Groupthink in Science: Greed, Pathological Altruism, Ideology, Competition, and Culture

Introduction: Definitions, Manifestations, and Theoretical Issues.- Groupthink in science: an introduction.- Thomas Kuhn and the huge hurdle of changing normal practice.- Altruism, professionalism, and the filtering of information.- Evolution of reason giving.- The mental and interpersonal mechanisms of groupthink maintenance.- Five case examples of how important ideas were initially attacked or ridiculed by the professions.- Mobbing and shunning behavior in science.- Competitiveness and careerism in academia and academic politics (scientific fraud).- Manipulation and Use of Social Influence in Science: The Financing, Design, and Dissemination of Research Studies and Results.- The politics of the acceptance of articles to preferred journals.- Political correctness in science.- Post-modernism and science.- The difficulty of publishing findings that contravene accepted wisdom.- Issues in obtaining research funding.- Manipulation of research design and methodology to serve pre-existing biases.- Peer review problems.- Lawsuits to prevent the advance of science.- When conjecture becomes fact.- Problems arising from the well-meaning intentions of IRBs and HIPPA.- Problems arising from the lack of political diversity in some academic disciplines and university departments.- Examples and Personal Experiences.- Business interests aligned with academia: the case of Big Pharma.- Public health and the conflict between science and markets: illustrations from tobacco and lead.- Science confronts human sexuality.- Why what you see isn't what you get: understanding the promulgation of social psychological myths.- Groupthink blocking progress in neonatology: the case of Martin Couney.- Vaccination/anti-vaccination.- Bias, disguise, and co-opted science: altruism as "scientized" ideology across the English professions.- Hurting by helping to support women's participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.- Perception is not reality: a critique of current models of sex addiction.- The tyranny of the normal curve: how the "bell curve" distorts educational research and practice.- Bad drugs, bad science.- A priori false assumptions that a characteristic is positive or negative in psychological research. - Chapter Authors Discuss Possible Overarching Solutions to the Problems Addressed in this Book.