Abstract
A range of problems currently undermines public trust in biomedical research. We discuss four erroneous beliefs that may prevent the biomedical research community from recognizing the need to focus on deserving this trust, and thus which act as powerful barriers to necessary improvements in the research process.
Highlights
In 2014, in an essay titled ‘Why scientists should be held to a higher standard of honesty than the average person,’ a former editor of the British Medical Journal argued that science depends wholly on trust (Smith, 2014)
Readers may be tempted to dismiss the foregoing analysis of erroneous beliefs as mere personal observations
They may prefer instead either hard data about how research measures up against metrics that contribute to deserving trust
Summary
In 2014, in an essay titled ‘Why scientists should be held to a higher standard of honesty than the average person,’ a former editor of the British Medical Journal argued that science depends wholly on trust (Smith, 2014). The concerns of interest to us in what follows have little to do with the misconduct found on the unforgivable end of the continuum Instead, they fall all along it and pertain to unsound research practices (such as non-robust reporting of methods, flawed study designs, incomplete reporting of data handling, and deficient statistical analyses) that impede the advance of science. They fall all along it and pertain to unsound research practices (such as non-robust reporting of methods, flawed study designs, incomplete reporting of data handling, and deficient statistical analyses) that impede the advance of science These are the practices that reform measures could counter if researchers were less reluctant to adopt them.
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