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Comment by beepbopboopp | Hacker News Reader

This feels a lot like the "blue-zone problem" in that it turned out blue zones were only prevalent in areas where they kept birth records poorly.

I dont know much, but are less wealthy countries more statistically likely to create unreliable research or is that not a vector that seems to affect deep science?

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China and India are countries with highly trained good scientists, who work in a bad system. They have to make results constantly to keep officials happy. So there is a lot of research fraud. I don't know about Iran but it's probably similar. A lot depends on the field and institution but it's possible. (The West is really bad for research fraud too, but not as bad.)

This meta analysis tries to look for high "risk of bias" based on methodology. But it doesn't look like they consider the possibility of fraud, only bad methodology and statistics.

> They have to make results constantly to keep officials happy. So there is a lot of research fraud.

What's surprising is that if there was fraud one would expect the results to go in the other direction since fluoridation is the official policy.

there may also be political pressure, but mainly there is just a strong demand for more papers, which means getting results that are publishable. "fluoridation has no effect on IQ" would be less publishable. same as in the west, but the western bureaucrats are more realistic and more focused on quality so the pressure is not as strong.

> have to make results constantly to keep officials happy

Ironically, there is probably some public pressure in the West to publish findings that make fluoride look bad. Why solve actual problems when you can defeat imaginary ones?

Thats the funny thing, Its hard to tell which side has more motivation for fraud.

I doubt it’s that coördinated. More likely: researchers respond to funders who really want to see a particular outcome. Nobody goes in aiming to be corrupt. But as a system it winds up being.

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