Dysfunctional Science

Carl Zimmer, one of the top science writers in the world, has written an article for the New York Times with the following provocative title: A Sharp Rise in Retractions Prompts Calls for Reform. It's partly about the rise in the rate of retractions¹ in scientific journals. This is a serious problem and it's hard to figure out the underlying cause, in spite of the fact that many of the people who comment think they know the answer.

But there's much more to this story as Carl explains on his blog [Dysfunctional science: My story in tomorrow’s New York Times].

In tomorrow’s New York Times, I’ve got a long story about a growing sense among scientists that science itself is getting dysfunctional. For them, the clearest sign of this dysfunction is the growing rate of retractions of scientific papers, either due to errors or due to misconduct. But retractions represent just the most obvious symptom of deep institutional problems with how science is done these days–how projects get funded, how scientists find jobs, and how they keep labs up and running.

As usual, Carl's got it right. There's something wrong with science, or perhaps I should say there's something wrong with the biological sciences since Sean Carroll doesn't see the same problem in physics [Is Physics Among the Dysfunctional Sciences?].

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1. The rate is about 0.04%. Compare this to the rate of fraudulent creationist publications, which is close to 100%.