Taswell2021Truth

Title

Truth in Science
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Authors

S. Koby Taswell, Anousha Athreya, Madhavi Akella, Carl Taswell

Affiliations

Brain Health Alliance, Ladera Ranch, California, USA

Abstract

Truth, honesty, and integrity remain crucial to the pursuit of science as a self-correcting discipline to explore, discover, and process information about the world around us. When following the scientific method, we hypothesize, experiment, and repeatedly retest our results, investigating whether or not those results can be confirmed as reproducible and valid. Conducting this process rigorously with unbiased and objective investigations enables greater confidence in obtaining results we consider more reliable and trustworthy. Such truthful information can be used to avoid harm and prevent injury by those who may wish to apply it in their daily lives in the form of a medicine, machine, or method of some kind. However, in recent years, some scientists and lay persons have violated these tenets of truth in science to further their professional or personal agenda by spreading false information in scientific literature and on social media. This misconduct can be evaluated by assessing the authors' awareness of the document's truthfulness prior to publishing it and their willingness to correct the mistakes and false information when brought to their attention. Identifying these key characteristics about incidents of scientific misconduct enables analysis and introduction of a consistent collection of definitions and criteria for the terms mis-information, dis-information, anti-information, caco-information, and mal-information. Clarifying different categories of misconduct in this manner should enable more effective interventions to remediate and/or prevent each one appropriately. Without adequate safeguards to maintain reproducible science as a self-correcting endeavor with retractions of publications when necessary, false information will continue to pollute the published literature and threaten the core of science.

Keywords

Scientific reproducibility, research integrity, mis-information, dis-information, anti-information, caco-information, mal-information.

Citation

Brainiacs Journal 2021 Volume 2 Issue 1 Edoc M85EC99EE
DOI: /10.48085/M85EC99EE
PDP: /Nexus/Brainiacs/Taswell2021Truth
URL: BrainiacsJournal.org/arc/pub/Taswell2021Truth

Dates

received 2020-12-28, published 2021-12-31, revised 2022-01-19, endorsed 2022-01-19, typeset 2022-02-06