As I am writing this post, the Trump administration has just been inaugurated (again, sigh…) and the new government immediately launched an all-out attack on universities and research funding. This coincides with a dangerous new era today where our research institutions are destabilizing, scientists are no longer trusted and critical thinking and knowledge are dismissed and trashed.

A point often brought up against scholars and the entire scientific premise is the increase in fraudulent research discovered in the past few decades. As passionate and objective as we claim to be, academics, like anyone else, at the end of the day are mere mortals like you and I who struggle to make a living. And amidst the punishing academic system, academics will face an ongoing temptation to strive for every advantage to game the system and climb the ladder towards tenureship, even if it means selling their integrity/soul to publish yet another ground-breaking study.

While I don’t proclaim to be a saint, I do find myself having to consistently turn to my faith in order to ground myself amidst this “survival of the fittest” culture within academia. A core tenet within Christianity is to lead holy lives filled with integrity and honesty (Prov 19:1) and turning to Scripture is my way of reminding myself that at the end of the day, research remains a job like any other job  – to be done with integrity as a form of servitude to the Lord. Nonetheless, it is undeniable (and unfortunate) that there will always be some who choose to game the system for personal gain instead.

Proverbs 19:1 – Better the poor walking in integrity than one perverse of speech who is a fool.

Modern scientific fraud

How is it possible that we live in an era so wealthy with knowledge yet so filled with anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers, climate change skeptics and other anti-intellectual groups? For a start, we academics don’t exactly have a great track record of being honest. I would like to believe most of us are trying to be as honest as we can in our work; yet all it takes is a few bad apples to spoil the crop. Indeed, it took only one man – Andrew Wakefield – and his trashy research on how vaccines cause autism, to spiral into the whole anti-vaccination movement seen today.

I would like to think that my field (ecology) is better than most, or that perhaps ecologists are more honest individuals than the average researcher. Truthfully, however, I have to concede with Dr. Jeremy Fox that there is almost no way to tell. Peer review is currently equipped with ways to catch researchers muddling with statistics and open data policies are a great first step to ensure ecologists reveal their dataset to enhance reproducibility across the field. Yet, at the end of the day, there is technically nothing stopping me from fudging a few numbers in my spreadsheet to get that magical P<0.05, or to outright forge numbers out of thin air and claim it as my own. Especially in the field of ecology where many of us study unique ecosystems and reproducing empirical data becomes infeasible or outright impossible, there is just no way to know. At its heart, academic research is built on the modern-equivalent of “trust me bro”.

Like how some people enjoy watching crime-busting TV shows, one of my favorite late-night doomscrolling channels on Youtube is Pete Judo – a behavioral scientist Youtuber who showcases many devastating fraud-busters within the fields of psychology and human behavior. Even publishers nowadays have joined the fray  – just ask any of your professors whether they received any emails from predatory journals in the past month (I get them even though I’m nowhere near that level!). As my blog is also partially dedicated towards showcasing interesting developments in biblical studies and theology, no field gets a free pass – even if said field claims to pursue only the “truth”. Just how bad is it? Bad enough such that researchers can get away with publishing a paper every other day.

Should the public continue to trust academia then?

YES.

For all the flaws plaguing the academic system, I believe the scientific method remains our best avenue to learn about our natural world, our history and our societies. To give credit where credit is due, it is extremely difficult to know something from scratch (more of this in a later post). Many academics dedicate the entirety of their lives towards rigorous examination of the literature, designing and executing experiments, analyzing data and communicating their findings. Too often, we hit dead ends and we restart the process. For those unfamiliar with the PhD experience, give your fellow graduate student friends a hug for their hard work the next time you meet them, and show some grace to them when they turn up grumpy for your next dinner party due to a failed experiment. It truly takes a special level of passion and perseverance to persist in doing any form of academic work, and to not throw yourself off the cliff when one hits a dead end the umpteenth time.

As for those who are battling the fires within the academic system, the temptation to cheat remains stronger than ever. Maybe sometime in the future, someone smarter and more influential than me can revolutionize the academic system and change the way we do science altogether for the better. But that day is not today. For now, we got to work with what we got, or as the Gen-Zs say “it do be like that sometimes”. I would love to hear other people’s thoughts on this.

For the layman, most scientific research remains far out of reach. For as long as society thrives, we will need experts to create new drugs to combat diseases, work out the effects of climate change on vegetation, pour over old manuscripts to work out the historicity of our most treasured religious texts and the list goes on. These aren’t trivial things that a layman can simply “do their own research” on; that’s why academics are paid to figure these things out for us. It is a matter of fact that our time on earth is limited and the volume of knowledge to explore is vast – we need experts to do the research for us. There remains the tendency for the layman to swing too far in either direction between “all research is useless” vs “trust the science (fully)”. Neither extreme is healthy.

As I conclude this first blog post, I am wary of the impression that I might bring to the layman. No, I do not intend to discredit the entire scientific enterprise, nor throw shade on any one individual. Instead, I hope that my post humanizes academics and academia as a whole. In our pursuit for knowledge, we remain mortals and are vulnerable to mortal tendencies – to cheat, to take the lazy way out, to abuse those working under us etc. Many find ways to avoid succumbing; a few stumble unintentionally and yet a few others actively game the system. Moving forward, we as a society will need to rethink of new ways to weed out those bad crops, as opposed to burning the whole orchard down.