I'm sometimes amused by 'scientists' on the Web calling themselves "skeptics" only to find that they're aiming most of their fire at what I can only call "low hanging fruit": creationists who think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, psychics who bend spoons, UFO abductees who've taken trips to the planet Kazaar (or some such), etc. etc. They often proudly call themselves "evidence-based" scientists… but don't seem to acknowledge that scientific "evidence" itself can be highly subjective, manipulated, and tainted fare... requiring skepticism itself.
What I've always wanted to see is more "skeptics" turning their keen eyes on the likes of the Journal of the American Medical Association, New England Journal of Medicine, CELL, Nature, Science, etc. Most "science" is so poorly done it doesn't even see the light of publication, but even research that does make its way into such 'premier' publications (let alone lesser ones) often escapes the scrutiny it deserves, receiving a sort of 'free ride' once published (the data, methods, underlying premises/assumptions, and of course conclusions, never being adequately challenged, nor replicated; and don't assume 3 peer reviewers have done their job either!). Most who have been heavily involved in research, IF they're honest about it, will admit that journal articles, as composed, often don't accurately reflect the actual work, as carried out. But with the digital age upon us, the needed sort of ongoing, ever-watchful skepticism is finally emerging.
Dr. Ivan Oransky has made a job of keeping track of journal "retractions" (often, but not always, for malfeasance) from research journals, with his wonderful, must-read "Retraction Watch" blog (sub headed: "Tracking retractions as a window into the scientific process"). And a recent 'Peer Review Congress' meeting in Chicago, well-tweeted (hashtag #pcr7) by Oransky and others, shined light on many of the important research issues that don't get voiced enough… and these are NOT new, but have been around for a long, long, long time, just finally getting the attention deserved. Anyone who has followed this area will be familiar with the name "John Ioannidis" as one of the most-vocal of those who've questioned the reliability/validity of much research. There are also now a number of twitterers (some better than others) focusing on biomedical/research skepticism, though 140 characters isn't always much to work with!
My sense is that a majority of the retractions that Oransky reports on involve the biomedical sciences, but even mathematics papers or journals occasionally appear among his subjects (sometimes almost laughably). So math, the 'queen of the sciences,' is not immune from sloppiness (or even fraud). Check these out:
http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/?s=mathematics
WHY the heck do I mention all of this now? Well, nothing earth-shattering, but in preparing the John Casti quote for the post that I did last Sunday on Math-Frolic (thought it would make a nice Sunday meditation), I came across information that disturbed me. Casti (who focuses on "complexity" theory) has long been one of my favorite science writers/thinkers; he is both a good explainer, and a thought-provoking one; I've read him for decades. So I was surprised/disappointed to learn from the internet that he'd been caught extensively plagiarizing material in the past -- multiple times... that doesn't make his material any less interesting or important to me (he plagiarizes from good people ;-), but it does throw a troubling ethical shroud over that material. Here are 3 web links that address Casti's sins:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/09/books/connections-plagiarism-that-doesn-t-add-up.html
http://www.ams.org/notices/200206/commentary.pdf
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cplx.20050/pdf
Last year, budding science-writer phenom Jonah Lehrer was disgraced and humiliated when he was found to have plagiarized, and even fabricated, passages in some of his best-selling books. His actions (and Casti's) are an affront to the many high-quality science communicators who choose to write books the old-fashioned way… by actually generating their own words ;-) Casti's lapses may not be as grievous as Lehrer's, but it will now be difficult for me to read him with quite the same respect I did previously -- his repeated actions being such an unexpected/disheartening bit of chicanery to learn about.
Moreover, it harkened back to my prior MathTango post, wherein I wrote about learning that some observers suspect that Daniel Tammet (renowned autistic savant, and another person whose books I've enjoyed) may not be a genuine savant, but only a memory expert who uses his mental skills/tricks to portray himself as he does -- again, disappointing to learn that this is even a possibility. Sigh.... I consider myself a fairly critical reader, yet was caught unaware by these controversies around Casti and Tammet. (While I'm on this whole subject it may even be pertinent to note that the post prior to the Tammet post was a review of the new book, "Magnificent Mistakes In Mathematics," coincidentally, yet another focus on flaws-of-a-sort in science/math.)
On the Web, there are plenty of individuals, with or without some math credentials, who stake out math ideas that aren't credible (Mark Chu-Carroll of "Good Math, Bad Math" occasionally writes entertainingly about them, and their math "crackpottery"): http://scientopia.org/blogs/goodmath/?s=crankery ). But to discover shenanigans going on at a more professional level and/or in journals, is more disconcerting and unsettling… though I s'pose no field is immune from flim-flam artists of all sorts, math/science included.
Luckily, pure math really is probably more resistant to outright fraud, or even unchecked sloppiness, than most fields. In fact when I typed "math" plus "fraud" into Google most of the examples arising were, not too surprisingly, in regard to economics or finance. The other area that popped up, again not too surprising upon reflection, was statistics, which often gets used (though not necessarily deliberately) incorrectly to argue some point.
Anyway, I write all of this as a way of saying that real skepticism needs (unfortunately) to cut across all boundaries -- I'd dare say epidemiology can be critiqued almost as easily as astrology! Don't aim doubt and critical faculties at just the naive, the non-empirical, the 'low-hanging fruit'… but at the 'evidence-based,' the peer-reviewed, and occasionally even the mathematical as well. I applaud Oransky and others for bringing a critical eye to "the process of science" and trying to keep scientists not just skeptical, but honest as well. Science succeeds best through its vigilant, self-scrutinizing, self-correcting functions, which, for a variety of reasons, too often get left on the sidelines... occasionally even in mathematics.
In sum, Margaret Mead was famous for saying: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."
I'm tempted to parody that by saying, 'Never doubt that self-skepticism, close scrutiny, and doubt aren't key driving forces behind scientific progress… indeed, they always have been.'
