Qualified outsiders and maverick insiders are very often right about the need to replace received wisdom in science and society. This site exists to back the best of them in their uphill assault on the massively entrenched edifice of resistance to and prejudice against reviewing, let alone revising, ruling ideas. 
Master list of sources of human bias in sciences
May 3rd, 2008The humble host of this blog and his much more distinguished colleagues and commenters extend an invitation to all enlightened readers to join us in defending good science against the endless list of corrupting human frailties and motivations which bend scientific conclusions in fields where data is malleable and open to interpretation, especially HIV/AIDS, cancer, bird flu, SARS, and other medical alarms, so that a gullible public and scientifically naive media reporters and political leaders may be rescued from often dire consequences, including inappropriate imprisonment and painful and premature death.
Since the list of compromising influences on modern science is long enough to form a Devil’s Dictionary in its own right, and expands every time we contemplate it, we have removed it from the bottom of the home page and present it here, available for additions anytime a new one occurs to us or is suggested by readers.
These are some of the emotions, influences and errors endemic to human nature which lead to the unjustified conclusions and claims of scientists, policy errors of political leaders, misdirected bureaucratic responses, wrong headed posturings of celebrities, invalid court judgments, and other unhappy consequences now rife in public affairs across the planet:
Activism, arrogance, authority wielding, avarice,
backscratching, bootlicking, browbeating, bullying, bureaucratic bumbling and self preservation,
careerism, closemindedness, censoring, censoriousness, clubbiness, club membership, coercion, collegiality, competitiveness, confidence tricks, conformity, convention, cooking the books, competing for credit, corruption of power, cowardice, credulity, crowd psychology, currying favor, cv expansion,
deceit, defensiveness, delusions of grandeur, gratitude, discretion, dissembling, dogmatism, dreams of glory,
embarrassment, empire building, envy, experimental bias,
false hope, fanciful theorizing, family loyalty, fashion, fear and loathing, fear mongering, flag waving, flocking, fondness for the status quo, friendship,
group loyalty, grant seeking,
herd instinct, homophobia, hubris, human error, hypocrisy,
iatrogenic ignorance, ideology, illogic, instigating panic, institutional affiliation, intimidation, irrationality, insanity,
job retention,
kowtowing,
lack of controls, laziness, lickspittle press instincts, loyalty to superiors, lying, lynch mob mentality,
maintaining parents, wives, mistresses and offspring, masochism, media stenography, mental inertia, mentor allegiance, misdirection, misunderstanding, naivite, narcissism, Nobel hunting,
obedience, obeisance, officiousness, opportunism, overclaiming,
panic, paradigm protection, patron pandering, peer pressure, perks, preconceptions, privileges and prizes, piety, politicking, political pressures, popularity, power seeking, pseudoscience, prejudice, preserving face, prevarication, pride, protectionism, Ptolemaic rationalizing, public relations, PubMed illiteracy, pusillanimity,
racism, rage, rationalization, religion, religious instinct, respectability, reputation enhancing, resistance to change, rivalry, ruthless ambition,
sadism, scheming for advancement, self-deception, self-interest, self-justification, self-preservation, self-promotion, scientific illiteracy, shame, sloth, slow wittedness, smug orthodoxy, social ambition, social belonging, status seeking, sheer stupidity,
terrorizing, thievery, timidity, toadying, trickery, tribalism, ‘truthiness’,
unchecked error copying, uninformed certainty,
vanity, venality, veneration, virus hunting,
witch hunting, wishful thinking, worship of authority,
and all other primeval forces of human nature flowing through modern social systems defeating intelligent objectivity and rational public choice.
This blog is designed to be a guide to better science and social perspective in public policy through a continuing series of posts highlighting error and clarifying confusion in certain scientific fields where paradigms are sustained beyond their shelf life and supported only by politics and propaganda, such as cancer and HIV/AIDS, and it includes a set of links to relevant other sites, which blogroll is lower down in the sidebar on the right. 
The overriding purpose is to combat group think and the political and social propaganda of government agencies and other large social systems, public and corporate, which induce conformist group think and unthinking social compliance, somewtimes with blatant error, by comparing current established beliefs and claims in science and elsewhere with the scholarly professional and research literature, and especially to defend the values of science and good scientists in the paradigm wars of HIV/AIDS, cancer, evolution, global warming, nutrition, particle physics, economics, religious belief and any other disputes over replacing doubtful ideas against conformity, prejudice, subjectivity and self-interest, standing up for free speech and publication against the tendency of the authorities to repress revolutionary ideas, and mining corrective truths buried in the professional journals and commonly overlooked by harried hacks. 
This is my battle with John Maddox [editor of Nature] and with people who are actually fabricating the data [Ascher et al in Nature, March 11, 1993]. They claim to have such a group that had not used any drugs. When I analyzed the data, it turned out that there was not a single person in their paper that was drug-free. I submitted a critique to Maddox, but his response was, I could no longer respond. I was censored. – Peter Duesberg (left), interview with Bob Guccione, Spin magazine, September, 1993.
Herd instinct, hindsight bias, homophobia, hubris, human error, hypocrisy, haste, Inattention blindness, iatrogenic ignorance, ideology, indoctrination, illogic, instigating panic, institutional affiliation, intimidation, irrationality, insanity,
Job seeking, job retention, just world prejudice, Kowtowing to seniority and power, Lack of controls, labeling, laziness, lickspittle press instincts, loyalty to superiors, lying, lynch mob mentality, Maintaining parents, wives, mistresses and offspring, masochism, media stenography, mental inertia, mentor allegiance, misdirection, misunderstanding, Naivete, narcissism, Nobel hunting, normalcy bias, Obedience, obeisance, officiousness, opportunism, overclaiming, operant conditioning, Panic, priming, publication bias, paradigm protection, patron pandering, peer pressure, perks, preconceptions, presentation bias, privileges, prizes, piety, politicking, political pressures, popularity, power seeking, pseudoscience, prejudice, preserving face, prevarication, pride, protectionism, Ptolemaic rationalizing, public relations, PubMed illiteracy, pusillanimity, psychopathy, Racism, rage, rationalization, religion, religious instinct, respectability, reputation enhancing, resistance to change, rivalry, ruthless ambition, Ringelmann social loafing, representativeness heuristic, Sadism, selective reporting, scheming for advancement, self-deception, self-interest, self-justification, self-preservation, self-promotion, scientific illiteracy, shame, sloth, slow wittedness, smug orthodoxy, social ambition, sociopathy, social belonging, status seeking, sheer stupidity, sunk cost fallacy, straw man fallacy, subjective validation, self serving, self validating bias, situation psychology, Terrorizing, Texas sharpshooter fallacy, thievery, timidity, toadying, trickery, tribalism, ‘truthiness’,
Unthinking acquiescence, unchecked error copying, uninformed certainty, underresearch, unconscious misperception, Vanity, venality, veneration, virus hunting, Witch hunting, wishful thinking, worship of authority, Youthful naivete, and Zeal in the service of the establishment and the status quo.
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