The Dark Side of Science

Mother Jones has published an article that looks into the seamier side of science   (yes, sadly, there is a seamier side). It's especially important now to understand how science works and how it can go wrong, either because of time pressure to release research, or because of outright fraud. 

Bad science is a lot like a virus. It starts small, but if it’s shared enough times, it can cause global disruption.

You may remember a kerfuffle last month over whether it is safe to take ibuprofen to treat coronavirus symptoms. It is a prime example of how a series of unfortunate errors can lead to bad health policy. It began harmlessly, when the Lancet Respiratory Medicine, a respected journal, published a 400-word letter from a group of European researchers that raised some safety concerns about the drug. It was an opinion piece that was, according to at least one of the authors, a hypothesis, not a medical recommendation. But much of the world treated the mere suggestion as if it were derived from the results of a clinical trial. Within a week, the French health minister, followed by a spokesperson from the World Health Organization, recommended that people with COVID-19 don’t take ibuprofen. A day later, after pushback from doctors and scientists, the WHO backtracked, saying it did “not recommend against” the use of ibuprofen. The move sparked widespread confusion, and for an institution that we’re all relying on for solid information, it was not a great look. 

Good science requires time. Peer review. Replication. But in the past few months, the scientific process for all things related to COVID-19 has been fast-tracked. While that is, of course, understandable on some level—thousands are dying worldwide every day, after all—it’s not necessarily safe. What was once a marathon has been compressed to a 400-meter dash: Researchers race to deliver results, academic journals race to publish, and the media races to bring new information to a scared and eager public. And, at the same time, unverified opinions circulate widely on social media and on TV from so-called experts, which makes understanding the situation all the more difficult.