science.
My comment:
No one paid Einstein for his research on his early papers on photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, his special theory of relativity and the equivalence of mass and energy. Darwin was self-funded as a naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle. For that matter, the Wright Brothers toiled without a government grant (unlike their rival, Langley, whose flying machine dunked itself in the lake and would not fly).
I recall how completely critics are modern science-worship were mocked for harboring doubts about our sacred clerical priesthood in labcoats. Then the Wu Han Flu hit, had its name changed, and was exaggerated into an epidemic, was wrongly diagnosed, wrongly treated, and combatted by a dangerous experimental m-RNA drug responsible for an estimated 17 million deaths (See the Epoch Time column here).
This generation of scientists frittered away its patrimony of prestige like a prodigal son engaged in riotous living, as harlots, prostituting themselves for pay.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
