Executive summary:Amore cites an unnamed source that claims that scientists concerned with global warming research cheat and lie for financial reasons, so their research is worthless. However the research referred to in her quote makes no specific reference to scientists working on global warming or climate change in general. That bit was simply made up by whatever fake news site that Amore read. Inspection of the underlying peer-reviewed published research also shows that its topic is very different from the one claimed in the reference.
Detail:
Here is Amore's unsourced quote, which specifically states that its research relates to global warming research (I have bolded the relevant words):
Global Warming Causes Global Spending: Follow the Money
“Some estimates put the spending on global warming causes at one billion dollars a day. Governments around the world, at the behest of the U.N., spend vast amounts of money on a problem which only exists in computer models. Climate change research has become big business; driven by political ideology and greed, instead of a quest for truth...
A survey of 3247 US research scientists who address global warming causes – all publicly funded through the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services – published in the science journal Nature, showed that 503 of them admitted to altered the design, methodology or results of their studies, due to pressure from funding sources. Those were just the scientists willing to be honest; it is safe to assume a much larger number.”
Here is what appears to be the article in question, published in 2005. Please note that it is a news item, not a research article that has passed through peer review. It just reports that certain researchers have claimed that something is the case:
Wadman, Meredith (2005). "One in three scientists confesses to having sinned." Nature 435: 718.Anything in the news item to justify the claim that this research relates to "US research scientists who address global warming causes"? Nope.
More than a third of US scientists, in a survey of thousands, have admitted to misbehaving in the past three years. The social scientists who carried out the study of research misconduct warn that because attention is focused on high-profile, serious cases, a broader threat from more minor deeds is being missed.
Their conclusions may hit a nerve, particularly among scientific societies in the United States. Throughout the 1990s, these groups fought to limit their government's definition of misconduct and the types of behaviour it is responsible for policing.
Brian Martinson of the HealthPartners Research Foundation in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and his colleagues mailed an anonymous survey to thousands of scientists funded by the National Institutes of Health. They asked the scientists whether they were guilty of misbehaviours ranging from falsifying data to inadequate record keeping.
Of 3,247 early- and mid-career researchers who responded, less than 1.5% admitted to falsification or plagiarism, the most serious types of misconduct listed. But 15.5% said they had changed the design, methodology or results of a study in response to pressure from a funding source; 12.5% admitted overlooking others' use of flawed data; and 7.6% said they had circumvented minor aspects of requirements regarding the use of human subjects (see page 737).
Overall, about a third admitted to at least one of the ten most serious offences on the list — a range of misbehaviours described by the authors as “striking in its breadth and prevalence”.
But Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, cautions against concluding that the structure of science is corroded. He points out that dropping an outlying data point is not the same as plagiarizing a paper.
“I don't mean to say that the problems identified don't merit deliberation and a response,” he says. “But there may be a tendency if you just read the headlines to say, ‘Oh my goodness, the ethical house of science is collapsing around us’.”
Martinson counters that, although individual cases may not be as serious as fraud, the survey reveals a threat to the integrity of science that is not captured by narrow definitions of misconduct. “The majority of misbehaviours reported to us are more corrosive than explosive,” he says. “That makes them no less damaging.”
He thinks the main cause of all the questionable behaviour is the increasing pressure that scientists are under as they compete to publish papers and win grants. “We need to think about the working conditions in science that can be addressed,” he says, suggesting better salaries and employment conditions for young scientists, and a more transparent peer-review process.
He is at pains to stress that he does not think governments should expand regulation of scientific behaviour. And when it was shown Martinson's study, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, based in Bethesda, Maryland, was quick to reiterate its support for the narrow definition of misconduct that was officially agreed in 2000.
“The US government adopted ‘fabrication, falsification and plagiarism’ as the defining criteria, a policy with which we concur,” says Paul Kincade, the federation's president. That means the government cannot investigate or punish any behaviours outside that definition.
In 2002, scientific societies led by the federation and the Washington-based Association of American Medical Colleges fought a government office's plan to collect data on such behaviours (see Nature 420, 739–740; 200210.1038/420739b). The societies argued such monitoring should be the responsibility of scientists themselves.
Martinson and his colleagues say their study is the first attempt to quantify such activities. They hope their results will persuade scientists to stop ignoring the wider range of misbehaviour.
In the same issue of Nature , there is also a comment article by Martinson and colleagues, but since it is behind a paywall (which I can cross because I have privileges), you will have to rely on me that it is a considerable less excited discussion of the points touched on in the news item:
Scientists behaving badly
Brian C. Martinson, Melissa S. Anderson & Raymond de Vries
Nature volume 435, pages 737–738 (09 June 2005)It begins and ends:
To protect the integrity of science, we must look beyond falsification, fabrication and plagiarism, to a wider range of questionable research practices, argue Brian C. Martinson, Melissa S. Anderson and Raymond de Vries.
....
Little attention has so far been paid to the role of the broader research environment in compromising scientific integrity. It is now time for the scientific community to consider what aspects of this environment are most salient to research integrity, which aspects are most amenable to change, and what changes are likely to be the most fruitful in ensuring integrity in science.
And again - it is nothing to do specifically with research on global warming. The published research does not say that it did, and the Nature journalists did not say that it did. That was made up by whatever fake news site that Amore read.
[EDITED to supply direct quotation from the Comment piece in Nature to replace article previously cited]