Healthy Skepticism Library item: 16796

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Publication type: Journal Article

Charlton BG
Are you an honest scientist? Truthfulness in science should be an iron law, not a vague aspiration.
Med Hypotheses 2009 Nov; 73:(5):633-5
http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0306-9877(09)00342-9

Abstract:

Anyone who has been a scientist for more than a couple of decades will realize that there has been a progressive and pervasive decline in the honesty of scientific communications. Yet real science simply must be an arena where truth is the rule; or else the activity simply stops being science and becomes something else: Zombie science. Although all humans ought to be truthful at all times; science is the one area of social functioning in which truth is the primary value, and truthfulness the core evaluation. Truth-telling and truth-seeking should not, therefore, be regarded as unattainable aspirations for scientists, but as iron laws, continually and universally operative. Yet such is the endemic state of corruption that an insistence on truthfulness in science seems perverse, aggressive, dangerous, or simply utopian. Not so: truthfulness in science is not utopian and was indeed taken for granted (albeit subject to normal human imperfections) just a few decades ago. Furthermore, as Jacob Bronowski argued, humans cannot be honest only in important matters while being expedient in minor matters: truth is all of a piece. There are always so many incentives to lie that truthfulness is either a habit or else it declines. This means that in order to be truthful in the face of opposition, scientists need to find a philosophical basis which will sustain a life of habitual truth and support them through the pressure to be expedient (or agreeable) rather than honest. The best hope of saving science from a progressive descent into Zombiedom seems to be a moral Great Awakening: an ethical revolution focused on re-establishing the primary purpose of science: which is the pursuit of truth. Such an Awakening would necessarily begin with individual commitment, but to have any impact it would need to progress rapidly to institutional forms. The most realistic prospect is that some sub-specialties of science might self-identify as being engaged primarily in the pursuit of truth, might form invisible colleges, and (supported by strong ethical systems to which their participants subscribe) impose on their members a stricter and more honest standard of behaviour. From such seeds of truth, real science might again re-grow. However, at present, I can detect no sign of any such thing as a principled adherence to perfect truthfulness among our complacent, arrogant and ever-more-powerful scientific leadership – and that is the group of which a Great Awakening would need to take-hold even if the movement were originated elsewhere.