I dont know how you can make such ridiculous asumptions. Scientific articles are published, and then research is done trying to replicate those results....Very rarely is something taken forgranted.

sam elrod, lebanon, tn

Reminds me of the McKitrick-McIntyre controversy concerning the Hockey-Stick graph. Peer-review does not imply due diligence in checking the results of papers.

Frederick Davies, Oxford,

This sordid story reminds me of Professor Reiner Protsch von Zeiten, who was the leading expert on human origins for years before he was shown to have made up all of his findings. He couldn't even work his own carbon-dating equipment! Everything about the man was fake, even his family tree.

Speaking as a student of the philosophy of science at Cambridge University, I advise caution to all those basing their careers on unverified data. If there's one thing I've learned in my studies, it's that faith and trust are required as much in the modern sciences as in any religion. That's not to say there's no such thing as scientific fact - only that we can 'know' it with about as much confidence as we can know universal truths taught by, say, Christianity.

Andrew Puckering, Cambridge, England,

see J. Campbell's classic The Hero with a Thousand Faces for the hero in all of us, represented down through the ages for all cultures.

zankaon, zanville,

It reminds me that if Richard Dawkins and those like him were so committed to the rigors of honest science, they would trot stories like these out along with their dumbed-down "evidence" in favor of atheism (I have the "God Delusion" videos in mind). Scientific inquiry is absolutely wonderful, but it needs articles like this one remind us of its inherent limitations in our hands.

Patrick, Denver, CO

While this may seem like a recent phenomenon to some, my experience indicates otherwise. In college I had a simple lab experiment to measure the expansion of metals. I matched the book answer for 2 out of 3 metals, but not the third. No other student in the class had this problem. Over the next week, I performed the same experiment many times with the same result. Finally, the professor did it and he got the same result. His analysis: the answer in the book was wrong! He had been teaching this lab for 19 years at that university, and he had copied the problem from USC, where it had been used for 25 years before that! He checked and found that all of the other students in the class had "dry labbed" the answer, changing the data to match the expected result. There was only 1 "A' given for that lab, but that was an indictment of the sorry state of our science education. What had these students been learning since the '30s? Do whatever it takes to get the "right" answer!

Jon Penner, Los Angeles, CA, USA

During the very early days of climate hysteria - back when half the people who now comprise the global warming crowd were issuing warnings about imminent return of the ice-age - I recall reading an article by someone who, while lacking scientific credentials, had an abundant supply of common sense. He did something the scientific elite never thought to do; he took the latest and greatest computer models, which were the Holy Grail of climate scientists at the time, and plugged in known data from various time periods in the past. His logic: If scientists were plugging in current data (A, B, C, X, W, Z) to tell us what climate conditions would be in 30 years, then plugging in the same data from 30 years ago should accurately and easily predict present conditions. The predictions made using past data were not even close when predicting what actually occurred. Scientists are subject to the same vanity, ego and desire for fame as everyone else; why this is a surprise to anyone I don't know.

David J. Ambrose, NJ, USA

Of course they make headline-grabbing statements like this with impunity, as no one will ever hold them responsible when they turn out to be wrong, as so many of these micro-studies turn out to be. When theories such as global warming are presented by the pop press as non-falsifiable 'consensus', one has to wonder at the real motives of the purveyors.

Randall, Washington,

Reputable journals are supposed to be "peer reviewed" by competent and knowledgeable persons. This is what makes journals different from things randomly posted on the Internet. I was an editor on a medical-legal journal. I got into the habit of reading every citation I could find. It is amazing how things can get twisted. The world medical literature goes through cycles, with everyone copying work. Still, certain errors get through. For instance, the reporting of a few cases of Reyes' Syndrome has led the abeyance of aspirin in febrile children. It is "substandard care" to use aspirin in children, even though we did it for generations. Similarly, it used to be "substandard" to use anti-histamines in asthma patients in the 1970's. Now we do it all the time. The public can read medical articles. But they are likely to get the wrong impression. It happens with professionals all the time.

Tony Francis MD JD , Wichita, KS/USA

Trust has always been an issue in science from the very first scientist onwards. What makes it worse today is that we live in a target driven culture where young scientists must publish in the best places or they don't get jobs. This puts them under a lot of pressure to cheat.

When I was an undergraduate we explicitly trained in the ethics of experimentations yet some of fellow undergraduates had no qualms about making up their data. In fact , some even enjoyed the deception.

I can think of no solution for this problem. We could place more stress on the ethics of reporting experimental results but there will always be some deviants; look at the cases of some few Priests abusing children yet no one could argue that they were not well trained.

In the long term, one would hope that replication or lack of it will "out" the offenders but it may not stop them reaping the rewards and prizes during their lifetimes.

Scientist, Sheffield,

As an intern in the early 1980's, I was nearly dismissed from my position and faced ruination by suggesting the use of Beta-blockers and anticoagulants in patients with acute myocardial infarctions/unstable angina. I was labelled a heretic and thoroughly unprofessional for daring to suggest such, at that time, blasphemous therapies - counter to what mainstream medicine did at the time.

Well, the times have changed. Now the very same therapiy I suggested IS mainstream. Yet the self-proclaimed pompous intellectual critics at whose hands I suffered have shown their inability to think creatively time and again. These so-called "thought leaders" are just mindless parrots that follow the herd mentality, whether or not it is correct. I shudder at the number of people we could have saved over these years had the therapies been instituted.

When concensus, not fact or reasoned evaluation, leads to a cultlike following in the scientific community, more often than not, it is wrong.

A cynical physician, Gulf Coast, USA

Peer review is not a completely thorough process. It never can be - because it relys upon humans, and often only two or three oppinions. However, it rarely (never?) takes only one paper to shift opinion, it takes a bulk, or mass of them, and for this to happen there have to be many papers with many peer reviews - and many opinions.
In my field, some 'shonky' papers get through, but most people have a look, question the results and fabrications rarely (never?) stand the test of time.

This debate and these comments are a good example of non scientists not understanding how the process operates. We dont base all our understanding on one paper, oppinions are formed after consideration of the evidence. This (in my oppinion) is my frustration with dealing with alot of the climate change rhetoric - as most 'commentators' clearly have not read enough!

Read - and understand the key literature on the debate (on both sides) then you are worthy of giving a valid view.

Tom, E.Yorks.,

With climate change (warming, actually) occurring on Mars, Jupiter, Satrun, Triton (moon of Neptune) and Pluto, to a similar degree as experienced here, the presence of humans as a cause of global warming here is, until proven otherwise, a confounder.

Don Vasquez, Wichita, USA

I write to you as a scientist who has woeked in internationally recognised research groups for nearly 20 years and published over 35 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Publication of fabricated results is not really a serious problem in science. Most current research effort is concentrated in elite centres. The majority of research workers know to a greater or lesser extent what work is being carried out by competing research groups. If unexpected results are published, they will be viewed with interest and attempts will be made to replicate them.

If the original work cannot be independently reproduced then the original work will be forgotten. If the original study is reproducible, the methods will be incorporated into the work of other laboratories and improved upon. In this way science moves forward not by the efforts of individuals but by the work of many.

Nigel , Nottingham, UK

The only thing that Global Warming can point to is scientific consensus. That just means if you have more people getting money to study a problem, they'll find more things to keep them employed. There was also scientific consensus at one time that the Earth was the center of the galaxy - whoops on that one. Now, science can point to Mars also experiencing global warming - which makes sense if its a cyclic solar problem and not a man influenced issue. We had the little ice age of the middle ages, we'll have the little heat wage of the modern era. Not a big deal, Earth will adjust and so will we.

Patrick, U.S.,

Manmade global warming is a crock. For every scientist that says it exists, there's an equal number that says the manmade component is minimal and that most global warming is part of a natural cycle that's been around for hundreds of thousands of years.
No computer modeling can account for all the factors involved in climate change. What's more, scientists keep discovering more factors each year, such as the current discovery that trees in the tropics absorb carbon dioxide, but in cold climates they trap carbon dioxide and contribute to global warming. Mother Nature is a heck of a lot more powerful than we puny humans will ever be.

Kevin Hyland, Fredon, NJ

Paul Schleifer - is the public really so knowledgeable? What measurements have you carried out to support the assertion that papers on climate change are peer-reviewed more thoroughly? Are you suggesting that a prominent topic is reviewed more thoroughly than one that is not (and therefore that scientists' behaviour is affected by that topicality)? And by whom is a paper reviewed - scientists that agree with the author or not?

David, London,

Manmade global warming is a crock. For every scientist that says it exists, there's an equal number that says the manmade component is minimal and that most global warming is part of a natural cycle that's been around for hundreds of thousands of years.
No computer modeling can account for all the factors involved in climate change. What's more, scientists keep discovering more factors each year, such as the current discovery that trees in the tropics absorb carbon dioxide, but in cold climates they trap carbon dioxide and contribute to global warming. Mother Nature is a heck of a lot more powerful than we humans will ever be.

Kevin Hyland, Fredon, NJ

It is not just excessive workload that causes superiors to sign off papers and grant applications without going through them. The problem is that in sciences, a promotion system based almost exclusively on the number of publications, couples destructively with the omnipresent old boy network. All too often, a senior person will be a co-author on work done by his juniors, even when his net intellectual contribution to the project is at most negligible. This may be done to add more authority to a paper in eyes of the peer reviewers, or because (s)he controls access to research grants. It is very unlikely that someone who is a coauthor on 8 or more publications a year has had the time to work on the raw data on his own, especially if (s)he is also involved in teaching or in grant committees.
Academics should acknowledge that teaching and grant evaluation are tasks at least as important as research, and abolish the "three letters of recommendation" rule when employing new faculty.

Sutaria, Calcutta, India

The public providing a safety back-up peer review on the subjects of planetary albedo and sulphur dioxide emissions would be great (?) if the level of information presented to them was detailed enough, However all I see is scare headlines with no detailed information and no follow up.
The scientific community seems amenable to this situation, and the oft cited purity of the peer review process is looking very shoddy, especially when you start to realise tha the people called upon to do the reviews are whittled down to the accepted anointed.

Stuart, Leeds,

On the contrary, Phil. Climate change papers are subjected to far more scrutiny than other scientific research because the subject is so prominent. A public that is largely ignorant of monoclonal antibodies and quantum entanglement is remarkably knowledgeable about planetary albedo and sulphur dioxide aerosols.

Paul Schleifer, Chiswick,

This shows that the peer-review process is not as rigid as scientists would want us to think. It would be interesting to obtain statistical information on how much effort or time peer-reviewers and superiors spent on recently published research papers.

Andrew, Hull, UK

How many more Sudbos are moving around scot- free ?........fudging their data and bring out some scientific research with iota of authenticity. Science is indeed turning into a religion, with "make-believe " situations, and inferences created to befuddle the gullible minds. At times it is very difficult to analyse and confirm the veracity of the raw data from the first hand source collection , the results could be biased or even parochial depending on the team of researchers and their subjective means and methods. Can't we have a fool proof monitoring set up , like some Academy of International repute , with professionals ,sleuths and experts who could delve deep into and thread-bare the data source ,methodology used and inferences drawn , without any interference. Lies, more lies and damn figures...is global warming a real threat or some conjured up calamity to make catchy headlines , with more ruckus and hoopla and less hope.At times fiction is more real than facts.

Sandy, New Delhi, India

Steady on Phil, that souded very close to blasphemy.

Dan, London,

Thanks, Phil. And not only on global warming. Have you noticed how science has almost become a religion, and how great the shock when the current dogma is challenged? At least, that is, when the dogma coincides with a fashionable cause.

Michael Bruce, Selby, Yorkshire

And yet everyone seems to accept the scientists views on global warming without question.

Phil, Edinburgh,

You forget what one might kindly call unconscious plagiarism, deriving from a total neglect to search the literature for previous work on ones subject. Or, indeed, ignoring any that is inconveniently found. This, of course, can (and does) result in the regular publication of old re-hashed as new.

Tom Katz, Weybridge, UK

It all comes out in the end. If a result is in the least bit important someone tries to build on it. And the first thing they do is attempt to replicate the step they are building on. If it was garbage they should say so. The probelm is that journals don't really want to publish articles titled: "Complete failure to replicate result published last week". It isn't sexy enough. And so a misguided consensus gathers strength.

Will Leyland, CAmbridge, UK

I think the Dr. means 'militates' and not 'mitigates'. According to Webster 'Mitigate is sometimes used as an intransitive (followed by against) where militate might be expected. Even though Faulkner used it <some intangible and invisible social force that mitigates against him -- William Faulkner> and one critic thinks it should be called an American idiom, it is usually considered a mistake.' And logician should know that rejecting falsified data doesn't amount to endorsing the common views in science.

glen broemer, los angeles, ca

Plagiarism merely amplifies the data it copies. It might amplify good data, or it might amplify bad data. The plagiarist presumably is neither interested in nor capable of telling whether the original data is real or not.

However, in these days of surveillance video and terabytes of storage, it's certainly possible to provide complete evidence of an experiment from start to finish, and perhaps that is the standard towards which we should be moving. This would certainly spot fake patients. I recall a double-blind experiment conducted by the BBC's Horizon a few years ago to determine the efficacy of homeopathy. The double-blind key was in this case sealed in an envelope which was taped to the ceiling in plain view in the middle of the office. A stunt, o course, but effective.

Ian Kemmish, Biggleswade, UK

I find it interesting you seemed shocked by certain 'rogue' scientists making up data when you yourself seemed to be wedded to the idea that the scientific community is always 'right' . Particularly in areas such as climate change were mavericks are howled down as blasphemers. Peer reviewed journals encourage the very thing you highlight here. Instead of testing ideas to destruction, when after years of trying you still can't show a theory to be wrong. ie good science. You have all sorts of people bending their data to make sure it agrees with the majority view so it will be published and research grants are re-newed. The whole system mitigates against new ideas and the outsiders view. Because outsiders views dont get published and thus the money for their work dries up. Hence the majority view is strengthened. Then journalists like you use this as proof that the majority view is correct. Real outsiders like Darwin and Copernicus wouldn't get a look in these days.

Dr Kevin Law, Dundee, UK