Science has rightly developed immense trust from the populace. Science has given us everything from air travel to cures for diseases. Fraudulent science research takes advantage of the trust we have in science, and abuses it to try to push certain propaganda.
People are beginning to realize that vast swaths of modern scientific research in social areas especially are fraudulent. This is commonly referred to as the “replication crisis” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis
What are the most common methods of creating fake science?
Researchers can outright fake the evidence collection process. This results in a data set that supports their conclusion.
Researchers can cherry pick evidence, by discarding data that does not support their favored result.
Science journals can refuse to publish science that does not conform to their political narratives, such as the famed journal Nature.
Science journals can simply not publish boring, but true, research. This results in many studies showing something obvious not being published, then a fluke study showing the opposite being published.
Many scientists also just make honest mistakes or statistical mistakes in their research papers, so if a study has not been replicated successfully several times, it may be honestly incorrect.
You may have seen fraudulent research yourself. I have some educated guesses about where some of this research lies:
Fraudulent research has skewed towards supporting the views of Democrats as Republicans have been purged from academia:
https://www.thecollegefix.com/zero-republican-professors/
Research that says punishing crimes does not work is probably fraudulent. I myself have specifically not committed some crimes because I didn’t want to risk punishment, and many people I have talked to have said the same thing. You can also see this in the growing crime rates in cities that stopped punishing crimes.
Research that says judicious spanking of children is harmful to them is probably fraudulent. From my own children, and my observations of many other parents children, children who are spanked in a reasonable way behave much better than those that are not. Some of this fraud comes from researchers including outright abuse under the category of spanking, some of it may come from other sources.
Any area with a lot of political controversy is a magnet for motivated researchers to fake data. Climate change has been a big one lately with several frauds reported https://science.house.gov/2017/2/former-noaa-scientist-confirms-colleagues-manipulated-climate-records and https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/4/a/4a86454f-4287-4d1c-ae5f-85a01b8c78b8/7E90482A76C15A7B2D2473E6EDC911C0.refuting-12-claims-made-by-climate-alarmists.pdf. Another important bit of data that often gets ignored is that when you look at Earth’s temperatures across a longer period of time, we are actually coming off an all time low:
Here is a pretty good article about how political narratives have shaped some recent fraudulent research- https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/politicized-science-inevitably-tends
Even research into honesty has been dishonestly faked https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/how-do-you-know/202306/dishonest-research-on-honesty
A lot of research into a variety of medicines either has been faked or has not been really fully done. Some research into certain antidepressants actually showed they increased the suicide rate over the long run for example. Many of these medications are at best experimental and we don’t really know the long term effects. My recommendation is to avoid medication as much as possible unless something is absolutely necessary, and then stick to the best proven long run drugs.
More areas where I am skeptical of research from both political sides include papers falsely claiming vaccines don’t work or are harmful (just look at global disease rates plummet over the last century), that elections are perfectly secure (mail in voting, voting without ID, and electronic voting are all easily susceptible to fraud), that rent controls work (I own property I refuse to rent specifically because of rent control and eviction laws as do many others, worsening the housing crisis), and many more.
Ultimately, we need to bring very healthy skepticism to new research, especially research that has not been extensively replicated over time. We should all be contrarians and look for flaws in science research even that supports our existing ideas. Studies have been published showing that between 30-50% of new research does not replicate and is probably fraudulent or just false.