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Scientific Misconduct: Can Religion Help?

"A 2009 systematic review and meta-analysis of survey data discovered that among the scientists, 2% confessed to have “fabricated, falsified or modified data or results,” and over 14% had known colleagues to have committed the same. Moreover, over 33% of scientists confessed to “other questionable research practices,” and up to 72% had known colleagues to have done so."

"According to one survey by Nature, more than half of the researchers failed to successfully reproduce their own results; and over 70% failed to successfully reproduce another scientist’s results. Given this difficulty, hindered further by financial and other limitations, and by the complexity of the science concerned, it becomes easy to fabricate, manipulate, or selectively publish results."

"Like many of his contemporary biologists, Haeckel was a materialist. It is not materialism in itself that creates the problem, but rather the lack of accountability that results from it. It clears the way for deceit, corruption, and indeed the worst of crimes against humanity."

Ernst Haeckel's controversial embryo drawings

The article uses recapitulation theory as example of scientific misconduct:

"The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism—often expressed using Ernst Haeckel's phrase "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"—is a historical hypothesis that the development of the embryo of an animal, from fertilization to gestation or hatching (ontogeny), goes through stages resembling or representing successive adult stages in the evolution of the animal's remote ancestors (phylogeny)."

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#Science #Religion #Culture #Education #KM #Biology