Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

What is fake news in science?

2021; IOS Press; Volume: 32; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3233/jrs-211002

1878-6847

I. Ralph Edwards, Marie Lindquist,

Academic Publishing and Open Access

What is fake news in science?There seems to be a growing concern about 'fake news', but it is not always clear what that means.Strictly speaking 'fake' is more of an invention, synonyms being 'sham', 'forgery', 'imitation', or 'pretend'.'False' is similar but is more concerned with deliberate distortion of evidence that actually exists and is 'faulty', 'wrong', or 'misinformed'.For review of some of the more discussed issues around 'fake news', the easiest way is to go to: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news,but we wish to emphasise some more complexities that are missing in the current debates.It may be clear and very damaging if someone deliberately deletes, changes, suppresses factual, material evidence; or invents it.Other situations are not so clear as to allow any individual or group to set themselves up as arbiters of what is 'true' or not.There are few truths in life that are indisputable, and science uses the main stages of first hypothesis/discovery, then analysis and finally interpretation of data, using those three activities to produce evidence that we act upon.Data can be checked, but the discovery methods, selection of the data (which in turn relies on descriptions and definitions), and the aims and context of its discovery are often significant and not always available or easy to come by and evaluate by a third party.How the findings are analysed depend on tools that are used such as experimental methods and statistics, which must be appropriate and carried out properly.Interpretation of the results involve value judgements which are affected by the researchers' experience, knowledge, biases and more.In many situations, decision makers rely on experts to guide them on scientific matters; for them to say "We are listening to the scientists" has become synonymous with "We're doing the right thing".But are experts always right?They may be biased in favour of their own preconceptions, they may also not be expert in all the circumstances relevant to a particular project, nor is anyone free of any number of errors.Being part of a panel of experts takes care of some issues, though we usually cannot be sure how any disagreements might have been resolved, nor the compromises made.There is a further risk to relying on the wisdom of expert groups to decide on falsehood.The argument that something is false is often based upon prior knowledge.Prior knowledge is used in many epidemiological studies, though prospective data are often sought and can be analysed continuously.Not only can data suffer from being out-of-date, but it can also be out of context in relation to data obtained in a different place or circumstances.The Erice Declaration, from a meeting in 1997, contains the advice that all communications on scientific matters must make clear that '…..Facts, hypotheses and conclusions should be distinguished, uncertainty acknowledged, and information provided in ways that meet both general and individual needs' [1].These are the basic responsibilities of scientific communication that allow for a critical review of anyone's work: being careful and critical are the essence of determining what one should throw out and what might be useful.Peer review of scientific publications is the obvious way of seeking to eliminate misleading information and its subsequent use for actions that may be harmful.But here again, the evaluations are based on the assessors' experience and other values.