COVID-19 Puts Spotlight on Science — but Scientists Often Lie

Darwin, Pasteur, Mendel -- they all mixed truth with lies, fudged data or falsified experiments

We can beat COVID-19 — just trust the science, we’re told. Trust in the scientists, we’re told. And that’s not a paraphrase.

“From the Editors: We Can Beat COVID-19. Just Trust Science,” Wired wrote.

Well and good. Fine and dandy. But fact is, scientists often lie. Science isn’t always the beacon toward truth. It’s not just frequently flawed; it’s frequently deceptive. And purposely so.

So tossing citizens’ civil rights into the sea and allowing medical professionals and scientists to steer the COVID-19 boat may not be the best case scenario for a free America.

“Stanford researchers uncover patterns in how scientists lie about their data,” wrote Stanford News, back in late 2015.

The story went on to report how a couple of researchers “cracked the writing patterns of scientists who attempt to pass along falsified data,” a finding that gave the science world a tool to “identify falsified research before it is published.” The discovery of the pattern is one thing; the fact that the pattern had to be pursued in the first place is entirely another thing. It says, not so subtly, that falsified scientific data is so prevalent that a tool to identify — and slow the creep of — the false data was actually an in-demand item.

In fact, books have been written about the prevalence of falsified science.

“The Great Betrayal: Fraud in Science,” is a 2004 expose about the true state of science, and science that’s been peer-reviewed — that is, self-checked, self-policed. It’s 480 pages long. And in a terse assessment of his findings, author Horace Freeland Judson wrote, “Their claims about science are unscientific.” He was speaking of the scientific greats — of Gregor Mendel, of Charles Darwin, of Louis Pasteur, of Sigmund Freud.

They all fudged data.

What’s more, it’s well-known they all fudged data.

“Freud was a lousy scientist,” The New Yorker wrote, in 2017. “He fudged data; he made unsubstantiated claims; he took credit for other people’s ideas. Sometimes he lied.” [I’m not sure anyone still considers Freud a scientist by this point?]

Mendel, the founder of modern genetics, “may have falsified data,” The Great Courses Daily reported in 2016. It’s been a lingering shadow. From an August 2016 abstract, “Are Mendel’s Data Reliable? The Perspective of a Pea Geneticist,” published in the Journal of Heredity: “Based on a large number of statistical analyses as well as the review of several well-known geneticists, there can be little doubt that the data Mendel presented in 1866 corresponded much more closely to the predictions of his model than could be reasonably expected by chance.”

Moving on; Darwin.

“New Book Uncovers ‘the Life and Lies of Charles Darwin,’” Evolution News wrote in 2009.

And of especial note, given the ongoing COVID-19 debate and vaccinations, this 1993 headline from The Independent: “Pasteur ‘told lies about vaccines,’” — specifically, about the public trial of an anthrax vaccine, and by using a child as a test-case for a rabies vaccine that he had claimed to use on hundreds of dogs.

The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune — these are all papers of record that have reported over the years about Pasteur’s record of scientific deceptions.

Those are hardly the only bad apples.

Science magazine, in a 2018 piece entitled, “Tide of Lies,” wrote of bone researcher Yoshihiro Sato’s fabricated data — “fraud” that was called “one of the biggest in scientific history.”

The American Council on Science and Health, in a 2017 piece entitled, “Lying Politicians Is One Thing, Lying Scientists Is Another,” wrote of “the crappy science” of researchers Peter Eklov and Oona Lonnstedt who reported in a 2016 paper that “tiny particles of plastic in the ocean were harming fish,” and that “microscopic plastic must [therefore] be harmful to fish” — findings that led them to be slapped with the peer-based “misconduct in research” label; findings that the pair subsequently retracted.

QZ, in a 2016 piece entitled, “Nearly all of our medical research is wrong,” wrote: “Something is rotten in the state of biomedical research. Everyone who works in the field knows this on some level. We applaud presentations by colleagues … but we know in our hearts that the majority or even the vast majority of our research claims are false.”

Wow.

Look: Do the research. Google some headlines. There are more, so many more examples of scientists gone wrong, scientists gone rogue, science gone deceptive.

“This scientist nearly went to jail for making up data,” The Washington Post wrote in 2016.

“Researchers Behaving Badly: Known Frauds Are ‘the Tip of the Iceberg,’” Leapsmag wrote in 2018.

“Take That Back: The Top Scientific Retractions of 2019,” Live Science wrote in 2019.

Deceptions are part of the game.

Lies, skews, half-truths, selectively chosen data, biased conclusions, flawed interpretations, outright wildly inaccurate information — these are all part and parcel of scientists’ lives. And why? Because scientists are human, too.

Scientists have deadlines. They have pressures. They have funding goals. They have peer competition. They have personal agendas, political leanings, partisan purposes — spiritual blindnesses. In short: they are not perfect.

Scientists are not perfect; the science they present is not perfect.

And in this COVID-19 atmosphere, where scientists and researchers and medical professionals and scholars have taken over much of the control of US politics and government and how American citizens are supposed to now behave and function — it’s more important than ever to remember this: Scientists can be wrong, very wrong.

Moreover, scientists can lie. And very often, as history shows, they do.

Source: The Washington Times

8 Comments
  1. Andrew Ho says

    Evolutionnews is a website advocating ID. OF COURSE it’s going to try to disparage Darwin. The theory of evolution is the greatest achievement ever in the field of biology, and this author’s lame attempt at mud-slinging cannot take away anything from it.

    1. cechas vodobenikov says

      only idiots subscribe to this crudeness, while evolutionary theories contains some lacunae, they have been discredited entirely, something demonstrated by Gould and numerous anthropologists

  2. voza0db says

    If most of the majority of the Herd of Morons still believes in the scientific fraud “HIV is the cause of AIDS” it seems that they can get away with anything…

    Well, in fact, they are getting away with murder (aka invasive mechanical ventilation)… BUT NO ONE CARES! After all the “good doctor knows best” right?!

    Enjoy the reading!

    Increased understanding of the mechanisms and effects of acute respiratory failure has not been accompanied by more precise criteria by which the clinician can determine when intubation should be carried out and invasive positive-pressure ventilation (IPPV) instituted in a given patient. The indications traditionally offered in reviews and textbooks have tended to be either so broad as not to be very helpful in an individual case, or of questionable clinical relevance and too cumbersome for practical use. This review updates the indications for IPPV in adult patients with acute respiratory failure by examining available evidence from clinical trials and by considering new management alternatives that have become available in the last 20 years. Indications for IPPV based on specific threshold values for P(CO2) and pH or on various indices of arterial oxygenation have generally not been validated by clinical evidence, and it is unlikely that any cutoff value would be applicable to all patients or all categories of acute respiratory failure. Stated another way, there is probably no single value for arterial P(CO2), pH, or P(O2) that by itself constitutes an indication for IPPV. Compelling face validity justifies the use of IPPV in cases of apnea or when it appears certain that respiratory arrest is about to occur. However, dyspnea, tachypnea, or the subjective impression of respiratory distress are probably not in themselves justification for emergency intubation. It should be possible to avoid IPPV and its attendant complications in many cases of acute hypercapnic respiratory failure.

    source

    At a $39,000 income, who doesn’t want to kill some folks?!

  3. itchyvet says

    I learnt a long time ago, whilst having an in depth discussion with an “alleged” scientist who was drawing up a program for safe working in my trade. When I questioned him on the incorrect data he was putting in, I was told this is what my contract stipulates, if I want to get paid, I must conform to their contract. My day of revelation and I have not trusted science ever since.

  4. cechas vodobenikov says

    amerikans believe any ruling class ideology they r required
    “amerikans believe any thing described as scientific without question”. Geoffrey Gorer
    “both American liberals and conservatives misuse science”. Richard Hofstadter and Susan Javoby (The Age of amerikan Unreason)
    recent polls find that more than half of Americans under age 40, mainly fascist liberals, believe astrology is scientific and recent polls find the 47+% of US adults, mainly atheists, believe in ghosts.
    “the scientific attitude is naive and dishonest”. M Merleau Ponty
    Wittgenstein, admired by philosophers of science–Quine, Hempel, Kuhn, Putnam, Feyerabend, etc, wrote, “science tells you nothing…man must awaken to wonder and perhaps so do peoples—science sends them back to sleep again”. amerikans want to be asleep
    Only in the anglosphere is science made an enemy of religion…..Godel, along w Frege and Tarski the most important metalogician, and among the most important philosopher of science demonstrated that science was neither neutral or objective and remained a devout Christian his whole life—Einstein admired Godel….Popper, entirely disregarded today was described as “a crude savage” by Adorno…along w Horkheimer they wrote that science in the USA was adopted for the ruling elites….Putnam (the most important analytical US philosopher)dismissed all of anglophone pseudo philosophy described by Adorno as “a defense of technocratic capitalism” by Adorno that last 15 years of his life, preferring continental and Jewish philosophy…even Gorky admired Jewish philosophy…..of course Harvard would’t permit Putnam to teach Marxism.—Kuhn, also a physicist, denied science was neutral or objective (paradigm shifts)…and only idiots believe Darwin now fully dicredited by many, including Gould….Feyerabend wrote, ‘amerikans fetishize science–in America it is the most dogmatic and aggressive of all religions…that like all religions should be separated from the state”…Tocqueville, Galtung, Gorer, Sennet, Berman, etc write that amerikans r unable to make connections–they only comprehend discreet disconnected facts—of course in Gorer’s ethnography on Russians he found that Russians naturally think dialectically…apparently amerikans cannot apprehend that their fascist govt and corporations fund all science in USA…..”since the masses are eager to believe in something nothing is so easy as to arrange facts for their benefit”. Charles Talleyrand

  5. stevek9 says

    Biomedical research is in a class by itself in terms of misconduct/fraud. Why? …. Money.

    1. voza0db says

      We worship the TREE OF MONEY!

      https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c4d60758d1068e18744956070659e8b13131f090157fe8014715d5780f04a7e1.png

      And we are willing to kill for a piece of paper!

      Wonderful animal specie…

  6. itchyvet says

    Why did the author of this article wait for the Corona Virus before writing such an article ?
    How come it wasn’t written during the Global warming scam ??? The ALLEGED scientists with their “modelling” are of the same crowd.

Leave A Reply

Your email address will not be published.

Anti-Empire