Piltdown Superman

Somehow, the public has an image of scientists that are clever, dispassionate about facts, realistic about evidence and are above reproach. In last week's articles, we saw that they are indeed human, being prone to having ulterior motives and making mistakes [ 1 ,  2 ]. Here is some more information on scientific misconduct. Several recent articles by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) focused on the problem of unpublished clinical research trial data. University of Oxford's Richard Lehman and journal editor Elizabeth Loder wrote of "a current culture of haphazard publication and incomplete data disclosure [that] make the proper analysis of the harms and benefits of common interventions almost impossible for systematic reviewers."  Here's a sampling of recent issues that illustrate the problem: You can see the sampling and read "Is Scientific Misconduct on the Rise?" in its context, here .