When Scientists Behave Badly

 

Stereotypical `mad scientist’ of the 1930s Movies

# 8418

 

In recent years the reputation of both science and scientists has seriously eroded in the public’s eye. In another blow, today’s newspapers are filled with reports of a new alleged research scandal (see Washington Post Rising Japanese scientist fabricated heralded stem cell research, lab says), which sadly, is simply the latest in a long line of such stories. 

 

One only has to look at the public’s distrust over climate change, evolution, vaccine safety, nuclear power, and genetically modified food crops to realize the toll breaches of trust like these take on society.

 

Roughly two weeks ago JAMA Internal Medicine published the results of an online poll, conducted last fall, that asked 1351 people their opinions regarding popular `medical conspiracies’.  Many of these theories are actively promoted by websites and/or celebrities.  

Among the `conspiracies’ asked about:

• The FDA is deliberately preventing the public from benefiting from `natural remedies’ that cure cancer, and other ailments, to protect the financial interests of `Big Pharma’
• Health officials are covering up evidence that proves cell phones cause cancer.
• The CIA deliberately infected African Americans with HIV
• GMO foods are deliberately designed to dramatically reduce the world’s population
• Doctors know that vaccines cause autism, but continue to promote them
• Fluoridation  is really a secret way to dump toxic chemicals into the water supply

 

Amazingly, while levels of agreement with these conspiracies ranged from a low of 12% (GMO foods, Fluoridation & Deliberate infection with HIV) to a high of 37% (FDA suppressing natural cures), in all but one scenario (Deliberate HIV infection of African Americans), less than half disagreed with these theories.

Meaning that while they might not buy into a theory, but they at least found it plausible.  And the HIV conspiracy theory narrowly missed the cut, coming in at 51% disagreement.

 

The study is available at this link, and an NPR summary appears at Half Of Americans Believe In Medical Conspiracy Theories. This backlash against science and scientists is driven, at least in part, by revelations of scientific misconduct such as reported this morning in the Washington Post. 

 

Lest anyone think this is an isolated problem, in a presentation made in March 2012 (see Dysfunctional Science) before a committee of the National Academy of Sciences, journal editors Arturo Casadevall and Ferric C. Fang warned that the number of retraction notices for scientific journals has increased more than 10-fold over the last decade, while the number of journals articles published has only increased by 44%.

And in early 2013, in mBio: Gender Analysis Of Scientific Misconduct, we looked at an analysis written by written Joan W. Bennett, Ferric C. Fang, and Arturo Casadevall, that examined the rise of Scientific misconduct - which includes fabrication, falsification or plagiarism – over the past decade.

 

As a child of the space age, and raised on the science writings of Willy Ley and Isaac Asimov, I am about as `pro-science’ as one can get. So I find self-inflicted wounds such as these are particularly distressing. 

 

Science and technology, which are truly our best hope for a better future, are seriously at risk of losing the public’s support.

 

Three years ago in a BBC Horizon special Science Under Attack, Nobel Prize winning geneticist Sir Paul Nurse explored some of the reasons why science, and scientists, are increasingly coming under attack. While he cites many factors (including irresponsible bloggers, and tabloid journalism), he also faults scientists for their failure to communicate with the public.

 

A brief quote from near the end of the program:

 

“Scientists have forgotten that we don’t operate in an isolated bubble. We cannot take the public for granted. We have to talk to them, we have to communicate the issues. We have to earn their trust, if science really is to benefit society.”

 

Add in the parade of FDA approved drugs that we’ve seen withdrawn for safety reasons after years of use, allegations of biased industry funded clinical trials (see RCTs: All That’s Gold Standard Doesn’t Glitter), and a long list of scientific advances that proved to be `bad ideas’ over time:

 

• Adding Lead to paint & gasoline
• Using asbestos in ceiling tiles, insulation, and cigarette filters
• Painting clock dials with radium paint
• Using growth enhancing antibiotics for livestock
• Building nuclear reactors in a seismic fault zone

And you have ample precedent for the public’s wariness over scientific assurances of safety or efficacy. As a science geek it pains me to admit it, but much of this tarnish to science’s reputation has been at least partially earned.

 

Yes, most scientists and researchers are diligent and honorable.

 

But they live and work in a system that rewards `big discoveries’  with academic laurels or promises of wealth, and that expects them to attract large donations to their institutions, both increasing their stress levels and inviting the occasional `shortcut’ to success.

 

Topics covered last year in an hour-long Science Live Chat: Are We Doing Science The Right Way?

 

Every day the world becomes more dependant on technological solutions to solve our growing list of social, economic, and environmental problems. The need for the public’s trust and confidence in the scientific process has never been greater.

 

Yet, that trust is being squandered by a few scientists behaving badly.

 

Unfortunately, the end result isn’t just that the scientific community that will suffer, but so will society as a whole.

mBio: Gender Analysis Of Scientific Misconduct

 

UPDATE:  The link to this study on mBio is now live:

Males Are Overrepresented among Life Science Researchers Committing Scientific Misconduct

Ferric C. Fang, Joan W. Bennett and Arturo Casadevall

doi:10.1128/mBio.00640-12

 

# 6873

 

Later today the open access online journal mBio ® will publish an analysis of scientific misconduct - written Joan W. Bennett, Ferric C. Fang, and Arturo Casadevall - based on data from the Office of Research Integrity. 

 

Scientific misconduct - which includes fabrication, falsification or plagiarism – has been on the rise over the past decade.

 

In a presentation made last March (see Dysfunctional Science) before a committee of the National Academy of Sciences, journal editors Casadevall and Fang warned that number of retraction notices for scientific journals has increased more than 10-fold over the last decade, while the number of journals articles published has only increased by 44%.

 

A pair of related editorials, penned by Casadevall and Fang, appeared at the same time in the journal Infection and Immunity.

Reforming Science: Structural Reforms

Ferric C. Fang, Editor in Chief, Infection and Immunity and Arturo Casadevall, Editor in Chief, mBio

Reforming Science: Methodological and Cultural Reforms

Arturo Casadevall, Editor in Chief, mBio and Ferric C. Fang, Editor in Chief, Infection and Immunity

 

 

We get a preview of today’s analysis from a press release from the American Society for Microbiology. The study can be viewed later today at the mBio website http://mbio.asm.org/.

 

 

Men more likely to commit research misconduct than female counterparts

It's not hard to see that men are more likely to engage in risky behaviors than women, or that crime rates are many times higher among men, but this tendency to break the rules also extends to male scientists, according to a study to be published on January 22 in mBio®, the online open-access journal of the American Society for Microbiology. An analysis of data from the Office of Research Integrity reveals that men commit research misconduct more often than their female peers, a gender disparity that is most pronounced among senior scientists.

 

"Not only are men committing more research misconduct," says Joan W. Bennett of Rutgers University, a co-author on the study. "Senior men are most likely to do so."

 

In the study Bennett teamed with Ferric C. Fang of the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle and Arturo Casadevall of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, and scrutinized data from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity, an organization that investigates allegations of misconduct in research supported by the Department of Health and Human Services. "Misconduct" includes such infractions as fabrication, falsification or plagiarism.

 

They found that out of the 227 individuals sanctioned for committing scientific misconduct between 1994 and the present, 66% were male, a number that far outstrips their overall representation among researchers in the life sciences. And although men represent about 70% of faculty in the life sciences, 88% of faculty who committed misconduct were male.

 

If the fact that men are more likely to commit scientific misconduct is less than surprising, Casadevall says, what did surprise the authors is the fact that misconduct is not confined to inexperienced, early-career strivers.

 

"When you look at the numbers, you see that the problem of misconduct carries through the entire career of scientists," says Casadevall. Faculty (32%) and other research personnel (28%) represented a total of 60% of cases, whereas students (16%) and post-doctoral fellows (25%) were sanctioned in only 41% of cases.

(Continue . . . )

The damage done to the public’s perception and trust of science due to misconduct and fraud is difficult to calculate, but overall the public’s opinion of science and scientists has taken quite a beating in recent years.

 

According to a recent UK poll (Public Attitudes To Science, May 2011):

While the majority of respondents (79%) believed science has, on the whole, made our lives easier .  . . .  astonishingly, just 54% believed that the benefits of science are greater than any harmful effect.

 

One only has to look at the deep divisions over climate change, evolution, vaccine safety, nuclear power, and genetically modified food crops to realize just how wide this rift between the public, and scientists, has become.

 

Every day the world becomes more dependant on technological solutions to solve our ever growing list of social, economic, and environmental problems.

 

The need for the public’s trust and confidence in the scientific process has never been greater.

 

If that trust is squandered through scientific fraud or misconduct, it isn’t just the scientific community that will suffer, but society as a whole.

Science At The Crossroads

 

 

# 6151

 

 

Being born of the space age, and having cut my teeth on the science writings of Willy Ley and Isaac Asimov, I am about as `pro-science’ as one can get.  No one need convince me of the validity of evolution, or the benefits of vaccines, or that – on the whole – science has done much to better mankind.

 

Yet I’m sorry to say that the public’s perception of science, and scientists, has seen better days.

 

According to a recent UK poll (Public Attitudes To Science, May 2011), while the majority of respondents (79%) believe science has, on the whole, made our lives easier .  . . .  astonishingly, just 54% believe that the benefits of science are greater than any harmful effect.

 

One only has to look at the deep divisions over climate change, evolution, vaccine safety, nuclear power, and genetically modified food crops to realize just how wide this rift between the public, and scientists, has become.

 

Last year in a BBC Horizon special Science Under Attack, Nobel Prize winning geneticist Sir Paul Nurse explored some of the reasons why science, and scientists, are increasingly coming under attack.

 

While he cites many factors (including irresponsible bloggers, and tabloid journalism), he also faults scientists for their failure to communicate with the public.

 

A brief quote from near the end of the program:

 

“Scientists have forgotten that we don’t operate in an isolated bubble. We cannot take the public for granted. We have to talk to them, we have to communicate the issues. We have to earn their trust, if science really is to benefit society.”

 

While it would be nice to chalk up the public’s mistrust of science to a simple lack of communication, the truth is a bit more complicated.

Science’s record is hardly without blemish.

 

Call it the law of unintended consequences. Some ideas that seemed perfectly reasonable and rational at the time turned out to be foolish or even dangerous later.

 

A few scientific innovations that have come back to haunt us include:

 

• putting lead in paint & gasoline
• Using asbestos in ceiling tiles, insulation, and cigarette filters 
• Painting clock dials with radium paint
• Using growth enhancing antibiotics for livestock

 

We are smarter now, of course. And while it is easy to assure that we know better than to repeat the mistakes of the past, scientists are still human, and missteps will doubtless continue to occur.

 

But it isn’t just honest mistakes in science that has done damage.  Research has its dark side as well.

 

In a 2010 article appearing in the Journal of Medical Ethics, researcher R. Grant Sheen found hundreds of examples of research paper retractions over the past decade due to what he deemed to be `deliberate fraud’.

 

Add in the parade of FDA approved drugs that we’ve seen withdrawn for safety reasons after years of use, and allegations of biased industry funded clinical trials (see RCTs: All That’s Gold Standard Doesn’t Glitter), and one begins to understand why public confidence in science has flagged.

 

And while it pains me, It is hard to deny that some of this tarnish hasn’t been at least partially earned.

 

In recent months the debate over H5N1 research appears to have further polarized the public and the scientific community. 

 

Which may help explain why views, like the ones expressed in a recent New York Times Editorial (An Engineered Doomsday) - that called for a halt to this sort of work, and the destruction of the virus – seem to resonate with a substantial segment of the public. 

 

Regardless of what is ultimately decided regarding the publication of the Fouchier and Kawaoka H5N1 papers, this new era of bioengineering and life sciences brings with it a host of thorny issues that must be addressed if the public is to regain confidence in science.

 

Among them:

• How are we to handle this brave new world of life sciences, where new viruses and other life forms can be created in the laboratory?
• Who decides what is appropriate, or safe research?
• Who decides what should be published, and who should have access to redacted information?
• What laboratory protocols and protections are necessary for working the the H5N1 virus?

 

Daunting questions all, and likely to spur vigorous (even heated) academic debate. 

 

We find ourselves at at turning point in science, and potentially, in the perception of science as well.

 

How openly, honestly, and civilly this debate is conducted, and most importantly - how well these complex issues and subsequent decisions are conveyed to the public - will doubtless influence how the public will perceive the scientific community going forward.

 

There is much ground to be either gained or lost in the public’s mind, depending on how well this is handled. And a lot more at stake than the fate of a couple of research papers, or even a particular line of research.