BMJ: Do sexual abuse of children and research misconduct have something in common?

[Esther12]

http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2014/04/29...research-misconduct-have-something-in-common/

I thought that this could be of interest (although it's perhaps not a comparison us awkward patients should make!)

Also, this much longer blog post on problems in research, focussing on/around psychology that really just covers areas already discussed here (p-hacking, need for replication, fraud, publication bias), but might still be of interest to some:

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/hea...entists-save-themselves-human-behavior-78858/

 

[biophile]

Interesting. It essentially argues that the more prominent a researcher is, the less likely that accusations of misconduct will be taken seriously, or attributed to an innocent error. Someone could raise that point without the comparison to child abuse committed by prominent people in society. The Donaldson quote reminds of the normal physical function threshold in the PACE trial that was not only defended but then reused in the recovery criteria despite the uproar: "To err is human; to cover up is unforgivable; and to fail to learn is inexcusable."

 

[alex3619]

When researchers operate out of a paradigm of verification and not falsification, if given a range of possible data analyses they will pick the favourable one, thereby engaging in biasing results. Its good to see researchers rejecting results that cannot be replicated or properly supported.