In addition to my earlier post today, here is an example of a news item just posted by 'The Scientist' (http://www.the-scientist.com).
News: Science paper pulled Posted by Jef Akst [Entry posted at 30th November 2009 03:26 PM GMT] Researchers are retracting a highly-cited 2004 <http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/303/5656/371> Science paper describing a new way of adding sugars to proteins -- a longstanding challenge in molecular biology -- citing their inability to repeat the results and the absence of the original lab notebooks with the experiment details, they announced <http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/326/5957/1187-a> in Science last Thursday (November 26). I am merely citing the opening paragraph. The story is much longer, but for copyright reasons I can't cite it in its entirety. It's a nice example of self-correction within the science community, I think. Jan -- Jan Visser, Ph.D. President & Sr. Researcher, Learning Development Institute E-mail: [email protected] Check out: http://www.learndev.org and http://www.facebook.com/learndev Blog: http://jvisser-ldi.blogspot.com/ _____ From: Jan Visser [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 2:09 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: Denialism (was Re: [WikiEducator] Phil's Rants) I have no time at present to check the detail of all the information provided in newspaper articles and am particularly unable, when reading a newspaper report, to check the quality and veracity of the interpretation of what actually happened. I do know, however, and have evidence to back it up, that the scientific community is quite capable of identifying breaches of ethics, reporting them, and taking appropriate measures to repair the damage. One need but go through the past several years of Nature and Science to find the various instances in which published papers were retracted, sometimes at the request of the researchers themselves when they found that something had gone wrong in carrying out their research, sometimes following the discovery of deliberate fraud. I know few other areas of human endeavor where such rigorous self-control within the community exists. Typically, newspapers, whatever their high quality from on investigative journalism point of view may be, should not be considered reliable sources for validation. The final validation of recognized error or established committed fraud is still best done by the scientific community itself. I thus look forward to reading about the outcome of such processes in the relevant scientific literature. On the basis of what I know so far (and knew already before this conversation started), there is reason to be alert to the possibility that the mix of politics, science, and corporate interest that surrounds climate change, in addition to the propensity in humans (members of the general public) to wish to believe what they already believe, may potentially lead to biased research and even fraud (as well as to advocacy that is based on erroneous interpretation of scientific findings and conclusions). Alertness to such dangers has always been a key ingredient of the collective mindset within the scientific community. In some cases the danger is more prominent and more obviously present than in others. Investigative journalism plays a role, though, just as it does in politics. It is sometimes at the origin of identifying fraud. Besides, newspapers, when they have good science reporters on their staff, also play a great role in bringing the results of research and their societal implications to the attention of their readership. So, wait till the Times reports on what eventually appears in the relevant literature and then check the newspaper report against the cited literature if, as a scientist, you want to help the public understand the issues well and are thus willing to write letters to the editor to back up or challenge the reporting. Validity of what is offered in an open environment like WE is very important from an educational point of view. Users of WE must be able to trust that the utmost has been done to ensure the validity of what they get offered. In saying so, I am assuming that the WE audience has insufficient prior knowledge to make the validity judgments themselves. If that assumption is wrong, then we should perhaps clearly state upfront (on the WE home page) what we expect our target audience to be capable of. We should certainly have internal agreement on it. This may be worth some debate, if it is not already entirely obvious. Jan -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
