Full Description
This book discusses one of the hottest topics in science today, i.e., the concern over certain problematic practices within the scientific enterprise. It raises questions and, more importantly, begins to supply answers about one particularly widespread phenomenon that sometimes impedes scientific progress: group processes. The book looks at many problematic manifestations of "going along with the crowd" that are adopted at the expense of truth. Closely related is the concept of pathological altruism or altruism bias—the tendency of scientists to bias their research in order to further the ideological or financial interests of an "in-group" at the expense of both the interest of other groups as well as the truth. The book challenges the widespread notion that science is invariably a benevolent, benign process. It defines the scientific enterprise, in practice as opposed to in theory, as a cultural system designed to produce factual knowledge. In effect, the book offers a broad and unique take on an important and incompletely explored subject: research and academic discourse that sacrifices scientific objectivity, and perhaps even the scientist's own ethical standards, in order to further the goals of a particular group of researchers or reinforce their shared belief system or their own interests, whether economic, ideological, or bureaucratic.
Contents
Introduction: Definitions, Manifestations, and Theoretical Issues.- Groupthink in science: an introduction.- Thomas Kuhn and the huge hurdle of changing normal practice.- Altruism, professionalism, and the filtering of information.- Evolution of reason giving.- The mental and interpersonal mechanisms of groupthink maintenance.- Five case examples of how important ideas were initially attacked or ridiculed by the professions.- Mobbing and shunning behavior in science.- Competitiveness and careerism in academia and academic politics (scientific fraud).- Manipulation and Use of Social Influence in Science: The Financing, Design, and Dissemination of Research Studies and Results.- The politics of the acceptance of articles to preferred journals.- Political correctness in science.- Post-modernism and science.- The difficulty of publishing findings that contravene accepted wisdom.- Issues in obtaining research funding.- Manipulation of research design and methodology to serve pre-existing biases.- Peer review problems.- Lawsuits to prevent the advance of science.- When conjecture becomes fact.- Problems arising from the well-meaning intentions of IRBs and HIPPA.- Problems arising from the lack of political diversity in some academic disciplines and university departments.- Examples and Personal Experiences.- Business interests aligned with academia: the case of Big Pharma.- Public health and the conflict between science and markets: illustrations from tobacco and lead.- Science confronts human sexuality.- Why what you see isn't what you get: understanding the promulgation of social psychological myths.- Groupthink blocking progress in neonatology: the case of Martin Couney.- Vaccination/anti-vaccination.- Bias, disguise, and co-opted science: altruism as "scientized" ideology across the English professions.- Hurting by helping to support women's participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.- Perception is not reality: a critique of current models of sex addiction.- The tyranny of the normal curve: how the "bell curve" distorts educational research and practice.- Bad drugs, bad science.- A priori false assumptions that a characteristic is positive or negative in psychological research. - Chapter Authors Discuss Possible Overarching Solutions to the Problems Addressed in this Book.
