Science through time has always represented truth. Logical truth, verifiable truth, empirical truth – whatever the scientific method employed the single goal has been to find out whether something was true or false. Most of the time this might not be anything very exciting or innovative, but from the high school lab to cutting edge R&D, the pursuit of science seemed pretty clear cut.
The reporting of science also appeared to follow those straight lines, with the familiar methodology-results-conclusion storyrepeated by scholars fulfilling Newton’s ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’ observation. Sure, there were one or two bad eggs who sought to subvert the ritual, but by and large what you saw in a published research article was what you got.
But then things changed.
Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash
Through the looking glass
Whether it was the arrival of the internet, development of the Open Access model, or even the explosion in journal numbers in the postwar period it is difficult to tell, but in the last few decades it is clear the era of the research and publishing integrity problem is upon us. From predatory journals to Andrew Wakefield, from paper mills to AI slop, for those of us working within scholarly communications and higher education the numerous integrity problems have become onerous and depressing. For those outside, who just hear noise concerning scandals and retractions, trust in the scientific method becomes eroded.
On top of that, we are living in a well-documented time of misinformation and disinformation, where news is doubted on competing platforms and ‘alternative facts’ presented as truth. When science should be the one thing that is trusted by a worried population, it is being portrayed and perceived by some as one of the purveyors of misinformation. What is known and what is true is no longer decided by science; it is decided by an individual staring at their phone and the tech bros facilitating what is shown.
Dispersing the fog
The extent of the problem was clear recently when I heard someone say that, referring to one of the top scientific journals, ‘nothing can be believed in there anymore’. The lack of trust in research is not just to do with integrity issues or people’s cynicism, but the blurred lines that now permeate our interactions with information of any kind due to generative AI. Rightly or wrongly, people think that AI is generating text in articles in all research publications or doing a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to some research, in addition to the fog that surrounds our data as to whether something has been read by a human, training crawler or real-time retrieval bot.
A cynical response is to assume the worst on the part of the researcher, or more negatively dismiss all research as fake. A better response for us all is to draw new lines and increase our trust in key support systems. Seek out independently verified journals and articles; use trusted referrals from multiple sources; triangulate data from known suppliers. All these things can add weight to people’s judgement and rebuild trust that has been lost, and move us away from the abyss.
A timely article for me as I prepare to present on scholarly communication ethics. For me, I am being bold in suggesting that academic librarians are a trustworthy resource for researchers to partner with on a regular basis. [edited]