Rather, this is a sort of unconscious, or semi-conscious, massaging of data – ‘dimly perceived finagling’, to use Gould’s words – into which scientists can fall entirely innocently. Indeed, what’s scary about data manipulation is not only that it leads to false conclusions entering the literature, but that so many scientists either do it completely unwittingly or, if they’re aware that they’re doing it, are oblivious as to why it’s wrong.
