There is only one goal in scientific research — to find the truth. But the truth is not always easy to come by. Sometimes the truth is let down by methods. If a scientist recruits only one person to give their opinion on giving blood, and if that opinion is that ‘giving blood is a waste of time’, it is likely that this opinion will not reflect that of everyone in the country. On the other hand, the methods could be excellent but the result gained might not be novel or surprising. The scientific community or the general public may not deem the results interesting. But in the pursuit of publication, there are some simple ways to bend these results, making them seem novel, scarier and therefore more exciting.
It is not difficult to twist facts into any shape you deem appropriate. You could choose to ignore most of the evidence, leaving a strong one-sided argument for your cause. It especially helps if you use studies with imperfect methods, so that ‘100% of people surveyed thought that giving blood was a waste of time’. You could choose to exaggerate results so wildly that cell death in a petri dish becomes fullblown extinction of the human race. You could point randomly around you and claim that whatever you’re left pointing at definitely caused your current headache despite a perfectly reasonable alternative explanation. This bending of facts and research can have devastating consequences, including the rise of anti-vaccination campaigners and the related rise of measles infection in the UK. This article covers four of the methods most commonly used to twist and tangle scientific data so that almost any conceivable conclusion can be ‘proved’.
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