Remember Hwang Woo Suk? The Korean Scientist who claimed to have cloned a human embryo and successfully extracted stem cells? The journal Science, one of the most esteemed out there, published the two fraudulent papers out into the public domain. Donald Kennedy, Science editor-in-chief at the time, says "Scientific fraud is not new and is not rare, luckily it's not common either." in regards to the incident.
Linda Miller, the US executive editor of Nature, even says "If the fraud is clever enough, it is likely that referees and editors will not notice it," The sourced article is particularly noteworthy as it shows how unpoliced many journals are in regards to fraud. This raises the question of how much fraud goes undiscovered?
Other cases of Fraud include Jan Hendrik Schön, who worked with Carbon Based Semi-Conductors (article also mentioning the fradulent discovery of elements 116 and 118 at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Also this is Lorenzo's own field of Science, thought to be the most secure in terms of scientific fraud, unlike that whore of a science Biology, where trying to falsify research isn't such an easy task.
While looking for an article on Robert Slutsky, another scientist found to have fabricated data, I sound these two articles. The first is a summary of a paper stating in its conclusion that "Scientists do not, and probably cannot, identify published articles that are fraudulent." I also found this, which seems to be a course named Responsible Conduct of Research, which looks an excellent read. It cites more examples of scientific fraud.
Now sure, the very idea of scientific method involves independent experiments to replicate findings. Sounds great, but in the case of the LHC, who had another one to try and falsify its findings? When scientific experimentation runs into the millions, and often billions, then it becomes impossible to independently check results. You have to take the data presented at face value, which as we have seen above, can lead to problems. Can you imagine the LHC finding absolutely nothing? While no results would still further human understanding, the outcry would be massive. The pressure these guys must be under to get results must be staggering. However, being wrong is fundamental to science. You publish a theory, and someone improves upon it, or even eventually proves you wrong. It is an important stepping stone, but who wants to be the guy to be improved upon, or even worse, shown to be wrong? With such financial and career pressure, I don't think most want to be that guy or girl.
Shafto, Adam and I had a very interesting chat with UKHotDave regarding this in medical science. He was saying that the vast majority is funding and research is made into slightly improving and modifying current medicines. The reason for this is the patent of medicine is 7 years (I believe he said, perhaps Adam or Shafto can correct me), so if it is modified slightly then they can renew the patent on the medicine. The other reason, as I mentioned above, that looking for the next big miracle cure is expensive, takes many many years of research and usually yields absolutely nothing. It isn't seen as cost effective, lots of money is used up in a big gamble. To me this is the essence of science, but in you results dependent world this isn't satisfactory. Dave went as far as to say that all the big medical breakthroughs have happened. The ideal and the reality is very different.
That's what I am essentially talking about. We have an ideal about the scientific method, and how it can lead us to a new and beautiful future, but in reality it isn't the case. Bear in mind, much of science is speculative, just like economics. Lorenzo, you said here that the LHC exists to find dark matter, that thing that has speculated on that has been made up by scientists to make current theory work. Just think of all the science that is speculative. I don't think speculation is bad, it is just predicting an outcome based on past trends and current knowledge. Wasn't Darwins Theory of Evolution through Natural Selection speculative in his time? We now have much more evidence that supports it.
Economists are no more fallible than Scientists. What we need is a public of critical thinkers to keep all these so called 'experts' in check. We need to take the power back! Who wants to join me?!
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