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There are plenty of people out there who say no, including anti-vaccinators, mega vitamin proponents, lovers of non-Western medicine and those who see a pharmaceutical company plot behind every drug, device or genetically altered seed. Few of these skeptics have any sound evidence to offer on behalf of their distrust. Often their opposition is based more on ideology or politics than it is solid evidence for doubt.
But, that does not mean that biomedical science should ignore problems that do undermine public trust in what they have to say. One of the most important and disturbing is fraud.
A study published Monday in the very trustworthy journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that fraud is a real problem in scientific publications. This study is both a reason for concern and, ironically, a reason to trust what scientists and doctors say.
The study reviewed 2,047 retracted biomedical and life-science research articles dating back to 1973 and found that the biggest reason for their retraction wasn't honest error but fraud. More than 40 percent of the retractions were due to the discovery of outright fraud and another 23 percent to plagiarism. The rate of retractions of published articles, while a tiny percentage of all papers published in biomedical journals — 2,000 out of tens of millions published in the past four decades -- is growing. The rate has jumped 10 fold in the past 37 years.
It’s an unsettling trend. A teeny number of fraudulent articles can do an enormous amount of harm. Prominent cases of fraud certainly and rightly make the public wonder about the credibility of biomedical claims. Why, however, does this study and its findings have a silver lining?
Let me ask you a simple question: When is the last time you heard critics of vaccines or GMO food admit that there is fraud on their side? In my experience, the answer is never. Those who tout the benefits of chelation, megavitamins or cleansing enemas never confess to any degree of fraud among their number. Strange as it may seem, what makes mainstream biomedicine trustworthy is its willingness to admit that there are frauds and charlatans out there and that efforts need to be made to catch them.
Real trustworthy science knows that error happens, that sometimes the error is malicious, that there are bad apples out there and that you have to try and weed error out. If you are not ready to admit these truths then you are not trustworthy at all.
That said why is fraud on the rise? The study authors are not sure.
I suspect the increasingly competitive nature of science, the drive to secure more grants, patents and equity by individual scientists and the huge proliferation of journals that are not doing a good job peer-reviewing articles are all to blame. So are scientists who have agendas.
The biggest fraud mentioned in the study is Dr. Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield is no friend of vaccination. His bogus paper reporting a link between autism and vaccines had a huge and devastating impact on the health and well-being of babies and kids all over the world. Even though it was retracted and he was discredited, many still continue to believe he was right.
Biomedicine needs to do more to stop the growing trend of fraud. More education of young researchers, tougher penalties for fraud, and increased resources and rewards for peer reviewing will help. The fact that biomedicine is willing to look hard and publicly at its “bad apples” shows that there is every reason to think that scientists and doctors ought to continue to be trusted.
Arthur Caplan is the head of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center.
More by Arthur Caplan:
Bioethicist: US children suffer from vaccine exemptions
Greenpeace out to sea on GM rice, bioethecist says
Autism link to aging dads won't change vaccine debate or speed cure, bioethicist says
Leave a Comment:
Is a "lover of non-Western medicine" who uses treatments stemming from his own or preferred cultural tradition that have demonstrated benefit in clinical trials thereby wisely trusting the biomedical researchers who actually did those trials, or foolishly distrusting the internet preachers who think that their own biomedical research background endows them with the ability to determine which studies' results should be ignored?
I don't think that what you're describing has to do with fraudulent articles.
To be sure I was picking on a parenthetical comment, but Dr. Caplan raised the issue. I was appalled that he would so casually suggest that people who use traditional medicine or other non-Western healing modalities are as ignorant and quackish as those who think vaccines are a major cause of autism, implying that the large bodies of research supporting some of the former practices are as worthless (or fraudulent?) as the small amount of crummy literature supporting the latter belief. The difference between science and scientism is that the former does not automatically reject published data that don't support current American beliefs.
That's not exactly what he said, jane. He said that "lovers of non-Western medicine" accuse biomedical researchers of fraud without admitting that there could be any on their side. I'll agree he had a pretty dismissive attitude though.
Nice piece -- I completely agree with Dr Caplan. Only a field confident of itself will look squarely at its mistakes. Openness and toleration of criticism are the marks of a mature discipline and are credits to its (still) (largely) trustworthy practitioners. Tip of the tam o'shanter to you, Art.
But how can we know this study isn't a fraud?
It's not setting off my fraudar
The climate scammers got caught plotting fraud. But because their anti-human agenda is blessed by Political Correctness, they've been given a pass by the leftist media and politicians.
The climate scientists get a "pass" because they are right. There was no fraud.
Yes, climate science has spawned a cottage industry of ignorance and avarice attacking the findings. Put on your tinfoil hat, and go after the atmospheric physicists who obviously don't know anything. Bonus: you should do this if you're a high school graduate, you obviously know everything about everything.
that is a great number! Maybe not only students should use plagiarism checkers ( or turnitin), but editors of sciences research articles should use anti plagiarism software - who knows?..
Some do now, which of course makes it far easier to catch it.
who would suggest another ways to prevent plagiarism?
Just imagine the Fraud in the global warming research....keep the grants coming and I will keep feeding you information to support what you want.
"Imagine" whatever yuo want to, but there has never been any fraud demonstrated in global warming research. The fact that less than 0.0001% of publications are fraudulent does not prove that all the scientists you disagree with are lying.
Lead, thanks for the post, now we know you have an IQ of 65.
I guess you guys missed the story a few years back stating that the scientists were making up the global warming research to keep getting grant money... Look it up...there is about a hundred page report on it. And if you have to start with insults you don't have any facts to back you up.
"Few of these skeptics have any sound evidence.... ...based more on ideology...than...solid evidence for doubt."
Skepticism is the starting point in science. When comparing a hypothesis of harm against a hypothesis of a lack of harm, Type I/Type II error should place the burden of solid evidence more heavily on the hypothesis of a lack of harm--especially when that harm might be irreversible.
Yes, there is a lot of quackery and unscientific rhetoric out there -- but a lot of scientific people can easily fall into the error of claiming a lack of evidence for harm as a lack of basis for caution. It takes time, money, and motivation to seek out evidence in either direction.
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