Blootlegging van vervalste wetenskap

In ‘n onderhoud met David Lightsey (Creation 45(1) 2023, p 46-49) vertel hy op watter vlak vervalste wetenskap gepubliseer word en wat die motief daaragter is.

Opsomming

Jaarliks word 500-600 wetenskaplike artikels onttrek. 67.4% van hierdie onttrekkings word toegeskryf aan oneerlikheid/wangedrag. Die persentasie wetenskaplike artikels wat weens bedrog teruggetrek is, het sedert 1975 tienvoudig toegeneem. Die rede hiervoor is weens die druk op navorsers om nuwe studies te publiseer (“publish or perish”).

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Evolution ‘science’ is analogous us to counterfeit money. If counterfeit science were an Olympic event, evolutionary science would win the gold medal, in my view. Consider just a few excerpts from the secular science press illustrating why no one should embrace ‘science’ as inerrant ‘gospel’, regardless how passionate the presentation may be.

• In 2005, John Ioannidis, professor of disease prevention at Stanford University, published ‘Why most findings are false,’ in PLoS / Medicine. He stated, “There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. … Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.”
• In 2010, The Center for Scientific Integrity, a nonprofit organization, started “Retraction Watch”, due to the increasing amount of counterfeit science appearing in the science literature and reported that per year there are 500 to 600 retractions (i.e., researchers need to withdraw published papers).
• Much of this is due to lack of truthfulness. On 16 October 2012, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published the report, “Misconduct accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications”. They found that “67.4% of retractions were attributed to misconduct” and that “the percentage of scientific articles retracted because of fraud has increased tenfold since 1975.”
• In late 2016, LiveScience reported, Publish or perish: That’s the mantra among academics. The pressure on researchers to publish new studies, however, may have turned this saying into ‘publish and perish,’ as more than 650 scientific papers were retracted in 2016, jeopardizing the integrity of scientists and threatening the public’s trust in their work.

Clearly, counterfeit or junk science has become a significant international problem. Based upon false assumptions, erroneous data, or statistical manipulation, it impacts a wide variety of agendas, such as abortion, evolution, extreme environmentalism, etc. Science is often tainted by salesmen masquerading as scientists selling an ideological or political agenda.

That last sentence is a strong statement to make …

Well, consider the comments by Frank Schnell, Ph.D., in his article “The Age of Stupid”. Dr Schnell is a retired toxicologist for the Agency for Toxic substances and Disease Registry, part of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, Georgia. He is also on the Scientific Advisory Panel of the American Council on Science and Health. Schnell explains “how to tell the difference between a real scientist and a salesman with a political agenda.” Some of the points he makes include (his words, emphases added):

• Good scientists do not suppress debat, they insist on it.
• A good scientist knows that skepticism, whether or not it is the sign of a heretic, is actually essential to the practice of good science.
• A good scientist knows that science is not a democracy, that scientific truth is not determined by a show of hands, and that consensus and authority are there to be challenged, not to be accepted without question.
• Those who persist in behaving like witless sheep will be forever doomed to getting fleeced, on a regular basis, by the politicians, celebrities, and others whom they permit to do their thinking for them.

So, understanding that God is omniscient and that man’s understanding of anything is finite or very limited, is key to understanding and interpreting science. Science is only a reflection of what we currently know, which is obviously limited, and its ‘consensus’ changes as we know more. As an example, I recall sitting in a college biochemistry course where the professor was passionately adamant that dietary cholesterol was bad for you due to its association with heart disease, which was the consensus at the time. With time and more ‘science’ to clarify, a greater understanding of the issue of dietary cholesterol and heart disease has moved knowledge forward.

This has overturned the ‘consensus’ of earlier decades.

Your writings also often mention the ‘illusory truth effect’.

That simply means that when we hear the same false information repeated again and again, we often believe it is true. Especially when contrary information is suppressed. There is great censorship of science opposing evolution (including the excellent material CMI’s scientists put out) throughout most students’ academic careers, as well as through the media. So the illusory truth effect helps explain why evolution has taken on this aura of invincibility.

What would be your advice to Christian students finding themselves in an increasingly anti-Christian environment, academically and socially?

They need to be prepared. It’s firstly vital to become really well-informed about the science. The more you know about the science, the less likely you are to be taken in by the counterfeit.

They also need to be aware of how easy it is to be swayed by public opinion, the illusory truth effect, or counterfeit science. Anti-Christians, aided by a generally subservient media that has itself been influenced by those factors, have swayed public opinion by masquerading counterfeit science as science to a generally naive and uneducated public.

Christians should not allow the quasi-religious enthusiasm for counterfeit science to make them incapable of determining truth, or allowing others to do their thinking for them. Scripture is our only source of absolute truth, and if it conflicts with the Bible, it’s wrong; it’s that simple.