IS SCIENCE SELF-CORRECTING?

Is Science self-correcting?

Is Science self-correcting

When a research project reaches the final stage - that is, the dissemination of results - the primary consideration regarding ethical conduct shifts from avoiding harm to the participants in research to making sure the consumers of the research are not adversely affected. Results of a study typically are communicated in the form of a report to a sponsoring organization, a publication in a profession journal or, possibly, a new release to the media. Ethical voilation concerning disclosure of results undermine the very nature of the scientific process. If we cannot depend on accuracy of existing knowledge, then the scientific endeavor is threatened. Scientific fraud like these can take many forms, from deliberate falsification, misrepresentation, or plagiarizing of the date to embellishing research reports or reporting those whose research has never been conducted. Other questionable practices are irresponsible claims of authorship (listing coauthors who did not really make contributions to the research) and premature release of results to the public without peer review.Science, once emancipated from philosophy and religion, was faced with the need to self-define the parameters of its work and to establish a methodology that distinguish it from the environment and give it scientific validity to the conclusions. The scientific method, in principle, is only a series of established observations that determine the degree of truth of a hypothesis (Cotgreave 2003). It is never absolute; science is reported in degrees of accuracy because it is facing a logical problem inherent in its method: the so-called problem of induction. Inductive reasoning suggests a general conclusion based on a particular observation and specific (still serving a number of requirements to be considered scientific) can not be applied with a degree of absolute certainty to all that exists, since all that exists is unobservable (Sheldrake 2003). After watching ten thousand black crows, the statement "all crows are black" is still the product of inductive reasoning: you can still see a white crow.

Most scientists still consider protection against misconduct to be primarily a responsibility of the scientific community, which uses two mechanisms to detect fraud: peer review and replication (Lee 2006). There are, however, limitations to each of these mechanisms, as illustrated by a case of fraud in medical research involving Dr. Robert Slutsky. The prolific doctor had authored or coauthored 137 articles on cardiological and radiological research over a seven year period. During an evaluation of his appointment as a researcher at a university, questions were raised about duplicate data in two of his papers. In the ensuing investigation, 12 articles were deemed to be fraudulent, and 48 were considered to be questionable (Burns & Grove 2003 181-188). In some cases, articles described experiments that had never been conducted. How is it that these articles eluded the net of peer review by respected medical journals? There seem to have been two problems: peer review of article submission cannot detect plausible, internally consistent fabrications. Second, the sheer number of research articles submitted to publications for review ...