How do new findings and research become part of science? There are several steps to scientific method, but in our modern day, one of the most important steps is publishing a peer-reviewed research paper. Today, I’m going to explain to you exactly what a peer reviewed research paper is, who reads them, how they work, and what is wrong with them. Most of these papers can be a bit dull and dry but they are important because they can turn into things that affect your everyday life.
What is a Peer Reviewed Research Paper?
Let’s say you were a scientist or research student about to write and publish a science paper. You would probably get together with several of your friends, mentors, or co-workers. Together, your group would research your topic by finding out what other people say about it and by doing experiments. You write your beautiful, long, complex paper with a nice conclusion. After writing it, it has to be submitted to a publisher and reviewed by people who are experts in your field. For example, if you are a meteorologist, who studies the science of weather, you might research tornadoes and submit your paper to BAMS (Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society). Your paper would be reviewed by experts who know a lot about something related to your topic. After careful review, your paper might get published on the glossy magazine pages of BAMS. Of course, this is a very, very simplified explanation, but it gives you a basic idea.
Who Reads Peer Reviewed Research?
Very few people read these papers because they are usually very hard to understand – they use lots of specialized, technical words that are not in the normal English language. When I read research papers and books, I usually stick with geology papers because I understand the special geology words much, much better than biology or medical research papers. The people who read research papers are mostly the people who work in that specific field of science – e.g., biologists read biology research, physicists read physics research, and chemists read chemistry research. It’s important for any scientist to keep up with the latest research in her own field, but the fact that only a small group of people learn about the research can create its own problems.
What’s Wrong?
In 2005, Dr. John Ioannidis from Greece published his paper, “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False”*. In this paper, Dr. Ioannidis uses the math of statistics to show how most of the research that medical doctors depend on is probably false*. That’s a scary idea – what if most of the information your doctor counts on is wrong? Dr. Ioannidis had some very good points. Some are ways that research can be improved. For example, having a bigger research sample size can give more accurate results – testing 100 people instead of 12 in your research. Another good point he made is that more of the published findings should be verified by repeating them – most science really has to be repeatable and testable to be proved.
Other ideas presented by Dr. Ioannidis, and by Dr. Henry Morris II in another article I read this week, were much more serious, such as how researchers can pick data that go well with the point they want to make. In other words, it’s easy to pick evidence that we want to see instead of carefully looking at everything. This is one of the biggest problems with science – science is not perfect because it’s done by humans who are not perfect.
Here are some of the ways that our “human-ness” can cause problems in science research:
1. What’s cool?
If publishers are afraid that the idea in a researchers paper is too edgy and might make too many other scientists upset, they may not publish it. People are generally not happy when you want to challenge an idea that has been dearly held to for a long time. Things like doctors washing their hands, planets revolving around the sun, and that the continents were once together, unlike how they are today. People often just don’t want to rock the boat, and this can keep new discoveries from happening sooner.
2. What’s in it for me?
Does the researcher get special awards or importance for publishing this paper or “proving” certain ideas? For example, she gets her doctorate by naming a new species of fossil, she will probably make a bigger deal of little differences or maybe interpret a baby, male, or female of the same species as a new species. As naturally selfish humans, a person tends to cave in to what will be best for her instead of what will be best for everyone in the long run.
3. Where does the money come from?
You have to have money to do almost anything. Want to live in a house? Turn the lights on? Drive a car? Fix a car? Eat? Do experiments? All of those things (and countless others) take money. It’s just the way things work in our modern world. If a scientist is doing research, he needs money, which usually means he needs to convince someone else to give him money. And if someone is funding his research, he most certainly doesn’t want to disappoint them with his results. Even if a researcher doesn’t to intentionally choose his favorite data that his sponsors will like, it can still happen naturally without thinking about it. Of course, scientists can try their best to be as fair as possible, but sometimes personal ideas will still sneak into how they see the data. It’s just part of being human.
How Does Research Science Impact Me?
Please don’t get this wrong – it doesn’t mean that you can’t trust anything in peer reviewed research papers.* There is a lot of good, useful information in peer reviewed research papers and science methods are constantly being improved. Believe me, I wouldn’t spend lots of hours of my free time sifting through technical science research if I thought most of it was inaccurate. My point today is simply that science isn’t perfect.* Science is constantly growing and improving, as it should be. We can learn a lot from peer reviewed research, but we need to keep in mind that today’s science news headlines aren’t necessarily bona fide fact. Lots of things in life can change with a moment’s notice – science, houses, jobs, relationships, locations, emotions, etc. If you have something stable to rely on, like the unchanging character of God, all the other constantly changing factors will not wreck your world.
©Sara J. Mikkelson, February 2019
References:
Ioannidis, John. Why Most Published Research Findings are False. August 30, 2005. PLOS Medicine. Open Access. Last accessed 2/28/2019. https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
Ioannidis, John (guest). Why Most Published Research Findings are False. November 20, 2018. STEM Talk podcast, episode 77. Last accessed 2/26/2019
Morris, Henry, Jr. Peer Evaluation in Scientific Research and Creationism. Radioisotopes and the Age of the Earth, Vol II: Results of a Young-Earth Creationist Research Initiative. Introduction, Appendix. Pg. 21-24. 2005. Institute for Creation Research, USA.
*Note: Please do not use this article to make it say something it doesn’t say. This article is not about evolution. The research by Dr. Ioannidis was only in regards to the medical field and his statistics should not necessarily be extended to any or all fields of science. I simply present his research to be constructive and thought-provoking. Dr. Ioannidis’ goal was to improve the science of medicine with his research, a very noble goal.
