Nature Article: Scientific Fraud May Be More Widespread Than Previously Thought

Posted in Creation/Evolution on June 20th, 2008 by dhawkinsmo

“Nearly one generation after the effort to reduce misconduct in science began, the responses by NIH scientists suggests that falsified and fabricated research records, publications, dissertations and grant applications are much more prevalent than has been suspected to date. Our study calls into question the effectiveness of self-regulation. We hope it will lead individuals and institutions to evaluate their commitment to research integrity.” –Nature 453, 980-982, 19 June 2008 (Illustration credit: J. Taylor)

MY OPINION: External policing won’t work any better than self-regulation. Nothing will change without a change of heart and only the Creator Himself can do that. The Hebrew prophet Jeremiah once wrote … “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jer 17:9 (KJV). But the good news is that God is in the business of changing people’s hearts. He only requires us to acknowledge that He exists and submit ourselves to Him.

My experience has been that anti creationists accuse creationists of fraud quite often, they are usually not subtle about it, and they almost never provide proof for their accusations. Then they often shout “libel, libel” when creationists like me dare to question scientists’ work even if I’m not making an accusation of fraud (which I have never done). But I do think scientists are human and they are biased strongly by their pre-existing beliefs. So this provides temptation to at least ignore contrary data if not commit outright fraud.

Free Bloomberg News article on this HERE.

Related to this topic, here is an interesting editorial on how academia really works by Gary North …

Academia is a self-certified guild that is funded mainly by tax money. Each year, something in the range of $350 billion goes into higher education in the United States. This figure keeps rising. So, the stakes are high.As with any guild, it must limit entry in order to preserve above-market salaries. It does so primarily by academic licensing.

The primary licensing restriction is university accreditation, which is a system run by half a dozen regional agencies. To get degree-granting status, a college or university must be certified by one of these agencies. They certify very few.

The next screening device is the Ph.D. degree. This system was imposed on academia nationally by John D. Rockefeller’s General Education Board, beginning in 1903, when Congress chartered it. He gave money to colleges, but only if they put people with Ph.D. degrees on their faculties.

Next comes faculty tenure. After about six or seven years of teaching mainly lower division classes that senior professors refuse to teach, an assistant professor comes up for tenure. If he gets it, he can never be fired except for moral infractions far worse than adultery committed with female students. Very few assistant professors are granted tenure. The Ph.D. glut then consigns the losers to part-time work in community colleges for wages in the range of what apprentice plumbers receive. I have written about this glut elsewhere.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north632.html