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Replicability and fraud: Unintended consequence of modernity

replicability and fraud

John Parrish-Sprowl is a long-term friend of the CMM Institute and Director of the Global Health Communication Center at the Indiana University School of Liberal Arts and Professor of Communication Studies. In May of this year, John presented a paper at the University of WroClaw, on “The replicability and fraud crisis in science: The unintended consequences of modernity”. A summary of his argument follows:

Barnett Pearce first wrote about forms of communication in his 1989 book, Communication and the Human Condition. In that book, he identified 5 forms of communication: monocultural, ethnocentric, modernity, neo-traditionalism (this form was rarely mentioned later), and cosmopolitan. These forms can be differentiated on a number of factors including epistemology and the differing importance of coordination, coherence, and mystery—the CMM theory triumvirate. John’s paper specifically explores the impact of the epistemological differences on the contemporary scientific enterprise, especially in term sof the impact of modernity.

Modernity, as a form created, scientific resources and practices that enabled the inventions that gave us the industrial revolution. Modernity gave rise to competitive markets, democracy, endless variation on Christianity and perhaps most importantly, the development of modern science. The modern research universities of today continue to be purveyors of modernity forms of science, in constant pursuit of newer, more, better, faster (progress) in everything.

While there have undoubtedly been substantial benefits arising from the form of modernity, John also argues that there have been drawbacks. One unintended consequence of the modernity form is the creation of the replicability crisis and widespread fraud in the scientific literature due to the pressure to constantly produce more and better scholarship.

This is not a minor problem. John documents the scope of the problem as follows:

  • It is estimated that as many as 40% of studies cannot be replicated, meaning their scientific value is questionable at best
  • Fraud has created a number of health crises such as Wakefield’s fabricated data showing a link between vaccines and autism or Boldt’s falsified data regarding a blood substitute that endangered patients
  • This occurs in the social sciences as well. Recent high-profile examples include the President of Stanford and a widely respected and cited Harvard professor who presumably studied (rather than practiced) deception

He concludes by saying that moving on from the modernity form provides a communication pathway to escape the growing instances of scientific fraud. Understanding communication process and the forms it can take, offers an analytical perspective that enables us to consider what we are making and to ask ourselves if we want to make something different.

The fascinating question here is, what could we make with a cosmopolitan form?

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