Is science corrupted by money?

[KitKatMatt]

Scientists can definitely be corrupted by money, and they can influence data with that corruption.

But the great thing about science is no matter how much one person influences results, if other groups can't replicate those results, then the corrupt scientist has nothing to stand on and their corrupted data aren't worth squat.

 

[JackofSpades]

But the great thing about science is no matter how much one person influences results, if other groups can't replicate those results, then the corrupt scientist has nothing to stand on and their corrupted data aren't worth squat.

I guess this happens in long run, but when talking about topics that have been studied only recently, the chances of having biased results increases.

One thing that makes it difficult to spot possible biases in scientific research is that in very special areas of science, there are not too many people on the planet who are capable of analyzing the results objectively.

 

[Audacious]

I don't know about that. Phrenology was so popular in the 19th century that American courts were convicting Americans on trial through the expert testimony of men specializing in phrenology.

The consensus in science often changes. Usually with birth pains too.

Scientists are as biased as any other people walking around. Through the scientific method a good attempt is made to dramatically reduce that bias. However, it's usually never entirely eliminated. First of all, the schooling of any scientists biases him or her to the ideas and grand picture they were taught their. Likewise, with routes and means to searching for a solution to an unsolved problem.

Your example is a poor one because you fail to demonstrate that actual scientists accepted phrenology, and have examples of courts and laymen instead, which doesn't really accurately reflect consensus. (Look at how many laymen support chiropracty, or homeopathy.).

Anyway, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for the simple reason that I don't know everything: science sometimes has birth pains, but for a layman to reject the scientific consensus the consensus must be incredibly obvious, or said laymen will not be able to have a proper, full understanding of it.

 

[RDKirk]

Scientists can definitely be corrupted by money, and they can influence data with that corruption.

But the great thing about science is no matter how much one person influences results, if other groups can't replicate those results, then the corrupt scientist has nothing to stand on and their corrupted data aren't worth squat.

I think there is also the "Lloyd Christmas" effect caused by money (or let's say, the desire to gain money to continue research). The Lloyd Christmas Effect:

Lloyd: "Do I have a chance with you?"
Beautiful Woman: "One chance in million!"
Lloyd: "Then I have a chance!"

It's very tempting for a scientist to pump up the significance of modest results in order to gain a continuance of research grants. Nobody can say he's wrong--and best only over enthusiast. But he's not wrong.

Here, though, is what I learned as a military intelligence analysts: Politicians don't want the truth, they want support for their agendae.

This is where I discovered that I much preferred working for military commanders in the DIA rather than politicians in the CIA. Military commanders know they need the truth even if they don't like what they hear. Politicians will flat out deny a truth that does not support their agendae.

Scientists face the same problem...but they depend on politicians for basic research.

 

[LOVEthroughINTELLECT]

Here, though, is what I learned as a military intelligence analysts: Politicians don't want the truth, they want support for their agendae...

I will never forget something that I read about President George W. Bush. It was a news report about instructions he gave to the CIA, or something like that. The report said that he told the CIA, "Find me intelligence showing that they have WMDs". In other words, it wasn't, "Gather all of the intelligence you can, objectively analyze it, and report the results to me". It was, "Find me intelligence showing that they have WMDs".

 

[OldWiseGuy]

I will never forget something that I read about President George W. Bush. It was a news report about instructions he gave to the CIA, or something like that. The report said that he told the CIA, "Find me intelligence showing that they have WMDs". In other words, it wasn't, "Gather all of the intelligence you can, objectively analyze it, and report the results to me". It was, "Find me intelligence showing that they have WMDs".

Knowing how Dubya often phrased things that could well have meant "Gather all the intelligence you can."

 

[RDKirk]

I will never forget something that I read about President George W. Bush. It was a news report about instructions he gave to the CIA, or something like that. The report said that he told the CIA, "Find me intelligence showing that they have WMDs". In other words, it wasn't, "Gather all of the intelligence you can, objectively analyze it, and report the results to me". It was, "Find me intelligence showing that they have WMDs".

I served under six presidents. The only one who respected the profession of intelligence was the elder George Bush--and I suspect that was because he had been both a military commander and former director of the CIA.

All the others twisted intelligence to suit their own purposes. In the case of the younger Bush, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt because I know the intelligence got twisted at the Cheney and Rumsfeld levels.

 

[SuperCloud]

Your example is a poor one because you fail to demonstrate that actual scientists accepted phrenology, and have examples of courts and laymen instead, which doesn't really accurately reflect consensus. (Look at how many laymen support chiropracty, or homeopathy.).

Anyway, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt for the simple reason that I don't know everything: science sometimes has birth pains, but for a layman to reject the scientific consensus the consensus must be incredibly obvious, or said laymen will not be able to have a proper, full understanding of it.

The expert testimony came from men regarded as men of science, not laymen. They may have been psychologists, I'm not sure, but psychology proposes to be a branch of science.

Well... you can go back to the earlier days of anthropology, too, when it was considered pretty racist. The scientific consensus of the time that white men were more biologically evolved than black men and that the races were quite distinct.

Today the consensus in anthropology is that there is only one biological race among humans. This opinion is held in biology as well. (One I accept too.)

 

[leftrightleftrightleft]

Is the focused areas of funded grants causing biased results in scientific research? Is money corrupting science?

I don't think money is the biggest biasing factor. I think the biggest biasing factor to science is that scientists, journals, funders and the public want "results". They don't want "non-results".

If you have a scientist who is studying the effect of a new drug, no one (the scientist, the journals, the funders or the public) wants to hear the headline: "New drug has no statistically significant effect!"

The scientist wants a positive results. The journals want to publish positive results. The funders want positive results and the public wants positive results.

As a result, you end up with journals full of articles with positive results rather than journals full of null results. This becomes a particular problem when dealing with "statistically significant" results.

Lets say you read a journal article which has a scientist claiming that a drug is effective with 0.05 statistical significance. This implies that 19 out of 20 trials would come out with a statistically significant result, while the other 1 fails to pass the null hypothesis test. But the problem is that the null effects won't ever be published, so we only ever see the positive results without knowing whether they are actually statistically significant. They could just be statistically significant owing to random chance and in reality the drug does not pass the null hypothesis.

 

[bhsmte]

I served under six presidents. The only one who respected the profession of intelligence was the elder George Bush--and I suspect that was because he had been both a military commander and former director of the CIA.

All the others twisted intelligence to suit their own purposes. In the case of the younger Bush, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt because I know the intelligence got twisted at the Cheney and Rumsfeld levels.

Agree.

Didn't foreign intelligence sources have the same information as well?

 

[RDKirk]

Agree.

Didn't foreign intelligence sources have the same information as well?

Yes, they did, which is why they didn't corroborate the Powell UN speech.

It should be noted that a group of CIA analysts resigned after that speech.

A few years ago, an aide to Powell wrote that prior to making the speech, Powell had demanded four times for Tenet to reassure him of the intelligence content. The problem was that the State Department intelligence division--which also had the same information--didn't corroborate it, either. Powell's mistake was not sticking with his own people. He should have told Tenet, "You get your people to convince my people, and I'll go with it."

The professional intelligence analysts at DIA were not convinced either, which is why Rumsfeld had to create a group of non-professional outsiders in the Pentagon to "find what the others have missed."

 

[Erik Nelson]

Backreaction: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal

How long can they go on with this, you ask? How long can they keep on spinning theory-tales?

I am afraid there is nothing that can stop them. They review each other’s papers. They review each other’s grant proposals. And they constantly tell each other that what they are doing is good science. Why should they stop? For them, all is going well. They hold conferences, they publish papers, they discuss their great new ideas. From the inside, it looks like business as usual, just that nothing comes out of it.

This is not a problem that will go away by itself.​

NB: Particle physics is an obstacle to observational Cosmology ("eyes on the skies") because the Alpher Bethe Gamov calculation of 1948 "proved" (on their second try, when they recognized that Big Bang fusion occurred in the radiation-dominated epoch, not the matter one) that our Universe "must" be almost entirely devoid of normal matter

Normal matter "can't" exist...

at least not more than 6% of the Cosmological critical density. But even though we can only observe 10% of the bright luminous self-advertising self-telegraphing stars & galaxies out there [1], we can already infer that matter-like substances comprise 30% of critical density.

The "impossible excess" of 24% or so is thusly dubbed "Dark Matter"

the endless search for which "warrants" enormous outlays each year

-----

For the same price, humans could just build enormous & sensitive optical telescopes, and stare out there and actually directly observe what is there is better & better detail.

For 400 years since Galileo, every. single. time. people. built. bigger. and. better. telescopes. they. saw. more. stars. galaxies. and other space objects. out there.

Tried & true. Bigger is better. Telescopes have never ever come close to observing everything out there. Nobody has ever decried the next generation of observatories as "not worth it in hindsight". Failure rate 0.00%

People have so far decried... or at least been dismayed... that every single dark matter detector was "not worth it in hindsight". Failure rate 100.00%

But Alpher Bethe Gamov have "Star Wars Jedi helmet'ed the Cosmos"... they "know" everything that's out there, without looking...

and everyone appears to be so "sure", that they would rather pour money into and endless series of so-far endlessly failing Dark Matter detectors (0% success rate)...

rather than just go for "Galileo pro plus" (100.00% success rate to date)

If Dark Matter is ever observed to just be a bunch of stellar-mass black holes, black dwarves, brown dwarves & planetary debris...

some people would apparently complain, preferring to believe that normal matter as we know is practically non-existent (!), cosmologically speaking

that violates the core Cosmological Principle of "mediocrity" = "what's here is there", "everything we know is normal and generalizes across the cosmos"

also violates common sense

also has failed 100% of the time to date

also gets ~100% of the funding to date

so I understand

Bible: "reap what you sow"
vernacular: "get what you pay for"


[1] How Many Galaxies Are There in the Universe? - Universe Today

 

[Ana the Ist]

Is the focused areas of funded grants causing biased results in scientific research? Is money corrupting science?

I suppose that depends upon what you mean by "corrupt". If, for example, an oil company pays a scientist to specifically find data that can suggest that oil isn't a cause of global climate change....that scientists is certainly unethical, but corrupt? I suppose that's going to depend upon other things.

 

[Erik Nelson]

I suppose that depends upon what you mean by "corrupt". If, for example, an oil company pays a scientist to specifically find data that can suggest that oil isn't a cause of global climate change....that scientists is certainly unethical, but corrupt? I suppose that's going to depend upon other things.

if "science = pursuit of truth"

and if money deflects science from the truth (the whole truth and nothing but the truth)

then wouldn't money be as guilty of "corrupting science" as someone bribing a witness in a court of law?

Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted the other day, that because (1) rocket scientists can land a probe on Mars that (2) the whole scientific community should be trusted implicitly about climate change on Earth.

Now, I understand that humans have been affecting earth's climate globally since the Agricultural Revolution (clearing continents' worth of forests for farm fields affects the Carbon Cycle too), not merely the recent Industrial revolution. But Martian apples don't prove terrestrial oranges.

But people apparently implicitly trust scientists... which blind trust apparently has "commercial value" so to speak.

And, as with any blind trust, it evidently doesn't matter when such extra-scientific influences are brought to light.

Trust but verify?
Oh, they're in charge of the verify part...
Well, hey, you get to be in charge of the trust part!!

 

[Ana the Ist]

if "science = pursuit of truth"

It doesn't...it's a method for understanding reality.

and if money deflects science from the truth (the whole truth and nothing but the truth)

then wouldn't money be as guilty of "corrupting science" as someone bribing a witness in a court of law?

Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted the other day, that because (1) rocket scientists can land a probe on Mars that (2) the whole scientific community should be trusted implicitly about climate change on Earth.

Seems like an odd lapse in logic by him.

Now, I understand that humans have been affecting earth's climate globally since the Agricultural Revolution (clearing continents' worth of forests for farm fields affects the Carbon Cycle too), not merely the recent Industrial revolution. But Martian apples don't prove terrestrial oranges.

But people apparently implicitly trust scientists... which blind trust apparently has "commercial value" so to speak.

Ok.

And, as with any blind trust, it evidently doesn't matter when such extra-scientific influences are brought to light.

I can't say I agree.

 

[durangodawood]

So this post is just another mindless defense of an unproven theory that has had billions of dollars thrown at trying to prove it?

Does money corrupt research when it cherry picks pet causes?

Corruption does occur in science.

But the results of corruption typically do not survive broad scrutiny over a long time the way climate change fundamentals have. Reality tends to win out.

 

[durangodawood]

Corruption does occur in science.

But the results of corruption typically do not survive broad scrutiny over a long time the way climate change fundamentals have. Reality tends to win out.

For example, the Berkeley Earth project led by a physics prof, a skeptical review of all climate science (which was funded by the Koch brothers!), ended up completely confirming the basics of current climate change science.

 

[bhsmte]

Anything can be corrupted by money. The key is, what are the mechanisms to identify and correct the issue. Science self corrects over time, because of the evidence that is collected and analyzed. Other areas, not so good at self correcting.

 

[Allandavid]

Scientists should be as vigorous in providing solutions as they are in identifying problems. They sound dire warnings, then leave the room leaving scientifically clueless leaders running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

So, all those scientists busily developing solar, wind, tidal, nuclear technologies aren’t finding solutions....??

 

[OldWiseGuy]

So, all those scientists busily developing solar, wind, tidal, nuclear technologies aren’t finding solutions....??

Admittedly they are finding some solutions, yes.