The Ugly Scientist

Fraud and Deception

Science trades under the mantle of objective, tested, authenticated conclusions.  It turns out, however, that in all  scientific endeavour there is a strong dose of interpretation and subjectivity.  This is not just the case for science; it is true of all human actions.

Larry Woiwode illustrates the principle:

No fact exists without an interpretation of it, as a philosopher by the name of Cornelius Van Til once said.  What he meant is if I say, "The Civil War", anybody who hears those words is stormed by sets of facts, some merely by naming it as I have.  If you view it as a war of northern aggression, you have facts to support that.  If another sees it as a conflict that installed commercial manufacture over agrarian interests, facts might well support that view.  If I say its genesis was slavery, I might well be closer to the truth, but I would have to summon my series of facts to support that. . . .

Take a step farther back.  If you believe trees are a result of random happenstance or believe they were ordained to look as they do, part of a design fulfilled, then your view of the tree and facts about it will differ, according to your ideology.  [Larry Woiwode, Words for  Readers and Writers (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2013), p. 33f.]

Modern science is presently dominated by a perverse ideology: scientism--which holds that the only reality, the only thing which exists, is matter.   It denies the subjective, ideological construction of all scientific endeavour.  It claims pure, brute objectivity. 

As a result, it perversely drives science into being a more ideologically bound and subjectively dominated enterprise.
  There are some things which absolutely must be true--for philosophical or ideological reasons.  "Science" becomes a club to beat upon those who would disagree.  Moreover, the belief that one is purely and absolutely objective easily results in self-willed blindness.  It comes as no surprise then, that fraud has become more common in the scientific enterprise.  Since the data represents brute factuality and pure objectivity, manipulation of it must be equally brute, objective, and factual.  One man's data is as good as another. 


One of the more recent pieces from Creation Ministries International highlights the growing incidence of deceit and fraud in scientific research.  Some excerpts:

Most of the known cases of modern-day fraud are in the life sciences.  In the biomedical field alone, fully 127 new misconduct cases were lodged with the Office of Research Integrity (US Department of Heatlh & Human Services) in the year 2001. This was the third consecutive rise in the number of cases since 1998.This concern is not of mere academic interest, but also profoundly affects human health and life.Much more than money and prestige are at stake—the fact is, fraud is ‘potentially deadly’, and in the area of medicine, researchers are ‘playing with lives’. The problem is worldwide. In Australia misconduct allegations have created such a problem that the issue has even been raised in the Australian Parliament, and researchers have called for an ‘office of research integrity’. . . .

The major problem with fraud is that of science itself, namely that scientists ‘see their own profession in terms of the powerfully appealing ideal that the philosophers and sociologists have constructed. Like all believers they tend to interpret what they see of the world in terms of what the faith says is there.’ And, unfortunately, science is a ‘complex process in which the observer can see almost anything he wants provided he narrows his vision sufficiently’. An example of this problem is James Randi’s conclusion that scientists are among the easiest of persons to fool with magic tricks. The problem of objectivity is very serious because most researchers believe passionately in their work and the theories they are trying to prove. While this passion may enable the scientist to sustain the effort necessary to produce results, it may also colour and even distort those results.

Many examples exist to support the conclusion that researchers’ propensity for self-delusion is particularly strong, especially when examining ideas and data that impugn on their core belief structure. The fact is ‘all human observers, however well trained, have a strong tendency to see what they expect to see’. Nowhere is this more evident than in the admittedly highly emotional area of evolution.

[The original article includes citations and footnotes]