Science Guardian

The humble host of this blog and his much more distinguished colleagues and commenters extend an invitation to all enlightened readers to please join us in defending good science against the long 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).