Nautilus explores the ideas of a psychologist who has been examining the minds behind the expanding proliferation of flawed science.
Nautilus reports: “Psychologist Brian Nosek of the University of Virginia says that the most common and problematic bias in science is ‘motivated reasoning’: We interpret observations to fit a particular idea. Psychologists have shown that ‘most of our reasoning is in fact rationalization,’ he says. In other words, we have already made the decision about what to do or to think, and our ‘explanation’ of our reasoning is really a justification for doing what we wanted to do–or to believe–anyway. Science is of course meant to be more objective and skeptical than everyday thought–but how much is it, really?”
The Trouble With Scientists (Nautilus, May 14, 2015)