Beware the creeping cracks of bias

[Jim Myers]

Alarming cracks are starting to penetrate deep into the scientific edifice. They threaten the status of science and its value to society. And they cannot be blamed on the usual suspects — inadequate funding, misconduct, political interference, an illiterate public. Their cause is bias, and the threat they pose goes to the heart of research. . . A biased scientific result is no different from a useless one. Neither can be turned into a real-world application. . . It would therefore be naive to believe that systematic error is a problem for biomedicine alone. It is likely to be prevalent in any field that seeks to predict the behaviour of complex systems — economics, ecology, environmental science, epidemiology and so on.

Read complete article at -- http://www.nature.com/news/beware-the-creeping-cracks-of-bias-1.10600