With all the "discussion" lately about "fake news", I've been thinking about how the word fake relates to scientific publication, and even scientific research. In thinking about it, I might put science results into possibly three major categories: good or quality research, biased research, and finally fake research.

Quality research is what most scientists do. The first step is to take data or make an observation of something. This may even involve a computer simulation. In designing the experiment you will probably have some idea of what you are looking for, but you MUST NOT let that limit your results. You will design an experiment to look for something, but you must not design it to ignore what may disagree with what you are looking for. For example, if you are looking for black, you must not let the experiment ignore white. You must think long and hard about what your experiment may be overlooking. You then ask, what does this data mean, what is it telling me. If you like or dislike the result you must ask yourself why. When you submit it for publication the referee will try to find something wrong. He/she will demand that you explain (rewrite) anything that is unclear. You must write the paper such that others can independently verify or prove your result wrong.

Biased research is more common than one would like, but those who engage in it don't usually get very far. In this case, you start out with a preconceived notion and try to prove it with an experiment or computer simulation. An example of a biased experiment might be that I am going to prove that chocolate makes you fat. I will find 100 fat people and discover that 95% of them eat chocolate. Case proved, I never bother to find out that 95% of skinny people also eat chocolate. In most cases, the referee process in publican does not allow these types of results to be published.

People who do fake research do not usually last very long. In this case, a person makes up their results. An example might be the discovery of a pill that cures cancer. Fake research usually involves the desire to make a lot of money, or obtain glory. Other scientists will demand enough information to confirm the result. These "scientists" usually try to hide the details of what they have done. The immediately becomes a red flag, so others will dig in even harder to reproduce the results. If it is fake, the results can't be reproduced, and the scientist is publically discredited. We as scientists work diligently to expose this kind of activity.

I find it exasperating that fake news and fake science seem to get the most attention. We/people need to be more critical in our processing of information.