A vital battle is being waged daily by researchers like Lonni Besançon, who devote their spare time to fighting scientific fraud, ensuring the integrity of published studies, and ferreting out flawed scientific papers published due to a lack of proper oversight or even naked corruption.
Besançon’s efforts are far from isolated. He’s part of a growing community of scientists and whistleblowers calling attention to the flood of misinformation threatening to drown genuine scientific progress.
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The consequences of the proliferation of junk science are ample. Scientific research often plays an important role in certain kinds of litigation, for example. Scientific evidence tends to be highly valued by juries, which often lack the expertise to correctly interpret or question it. Juries with a lower understanding of the potential limitations of such evidence are more likely to convict without questioning the evidence, which could lead to grossly unfair and unsound rulings.
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Related on the SLP
US judge throws out case claiming paraquat causes cancer, suggesting tide may be turning against environmental activists’ bogus campaigns targeting safe crop chemicals
Viewpoint: Environmental trade-offs are more important than knee jerk, feel-good chemophobia — Pistachio growers make the case for paraquat
Consider the recent developments in cases against the popular herbicide paraquat. There are more than 5000 lawsuits being pursued against herbicide manufacturers Chevron and Syngenta, alleging that paraquat, one of the world’s most commonly used weed-killers that has been repeatedly approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), could cause Parkinson’s disease.
The cases have all been grouped under the central jurisdiction of one U.S. district judge, who recently dismissed four bellwether cases because the scientific testimony of the plaintiffs’ only expert witness, Dr. Martin Wells, was deficient, cherry-picked, and insufficiently reliable. Specifically, Dr. Wells’ methodology for reviewing the available scientific evidence, as well as the conclusions he drew from examining a relatively limited number of studies, was heavily criticised for lack of reliability and relevance, with the court emphasising that Dr. Wells’ analysis failed to address potential confounding factors and alternative explanations adequately.
