Is it Real Science?

NY Times reporter Paul Krugman comments on how we lay persons can be deceived by fake "science".

"There are several reasons why fake research is so effective. One is that non-scientists sometimes find it hard to tell the difference between research and advocacy - if it's got numbers and charts in it, doesn't that make it science?

Even when reporters do know the difference, the conventions of he-said-she-said journalism get in the way of conveying that knowledge to readers. I once joked that if President Bush said that the Earth was flat, the headlines of news articles would read, "Opinions Differ on Shape of the Earth." The headlines on many articles about the intelligent design controversy come pretty close.

Finally, the self-policing nature of science - scientific truth is determined by peer review, not public opinion - can be exploited by skilled purveyors of cultural resentment. Do virtually all biologists agree that Darwin was right? Well, that just shows that they're elitist who think they're smarter than the rest of us."

As a co-author of technical papers I experienced the peer review process. Journals that publish peer reviewed papers are called refereed journals. In legitimate science research the researcher writes an outline of his findings with enough detail for other experts in the field to judge if his work is worth publishing. His outline is sent to several experts for comments and these comments are reviewed by a committee. The committee is conscious of their Journal's reputation for quality research and decides if the full paper will be accepted for publication. The full paper is then available to anyone interested, usually only other people working in the same field. This process is called peer review and usually weeds out poorly done research. Also, researchers are very conscious of their reputation and do not want to risk ridicule from their peers.