The New Yorker on the prevalence of (unconscious) bias in scientific studies

This is big, and it is worrying. I "believe" in science or, more to the point, the scientific method. Even something like this is probably part of the self-correcting nature of science. It's just that self-correction as we've traditionally understood it doesn't seem to have worked very well. As the article makes clear, this is not about scientific fraud. It's about the fact that scientists are human beings and are prone like anyone else to see what they want to see. In its current issue, The New Yorker has an excellent piece on the prevalence of (unconscious) bias in scientific studies that builds on this recent must-read piece in The Atlantic. And to some extent, Jonah Lehrer’s New Yorker article builds on this story he did for Wired in 2009. Anyone interested in the scientific process should read all three, for they are provocative cautionary tales.  Back to Lehrer’s story in The New Yorker. I’m going to quote from it extensively because it’s behind a paywall, but I urge people to buy a copy of the issue off the newsstand, if possible. It’s that good. His piece is an arrow into the heart of the scientific method:  The test of replicability, as it’s known, is the foundation of modern research. Replicability is how the community enforces itself. It’s a safeguard for the creep of subjectivity. Most of the time, scientists know what results they want, and that can influence the results they get. The premise of replicability is that the scientific community can correct for these flaws.  But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn't yet have an official name, but it's occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology. How did this happen? How have “enshrined” findings that were replicated suddenly become undone? The fatal flaw appears to be the selective reporting of results–the data that scientists choose to document in the first place. Dr Ray from Greenie Watch (has links to article etc) comments: I heartily agree with the article below, which is why I reproduce it fully (with links). And its relevance to Warmist "science" needs no spelling out. I saw all of the faults discussed below in my own social science research career and to this day I tackle similar problems daily in my FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC blog.  I can however go beyond the article below and point to what is the remedy to these now well-documented faults in scientific reporting. The remedy is to encourage similar research by those who have an OPPOSITE agenda to the established writers. Because I am a conservative, I saw the received wisdom in my Left-dominated field of research as quite absurd. And I set out to show that such theories were absurd. And I did. I even got my findings published over and over again in the academic journals. My findings, however, had no impact whatever. Leftists didn't want to believe my findings so simply ignored them.  If however, I had been one of many people with opposing views writing in the field, that would have been much harder to ignore and a more balanced view might have emerged as the consensus position.  At the moment, however, being skeptical of any scientific consensus is career death. So the only remedy is for skeptical views to be specifically rewarded both among students in marking, in academic hiring and in career advancement. It is only a faint hope but perhaps there are enough people of integrity in science to bring that about eventually. Science will be greatly hobbled otherwise -- JR