Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth

by Stuart Ritchie

What ensures that the participants in the process just described – the researcher who submits the paper, the editor at the journal, the peers who review it – all conduct themselves with the honesty and integrity that trustworthy science requires? There’s no law requiring that everyone acts fairly and rationally when evaluating science, so what’s needed is a shared ethos, a set of values that aligns the scientists’ behaviour.19 The best-known attempt to write down these unwritten rules is that of the sociologist Robert Merton. In 1942, Merton set out four scientific values, now known as the ‘Mertonian Norms’. None of them have snappy names, but all of them are good aspirations for scientists. First, universalism: scientific knowledge is scientific knowledge, no matter who comes up with it – so long as their methods for finding that knowledge are sound. The race, sex, age, gender, sexuality, income, social background, nationality, popularity, or any other status of a scientist should have no bearing on how their factual claims are assessed. You also can’t judge someone’s research based on what a pleasant or unpleasant person they are – which should come as a relief for some of my more disagreeable colleagues. Second, and relatedly, disinterestedness: scientists aren’t in it for the money, for political or ideological reasons, or to enhance their own ego or reputation (or the reputation of their university, country, or anything else). They’re in it to advance our understandin...