Bad Science, Junk Science, and Fake Science

Andrew Gelman, professor of statistics and political science at Columbia University, blogs at Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science.

In today’s post, Autism junk science: The only part of this story that surprises me is that the outside critic “found it hard to believe just how flawed it turned out to be”, Dr. Gelman provides the following definitions of bad science, junk science, and fake science:

Bad Science

Bad science . . . [is] work that generally follows the methods of science but has some serious flaws in design, measurement, or analysis, with the most common problem being measurements that are too noisy to allow any realistic effects to be discerned from the data.

Junk Science

Junk science . . . [can] be defined as bad science as a general practice. . . . Researchers are doing junk science when they set up a research program that allows them to produce a stream of bad science.

Fake Science

Fake science . . . [is] reports that have the superficial form of science but do not involve any aspects of scientific inquiry. This could include fake data, plagiarism, or completely empty word salad, or various versions of data misrepresentation, politically motivated hackwork, or extreme p-hacking.