Open Access: a remedy against bad science | Education & Numérique | Scoop.it

Who has never been in the situation that he had a set of data where some of them just didn’t seem to fit. A simple adjusting of the numbers or omitting of strange ones could solve the problem. Or so you would think. I certainly have been in such a situation more than once, and looking back, I am glad that I left the data unchanged. At least in one occasion my “petty” preformed theory proved to be wrong and the ‘strange data’ I had found were corresponding very well with another concept that I hadn’t thought of at the time.[...]

 

In this article I propose that for almost all of the instances where scientific misconduct was found, open access to articles AND raw data would have either prevented the fraud altogether, or at the very least would have caused them to be exposed much more rapidly than has been the case in the current situation.[...]

 

To state it more simply: the more people there are who can take a look at complete data, the more likely it is that inconsistencies will be quickly spotted.[...]

 

CONCLUSION. Implementation of open access inclusive of full access to raw research data would minimize the possibilities for scientific fraud...


Via MyScienceWork