Anjana Ahuja, in her weekly science column in the Times, quotes Steve Fuller, Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, on the subject of fraud in science:
Fuller, unsurprisingly, is a voice of dissent in a discussion of whether the race to publish encourages scientists to perpetrate fraud. The discussion appears in Science & Public Affairs, the quarterly magazine of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He does, though, make an exception for drug studies, where misreporting could cause physical harm.
Another contributor, Dr Philip Campbell, the editor of Nature, insists that the pressure to publish is no excuse for unethical behaviour.
Fuller offers a blunt assessment of Campbell’s view: “It’s bullshit. It’s not a case of a few bad eggs. I think most fraud goes undetected. And if it was detected, the pace of science would probably slow down.” Indeed, a recent survey by Nature found that a third of postdocs in the US admitted to research misconduct.
What matters, Fuller insists, is whether the research turns out to be any good, and whether it spurs other discoveries: “The validity of a work is proven by its consequences. If enough people get good results out of what you’ve done, then that you derived your results under false circumstances doesn’t matter.”
The notion of truth, interestingly, doesn’t feature in Fuller’s argument.
How seriously should we take this? Well, one clue is Fuller’s title: Professor of Sociology. Another is that he’s the guy who testified in the recent Kitzmiller trial in Dover Pennsylvania, arguing for the defence, ie for the teaching of Intelligent Design. On the grounds, as far as I can make sense of his reasons, that science is really all about power struggles (Foucault, you know), and the current domination of the Darwinist paradigm is a Bad Thing.
For more on Fuller, see this, at Butterflies and Wheels.
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