Posted on 02/05/2010 7:47:21 AM PST by KeyLargo
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL * OPINION: DE GUSTIBUS * FEBRUARY 4, 2010, 10:00 P.M. ET
New Episodes Of Scientists Behaving Badly Scandals just keep pouring from the laboratories
By ERIC FELTEN
This has not been the proudest of weeks for science. Twelve years after publishing an article purporting to prove a link between childhood vaccines and autism, the prominent British medical journal Lancet finally retracted the paper in its entirety. But only after Britain's General Medical Council found that the author of that article had been "irresponsible and dishonest" in his research, bringing medical science "into disrepute."
That wasn't the only controversy involving scholarly journals and the repute of researchers to flare up this week. Also in Britain, two prominent stem-cell researchers went to the BBC with their complaint that the peer review system has become corrupt. Flawed and unoriginal work gets published and promoted, while publication of truly original findings is often delayed or rejected, according to Austin Smith of Cambridge University and Robin Lovell-Badge of the National Institute for Medical Research
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Al G didn’t invent the internet because he wasn’t old enough to know hiss a** from up when DARPA invented it. He did invent global warming because he was pissed at G W Bush.
It really comes down to money. The climate researchers promoted their political agenda and brought naive people like Al Gore, Prince Charles, Hollywood celebs etc. on as promoters and in return got more government money for further “research”. With their useful idiots trumpeting the imminent disaster more money flowed. This is nothing more than a scam run by academic hucksters looking for a buck.
Scientists would never lie to us. You’re obviously just a bigoted tool of the oil company.
So the Global Warming hoax is GW Bush’s fault, too. Of course! Why haven’t we thought of that before? ;^)
Sooooooo, Global Warming is GW Bush’s fault. Of course! Why haven’t we thought of that before? :^)
Oops! Thought the first one didn’t post.
Also in Britain, two prominent stem-cell researchers went to the BBC with their complaint that the peer review system has become corrupt. Flawed and unoriginal work gets published and promoted, while publication of truly original findings is often delayed or rejected, according to Austin Smith of Cambridge University and Robin Lovell-Badge of the National Institute for Medical Research...Thanks KeyLargo.
thanks sunken
Great sign - thanks for sharing.
“Just this week I was chatting with a friend who, over the years, has helped her kids slog through the obligatory science-fair projects.
“The experiments never turned out the way they were supposed to, and so we were always having to fudge the results so that the projects wouldn’t be screwy. I always felt guilty about that dishonesty,” she said, “but now I feel like we were doing real science.””
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This is EXACTLY the WRONG approach to use with any science project! If a science project experiment turns out to give results different from those you expect, the right thing to do is to state your results, then to speculate as to what you may have done incorrectly - own up to the mistakes, and let people know how painstakingly the experiment has to be done to get useful results!
Since my realm has generally been solid chemistry and physics experiments, if I didn’t completely screw up (fail to mix thoroughly, forget to document whether I used inches or cm., etc.) my results have seldom been opposite expected. In Biology or Psychology, etc, it is easy to screw up in ways that you don’t even realize, that result in unexplained data. When that occurs, state what was expected, and what factors that you can imagine may have affected the experiment but that you didn’t control for. Then say the experiment needs to be repeated with “a larger data set”, “more controls”, “more attention to detail”, or whatever else is important.
I was drawn to science as a youngster ... my undergraduate major was chemistry. I am offended by those GW alarmist "scientists" who knowingly have subverted the scientific method ... and especially as it gave cover to dishonest politicians in their quest to promote a leftist political ideology.
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