There are no facts, only interpretations. – Nietzsche
Many of us consider science the most reliable, accountable way of explaining how the world works. We trust it. Should we? John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist, recently concluded that most articles published by biomedical journals are flat-out wrong. The sources of error, he found, are numerous: the small size of many studies, for instance, often leads to mistakes, as does the fact that emerging disciplines, which lately abound, may employ standards and methods that are still evolving. Finally, there is bias, which Ioannidis says he believes to be ubiquitous. Bias can take the form of a broadly held but dubious assumption, a partisan position in a longstanding debate (e.g., whether depression is mostly biological or environmental) or (especially slippery) a belief in a hypothesis that can blind a scientist to evidence contradicting it. These factors, Ioannidis argues, weigh especially heavily these days and together make it less than likely that any given published finding is true.
Ioannidis’s argument induces skepticism about science. . .and a certain awe. Even getting half its findings wrong, science in the long run gets most things right – or, as Paul Grobstein, a biologist, puts it, “progressively less wrong.” Falsities pose no great problem. Science will out them and move on.
This author of this interesting essay from the NY Times Magazine, seems to understand that scientific knowledge is an iterative process. We rarely change our understanding from one study. We wait for the preponderance of the evidence; only then can we make a new interpretation of science.
This process is much more complex than most non-scientists believe. Each study is another clue in the mystery of how things work (especially the human body). Overreliance on any one clue generally leads to mistakes.
A particular problem stems from the publication process. The author argues in favor of open access publication. Here is his summary:
Open, collaborative review may seem a scary departure. But scientists might find it salutary. It stands to maintain rigor, turn review processes into productive forums and make publication less a proprietary claim to knowledge than the spark of a fruitful exchange. And if collaborative review can’t prevent fraud, it seems certain to discourage it, since shady scientists would have to tell their stretchers in public. Hwang’s fabrications, as it happens, were first uncovered in Web exchanges among scientists who found his data suspicious. Might that have happened faster if such examination were built into the publishing process? “Never underestimate competitors,” Delamothe says, for they are motivated. Science – and science – might have dodged quite a headache by opening Hwang’s work to wider prepublication scrutiny.
In any case, collaborative review, by forcing scientists to read their reviews every time they publish, would surely encourage humility – a tonic, you have to suspect, for a venture that gets things right only half the time.
Science will always benefit from open debate. Publication should not depend on the politics of the editors and the reviewers. We need free and open debate. The solutions suggested herein epitomize the scientific spirit.
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