“At a certain point, we just have to trust the peer-review process”
Coming here late, found it an interesting comment overall, but just thought I’d say something re interpreting the peer reviewed literature as an academic, as I think people often misunderstand what peer review does. It’s pretty weak and you don’t just trust what comes out! Instead, look for consistent results being produced by at least a few independent groups, without there being contradictory research (researchers will rarely publish replications of results, but if a set of results don’t corroborate a single plausible theoretical picture, then something is iffy). (Note it can happen for whole communities of researchers to go down the wrong path, though—it’s just less likely than for an individual study.) Also, talk to people in the field about it! So there are fairly low cost ways to make better judgements than believing what one researcher tells you. The scientific fraud cases that I know involved results from just one researcher or group, and sensible people would have had a fair degree of scepticism without future corroboration. Just in case anyone reading this is ever in the position of deciding whether to allocate significant funding based on published research.
“Science relies on trust, so it’s relatively vulnerable to intentionally bad, deceptive actors”
I don’t think science does rely on trust particularly highly, as you can have research groups corroborating or casting doubt on others’ research. “Relatively” compared to what? I don’t see why it would be more vulnerable to be actors than most other things humans do.
“At a certain point, we just have to trust the peer-review process”
Coming here late, found it an interesting comment overall, but just thought I’d say something re interpreting the peer reviewed literature as an academic, as I think people often misunderstand what peer review does. It’s pretty weak and you don’t just trust what comes out! Instead, look for consistent results being produced by at least a few independent groups, without there being contradictory research (researchers will rarely publish replications of results, but if a set of results don’t corroborate a single plausible theoretical picture, then something is iffy). (Note it can happen for whole communities of researchers to go down the wrong path, though—it’s just less likely than for an individual study.) Also, talk to people in the field about it! So there are fairly low cost ways to make better judgements than believing what one researcher tells you. The scientific fraud cases that I know involved results from just one researcher or group, and sensible people would have had a fair degree of scepticism without future corroboration. Just in case anyone reading this is ever in the position of deciding whether to allocate significant funding based on published research.
“Science relies on trust, so it’s relatively vulnerable to intentionally bad, deceptive actors”
I don’t think science does rely on trust particularly highly, as you can have research groups corroborating or casting doubt on others’ research. “Relatively” compared to what? I don’t see why it would be more vulnerable to be actors than most other things humans do.