You may be aware of the this recent incident of supposedly discovered fraud:
IN December, Science published a paper claiming that people could change their minds about same-sex marriage after talking for just 20 minutes with a gay person. It seemed too good to be true — and it was.
On Wednesday, the journal distanced itself from the study, after its accuracy was disputed, and one of the authors could not back up the findings.
We joined in on the initial enthusiasm for the reported research, and now we want to recognize that the results are disputed. The question remains, how do scientists with much to lose take the chances involved in publicly putting forth cooked data? The article linked to above offers an answer:
Economists like to say there are no bad people, just bad incentives. The incentives to publish today are corrupting the scientific literature and the media that covers it. Until those incentives change, we’ll all get fooled again.
Feminist Philosophers 