Do Pressures to Publish Increase Scientists' Bias? An Empirical Support from US States Data

Daniele Fanelli^*

INNOGEN and Institute for the Study of Science, Technology and Innovation (ISSTI),The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

The growing competition and “publish or perish” culture in academia might conflict with the objectivity and integrity of research, because it forces scientists to produce “publishable” results at all costs. Papers are less likely to be published and to be cited if they report “negative” results (results that fail to support the tested hypothesis). Therefore, if publication pressures increase scientific bias, the frequency of “positive” results in the literature should be higher in the more competitive and “productive” academic environments. This study verified this hypothesis by measuring the frequency of positive results in a large random sample of papers with a corresponding author based in the US. Across all disciplines, papers were more likely to support a tested hypothesis if their corresponding authors were working in states that, according to NSF data, produced more academic papers per capita. The size of this effect increased when controlling for state's per capita R&D expenditure and for study characteristics that previous research showed to correlate with the frequency of positive results, including discipline and methodology. Although the confounding effect of institutions' prestige could not be excluded (researchers in the more productive universities could be the most clever and successful in their experiments), these results support the hypothesis that competitive academic environments increase not only scientists' productivity but also their bias. The same phenomenon might be observed in other countries where academic competition and pressures to publish are high.

Original complete paper can be found in:

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0010271

Brazil's presidential election Another Silva, A celebrated environmentalist pitches for the presidency

Apr 22nd 2010 | SÃO PAULO | From The Economist print edition

A born and bred green

OCCASIONALLY, a politician comes along who seems too principled to be thrown into an electoral dogfight in a giant democracy. Marina Silva, the candidate of the small Green Party in Brazil’s presidential election in October, is such a candidate. What she lacks in party machinery she is trying to make up with ethical force. Her immediate aim is to make it to the run-off ballot. This will not be easy: a recent poll gave her only 10% of the vote. But that is not bad given that many Brazilians, like voters elsewhere, do not count saving the planet as one of their priorities.

Ms Silva was born in Acre, in Amazonia. Her father, a migrant from the poor north-east, found work there as a rubber tapper. It was a hazardous place to grow up: of Ms Silva’s 11 brothers and sisters, only eight survived beyond infancy. Malaria, hepatitis and other forest diseases bequeathed health problems to the adult Ms Silva, including a collection of allergies to things from seafood to air-conditioning.

She worked as a maid to put herself through university in Acre (later she earned a postgraduate degree too). She campaigned with Chico Mendes, an environmental organiser from Acre who was murdered by a landowner in 1988. She was a founding member of the Workers’ Party, along with Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a trade unionist of similarly modest origins. When he became president in 2003 he made Ms Silva, who had entered politics as a state deputy and federal senator, his environment minister.

In government she lost arguments, some better-founded than others, over the introduction of genetically modified soya, the paving of the BR-163 road through the Amazon and nuclear power. She was accused of filling her ministry with greens (to which she pleads guilty) and fellow evangelical Protestants (a charge she rejects). In 2008 she resigned shortly after another minister was handed responsibility for reforming the law on land tenure in the Amazon. She refused to criticise Lula publicly.

Ms Silva’s main campaign theme is that Brazil has a moral responsibility to become a high-tech, low-carbon economy as an example to other developing countries. In a tacit critique of Lula’s fondness for a big state and for Fidel Castro, she also says that Brazil must lower its tax burden and not cuddle up to tyrants. Guilherme Leal, who owns Natura, a big cosmetics firm, and is one of Brazil’s richest men, is considering a request to be her running mate. She still has a lot of ground to make up. “My grandfather told me that the animal with the shortest legs has to run the farthest,” she says, before rushing off to her next campaign appointment.

Scientists call for research on climate link to geological hazards

Experts say suggestions that climate change could trigger more volcanoes and earthquakes are speculative, but there is enough evidence to take the threat seriously

Smoke and steam hang over the volcano under the Eyjafjallajokull glacier in Iceland. Volcanic ash drifting across the Atlantic forced the cancellation of flights in Britain and disrupted air traffic across Europe last week. Photograph: Jon Gustafsson/AP

Scientists today called for wide-ranging research into whether more volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides and tsunamis could be triggered by rising global temperatures under global warming.

Significant warming of the atmosphere in the distant past can be linked to changes in geological activity, they say. Suggestions that climate change predicted for coming decades could bring similar changes remain speculative, but the scientists say there is enough evidence to take the threat seriously. Some experts have already linked current levels of global warming to rockfalls and landslides in mountain regions.

Richard Betts, a climate modeller at the Met Office Hadley Centre in Exeter, said: "This is a new area of academic research with potentially interesting implications. It was previously assumed there was no link at all between climate change and these events, but it is possible to speculate that climate change might make some more likely. If we do get large amounts of climate change in the long term then we might see some impacts."

He said there was no evidence that current levels of global warming were influencing events such as last week's earthquake in China that killed hundreds of people and the volcanic eruption in Iceland that grounded flights across Europe.

Experts say global warming could affect geological hazards such as earthquakes because of the way it can move large amounts of mass around on the Earth's surface. Melting glaciers and rising sea levels shift the distribution of huge amounts of water, which release and increase pressures through the ground.

These pressure changes could make ruptures and seismic shifts more likely. Research from Germany suggests that the Earth's crust can sometimes be so close to failure that tiny changes in surface pressure brought on my heavy rain can trigger quakes. Tropical storms, snowfall and shifting tides have all been linked to shifts in seismic activity.

Writing in a special series of scientific papers on the topic published today by the Royal Society, Bill McGuire, head of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at University College London, says: "In relation to anthropogenic climate change, modelling studies and projection of current trends point towards increased risk in relation to a spectrum of geological and geomorphological hazards in a warmer world, while observations suggest that the ongoing rise in global average temperatures may already be eliciting a hazardous response from the geosphere."

He adds: "In order to improve knowledge and reduce uncertainty, a programme of focused research is advocated ... The IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] is also strongly exhorted to address more explicitly in future assessments the impact of anthropogenic climate change on the geosphere, together with its manifold potentially hazardous consequences."

The papers follow a special meeting on the subject last year and are published in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. They include studies of the likely impact of rising temperatures on events such as earthquakes and volcanoes, as well as whether the release of gas from undersea deposits called gas hydrates could trigger landslides and tsunamis.

McGuire says: "No increase in the global incidence of either volcanic activity or seismicity has been identified to date ... It may be the case that modulation of potentially hazardous geological processes due to anthropogenic climate change proves too small a signal to extract from the background noise of normal geophysical activity, at least in the short to medium term."

A Land Without Men for Men Without Land: Travels Through the Amazon

Doug Gunzelmann, Amazon adventurer and author

Posted: April 4, 2010 04:25 PM

On my 29th birthday, I set out on my first ever bicycle expedition. The first time I had ever been to Brazil I landed in Belem at the mouth of the Amazon River with a used mountain bike I had bought on eBay six weeks prior. My Portuguese vocabulary consisted of about 50 words, and the weight of the equatorial jungle heat made it difficult to think straight. I was going to cycle the Transamazonica highway alone, over 3,000 miles across the continent joining with the new Trans-Oceanic highway in Peru, to explore the deforestation of the Amazon Basin firsthand. This brutal trek shaped the way I think about Amazonia, deforestation, and how people fit into the picture of global environmental conservation.

The Transamazonica highway, also referred to as BR-230, was built through the Amazon jungle in the early 1970s to open the area for "development." The TransAm has been cycled to the extent of my trip only four or five times since it was hacked across Brazil. First, and most impressively, was by Louise Southerland, a 100 lb. nurse from New Zealand riding a 5 speed steel Raleigh over forty years ago. Her adventure, chronicled in the book The Impossible Ride, describes the frontier of Brazil, which to this day, has very little law enforcement (meaning zero outside of cities) where gold miners still have shootouts in the jungle and pay for rum with gold dust.

The intention behind building the TransAm was to open the vast expanse of the Amazon interior to provide "Land without men for men without land," and create a trucking route west. Settlers were given plots of land to develop for their own sustenance through farming and ranching but ultimately this horribly expensive project was a failure. The route dead-ends in a small town called Labrea, however it's possible to cross the continent via connecting roads. To this day, the highway is surfaced almost entirely of dirt, is poorly maintained, and serves as a transport corridor for local communities and an access route for loggers and illegal miners. Some sections are experiencing a major revamp to accommodate increasing agriculture in the region with the increasing global demand for soy beans.

My planning for this trip consisted mostly of searching for articles on the area and zooming in on Google maps, which meant my planning was incredibly shoddy. The TransAm seemed to be nothing more than a giant mistake, nearly lawless, all but forgotten by the government that started the project, and now filled with morally reprehensible souls willing to kill for quick profit from the wood and resources found in the jungle. How easy it would be to point fingers and draw plans to curb deforestation if this was the simple case.

I successfully crossed the entire continent with nearly 2,000 miles on unpaved tracks through the world's greatest jungle. I saw the fazendas, or cattle ranches, that fill the treeless plots lining roadways all through out the Amazon. They look like hairy brown veins when you zoom in with Google maps. Everyday for the 6 weeks I was in the Amazon Basin I heard chainsaws, saw and smelled the fires of the quimadas as new land was gained from the jungle, and met many garimpos, or miners, who worked deep in remote corners of the forests looking for gold or semi-precious stones. It was all happening every day across the entire width of the jungle along the TransAm and Trans-Oceanic highway.

Before my trip, when I thought of the environment issues facing the Amazon, I failed to account for the cities, villages, and families that have existed here for lifetimes. People I spoke with at home in the U.S. were always surprised that this wasn't empty land save for a few loggers. One day I rode for 12 hours in 100+ degree heat and was taken into the home of a family living along the road. I had no place to sleep that night and no food or water. They gave me water to clean myself and drink, a freshly cooked dinner, and a bed to sleep in. The next morning breakfast was waiting before I left and they refused to take any money in return for their hospitality. The Dona of the household just asked that I said hello to her sons as they worked on the fazenda outside of town. This openness and hospitality is what I remember most about the people living in the Amazon.

The narrow cross section of South America I was exposed to on my ride showed me three major environmental issues concerning the Amazon, its resources, and the people living there. First is the creation of dams for hydroelectric power. The Tucurui dam is one of the largest in the Amazon Basin and will be joined by a dam in the Xingu river area around Altamira. The dam will of course result in flooded jungle which will displace the people and animals that live along these waterways as well as disrupt the livelihood of those living down stream of the dam. I witnessed protests for water rights and against the construction of these dams in Belem and Altamira.

Then there are the roadways themselves which are a major issue in this part of the world. Roadways, like the Transamazonica or the TranOceanic highway, offer access to these remote areas and the potential for exploitation of the jungle and people. However, the people I came to depend on for my own safety and well being also depend on these roads for transportation of their goods and themselves. These roads allow Brazil, Peru, and other countries of South America to move their goods to ocean ports to sell on the world market. For instance, parts of the Transamazonica between Santarem and Cuiaba have been widened and paved since I rode them a few months ago, to transport truck loads of soybeans. Roads will bring destruction, no question about it, but the dilemma is how to sustainably meet Brazil's right to compete on the global market and keep the Amazon from being mowed down.

Finally there is the popular deforestation issue which is easily observed on nearly all of the Transamazonica. I spent nights with the men and woman responsible for some of this destruction as well as beers and meals with people who now depend on the cleared land for a living. It's a complicated problem for me to come to terms with now. There needs to be a resolution that preserves the jungle yet allows these people to at least maintain their livelihoods and better yet to prosper. Brazilians have every right to work towards a higher quality of life and are competing on a global market to accomplish this, as are Americans, Europeans, me, and you.

I have now come face to face with deforestation, and it's not a surly bare-chested man walking around with a chainsaw kicking dogs. The people living in the Amazon along these roadways have been here for generations --before I was even born. They have very little material wealth, lead honest lives, and work extremely hard to provide for each other. When I left Brazil I was most struck by the openness and overall generosity of the culture. Never have an entire people left such a positive impression on me as that of the Brazilians I met across the relatively poor Amazonian states.

Deforestation as it has occurred in many parts of Brazil is not in anyone's long-term interest. The government is aware of this, much of the international community is aware of this, and the population of the Amazon itself is by and large very aware of this. However, so many of these people are backed against a wall. Due to poverty, isolation, and a general lack of alternatives they do what they must to make a living, which often times is to the detriment of the environment. This is the plight of many developing nations.

I spent an evening with a pig farmer, Resu, who literally didn't have a pot to pee in (we dug holes behind his one room shack for our toilet). We ate a dinner of rice and beans that I am guessing had been reheated on the same fire for days. He tended about 40 pigs and lived on the cleared land of a fazenda that he didn't own but depended on to survive. Resu is in his mid-30s, unmarried and uneducated. He left the city to provide for himself on this isolated farm in hopes of saving enough to find a wife and start a family. For food he sometimes eats his pigs or hunts wild game, including some rare animals, in the jungle about 100 yards back from the roadway. How do I tell Resu not to kill the animals of the Amazon? How do I tell him that the fazenda he depends on is part of the bleeding scar of the basin? I came to realize that the problem and solution is a little more complicated than I previously grasped.

I left the Amazon with more questions than answers as is often the case when one becomes so embedded in something. When I read about debates to stop the paving of the roadways of the Amazon I wonder what that means for the people I met? Do I have any right to voice my opinion about deforestation just because I can? Who is really causing the damage, them or me? I live in a country that has benefited from the degradation of others for generations. Brazil is competing in a cutthroat global economy with the United States and other world powers to provide for its people. At this point, I can't gauge who's really winning, and who has already lost.

originally posted in
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doug-gunzelmann/a-land-without-men-for-me_b_524753.html