Re: The state of the scientific community
nautica: "It's really sad that the state of the scientific community has come to this."
Sir Cyril Burt (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Burt)
"Sir Cyril Lodowic Burt, FBA (3 March 1883 – 10 October 1971) was an English educational psychologist and geneticist who also made contributions to statistics. He is known for his studies on the heritability of IQ. Shortly after he died, his studies of inheritance of intelligence were discredited after evidence emerged indicating he had falsified research data, inventing correlations in separated twins which did not exist."
His flawed 'research' was primarily used by the educationalists to create the divisive 'Grammar School, and Secondary Modern School' system in the UK, so that the top 25% 'clever children' could go to Grammar Schools, and the rest would go to secondary modern schools. The segregation included the split between 'O'-Levels and CSE's (a top grade CSE was equivalent to an 'O'-Level pass) taken at 15 or 16. Because the rich wanted their children to go to good schools and not mix with poor kids from council estates.
We still have this educational apartheid in parts of England, and it is total hypocrisy, because the Grammar School head still want the best soccer, rugby, cricket and hockey players so offer them scholarships.
He also claimed to have analysed the intelligence of separated identical twins, when one was adopted by a poor shepherd, which would never have happened in 1950's Britain: it was only the rich middle and upper class who got to adopt healthy white babies
At least Sir Cyril did his fakery for a reason other than pure self aggrandisement. He was caught because his faked data contained far too many numerals 7, but his legacy lives on.
(Personal note, I went to a comprehensive school. One of my fellow students at York University want to a secondary modern school, got the best first in maths in our year, did part 3 at Cambridge, a PhD in York, got a fellowship to Oxford and is now a full professor at a prestigious university. So he at least beat the system.)