Sunday, December 19, 2010

Seeing what you want to see

There is a good Opinion piece in the November Scientific American, Fudge Factor: a look at Harvard science fraud case by Scott O. Lillienfeld. He discusses the problem of distinguishing intentional scientific fraud from confirmation bias, the tendency we have as scientists to selectively interpret data in order to confirm our own theories.

This is a good reminder that the easiest person to fool is yourself.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Emergence and protein folding

Proteins are a distinct state of matter. Globular proteins are tightly packed with a density comparable to a crystal but without the spatia...