Biased Researchers - Slow Science

Christian Szablewski-Paz

HST 401

Professor Horgan

13 September 2022


Biased Researchers - Slow Science

I have always had a philosophy that some things in life just “are”... Some concepts or parts of life are just black and white.  That tree is a tree; the sky is blue.  Science is the search for truth.  My perspective has mildly changed after reading Science Isn’t Broken, published by The Atlantic.  The article dives into the ethics of scientific studies and their flaws, specifically relating to the confirmation bias of researchers performing the studies.  There have also been multiple studies that show that scientific innovation and progress has noticeably decreased over the years, despite the significant increase in funding and time spent on research.  Are the two somehow related, or are we comparing apples to oranges?  The question itself is complex, and in order to be able to build a fully comprehensive response, we must first understand the details of how scientific progress is measured as well as exploiting the common flaws in scientific studies.

A major problem in scientific studies is the researcher’s ability to use judgment on what variables to measure in order to prove a hypothesis.  An example is, say one is trying to prove if republicans being in office has a negative effect on the economy.  If inflation was always included as one of the variables to measure a good economy, there would never be data capable of being used as evidence to support this hypothesis.  On the contrary, if GDP was the only variable used to measure a poor economy, the correlation would be extremely significant.  This concept is known as “p-hacking”, or manipulating variables to get a p value of less than or equal to .05, which is denoted as statistically significant.  Despite a p-value showing virtually nothing about the strength of evidence, “a p-value of 0.05 has become the ticket to get into many journals” (Aschwanden).  Scientists are people.  It is human nature to take measures to prove what one believes to be true, even if this means manipulating chosen variables to prove a hypothesis.  This confirmation bias, along with researchers’ inherently selfish desires for the rewards of publishing papers, has led to many faulty publishings.  Most often, scientists make these mistakes without even realizing it; humans are blinded by what they believe to be true.  In many cases, science is not the search for truth, rather it is the search for what one believes to be true.

Data shows that scientific progress has slowed significantly post 1950.  Scientific advancement and progress is highly measured by the number of Nobel prizes received each year.  The four categories this covers are chemistry, physics, physiology and medicine, and literature and peace.  One major problem with this is that there are “parts of science [that] are not covered by the Nobel Prizes, especially newer areas like computer science” (Collison and Nielson).  Also, since science advanced so quickly throughout the 1900’s, it can be argued that it is difficult to make comparable scientific achievements in today’s day and age.  Overall, science is doing better than ever.  Fields such as AI and CRISPR (gene editing technology) are moving rapidly but there have always been fields moving just as quickly if not quicker throughout history.  Researcher’s need to learn more than ever before.  In the early days of the Nobel prize, the average age of a researcher who made a discovery that received the prize was 37 - now it is 47 (Collison and Nielson).  So is it truly fair to make the assessment that these measurements prove that scientific progress has slowed?  The answer is no.  Measuring scientific progress is extremely difficult.

The argument that scientific progress has slowed is flawed in the sense that the data used to make this argument often doesn’t encompass all areas of science as well as take into account the time current researchers spend in order to be caught up with previous scientific achievements.  There is no plausible way to conclude that bias and p-hacking has slowed the progression of science either.  There are a multitude of factors that go into measuring the rate of scientific progress, and it will be intriguing to see if and when a future model is developed that encompasses a majority of these.


Works Cited

Aschwanden, Christie. “Science Isn't Broken.” FiveThirtyEight, FiveThirtyEight, 19 Aug. 2015, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/science-isnt-broken/#part1.

Patrick Collison, Michael Nielsen. “Science Is Getting Less Bang for Its Buck.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 28 Nov. 2018, https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/diminishing-returns-science/575665/. 

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