Bishop Hill Prosecute scientific misconduct
Sep 16, 2014 Crime Richard Smith, the former editor of the British Medical Journal and an expert on peer review, has called for scientific misconduct to be criminalised:
After 30 years of observing how science deals with the problem, I have sadly come to the conclusion that it should be a crime, for three main reasons. First, in a lot of cases, people have been given substantial grants to do honest research, so it really is no different from financial fraud or theft. Second, we have a whole criminal justice system that is in the business of gathering and weighing evidence – which universities and other employers of researchers are not very good at. And finally, science itself has failed to deal adequately with research misconduct.
The point about fraud and research grants is an interesting one. Would it be possible to prosecute people under existing common and statute law? My guess is that it wouldn't be. And if we need new laws, how exactly would you frame them? Perhaps readers with legal qualifications can provide some clarity.
Reader Comments (57)
Skeptical chemist, I agree with you in that an anti-scientist or anti-science attitude is not is becoming. Several have already made the observation that protesting heavily about scientific misconduct could cut too close to the bone. If we look at historical precedent, the Baltimore case comes to mind. There were three main parties involved: there ultimately was no significant scientific misconduct. But the case showed how damaging an aggressive pursuit of fraud investigation can be.
I think the policing of science is the policing of curiosity, and therefore inherently problematic. The US ORI uses the trifecta: fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism as its guidelines. Such blunt tools are therefore applicable cleanly only in the worst of cases.
It is a common tactic to turn the topic around and throw around 'anti-science', 'denier' or 'flat-earther'.
We are talking about FRAUD, Corruption, Theft of Public Funds, Influence Peddling & destruction of public records not Anti-Science.
Hair dressers & hot dog vendors are licensed, regulated & prosecuted. There should not be special tort protection or immunity from criminal prosecution for a certain class of vermin.
I think we have to be careful not to confuse the typical role of a scientist as opposed to how some climate scientists' roles have evolved. A scientist studies ideas, theories, does some experimentation and then reports on it. They provide the "this may be something" element.
If that "something" can be repeated or not or even if it is actually fraud then let the scientific community deal with that.
But say scientists are onto something. The next stage involves engineering then application of whatever the outcome is into the real world. Then policy may be applied. As an example the use of drones for delivery of goods. The original unmanned air vehicle idea goes back 40 odd years and developed with a combination of science and engineering. Now we are at the stage where laws may be needed for safe use.
With climate science however that engineering and verification stage has been left out which makes the application of models and hypotheses even more dangerous. If anything climate scientists should be taken aside and told the models are not applicable for policy. But when is that going to happen? Climate science is an industry now and to be frank the scientific protagonists are out of their depth.
For the average scientist the idea of fraud is more to do with falsifying data and results. The outcome may be dismissal and getting titles stripped but the impact isn't that much outside of the community that the researcher works in. If that research was used in, say, a new aeroplane conducting fraud would require many more stages of testing and verification to also be complicit. It wouldn't just be the scientist who commits fraud but everyone. It's harder to do, though it does happen. The process however should catch any erroneous data.
So no I don't think scientists should be subject to legal punishment beyond that which the average citizen would receive. I do think however that climate scientists especially a few at my local Met Office should maybe stick to science rather than try to look like an engineer with a verified model that drives policy, and do it really badly. It's when scientists are given the chance to sidestep the proper process that they should take some time to sort out their ethics and decide if it's right.
If this was the case maybe we wouldn't have seen the disastrous effect of implementing waterway management based on models that happened in the Somerset Levels.
Dr. Patrick Michaels has a guest essay up at WUWT that demonstrates that climate scientists are not alone.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/09/16/decrying-wishful-science-on-npr/
They’ve known for a long time that mice make poor animal models for human but it’s where they have to start before moving up to larger, more suitable creatures. Cost and anti vivisectionists play a part. Unfortunately, not only are animals very different in design, they are reactive to different things. For instance, many animals and birds are poisoned by onions and chocolate.
Big pharmaceutical companies have a trick of doing multiple studies among humans so that while they may release all the data for the overall positive studies (good outcomes and bad), they omit the studies where things didn’t go so well. This is how homeopathic studies can seem to show successes too.
The Bish's new blog on a new society that demands replicability and data in its journal is the right way forward.
The simplest solution would be no more public funds for research. Research would have to have a clear objective and produce some positive benefit to the funder... that benefit could be some product or technology, or just make a billionaire feel good. Society advances and get richer on the back of innovation. The for-profit motive drives the latter, not Political good intentions... if that is not an oxymoron.
The advantage of private funding is the owner of the money firstly has a choice of what and where to fund, second puts his/her money at risk.
Is it likely that if climate change research were privately funded, private funders would still be flooding it with money in the light of its failure to prove its own point, and the mountain of evidence contradicting it? Or would they cut their losses and put money elsewhere to earn a return and do more good, like feeding people and curing disease?
With public funds, those granting the funds face no risk of loss since they use other peoples' money who have no choice as to where, what or whether to fund. Funding then supports political not scientific aims.
Not a legal expert but: fraudulent use of grants does come under Common Law, but the difficulty is proving it. The same would be true of some cooked up mess of legislation which inevitable would be a catch-all like 'hate crime' where just saying a word on the naughty list is 'proof', which takes no account of intent or effect, thus losing the notion of presumption of innocence and the accused must prove their innocence.
So under scientific fraud legislation simple mistake may result in prosecution because how can it easily be separated from cooking the data? Whilst ultimately such a case might not be proven, it will have a very severe effect on the individual.
Ultimately it will harm the willingness of scientists to undertake ground breaking research and stick to safe areas, and act as a disincentive to publish.
Bottom line: there are no solutions in life, just trade-offs. We have to accept bad scientist because there are a lot of good ones, and trying to eliminate the former (not possible) may have a detrimental effect on the latter.
And it is not the 'bad' scientists who actually cause the damage it is the fools and idiots who take notice of them in the media and Governments and special interest groups who use the rotten science for propaganda to achieve their own missions. I propose hanging.
There is an offence on the books called "obtaining pecuniary advantage by deception".
Six months, big fine, criminal record.
Go get 'em!
Climate science is a problem on many levels. I hope that not many climate scientists are guilty of fraud, if one defines fraud as falsifying results for gain.
Then if we take a scientist who chooses to publish alarmist claims using a climate model that reacts mainly to carbon dioxide forcing and has hardly any negative feedbacks due to clouds and other drivers, and which ignores the various effects of ocean oscillations, then how do we regard this?
I'm not suggesting that we should regard the second example as fraud, but if, for example, the gain may be funding, political, or career enhancement, then what is the difference between the two examples?
The way I have presented the examples forces a direct comparison. Is this fair or not? Perhaps in the second case the initial motivation is less important, but the opportunity becomes apparent as the research evolves. Does this make it less fraudulent? What if the motivation is confirmation bias?
We are missing the example where the scientist reports the same results with all the caveats, errors, uncertainties and unknowns and where the conclusions reflect all of that.
Why is it that in climate science when we are discussing fraud, the honest option seems the most ridiculous and far-fetched?
It is a difficult area because at the present time, the jury is still out. I suggest that in 10 years time, if there is no significant warming, then there may be some serious questions for climate scientists. Perhaps these will not be about fraud, but they could be about ignorance, not declaring errors and ignoring uncertainties.
I don't think that fraud is the appropriate crime, but I don't believe that the climate scientist movement is innocent and squeaky clean either.