this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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While in general, I'd agree, look at the damage a single false paper on vaccination had. There were a lot of follow up studies showing that the paper is wrong, and yet we still have an antivax movement going on.
Clearly, scientists need to be able to publish without fear of reprisal. But to have no recourse when damage is done by a person acting in bad faith is also a problem.
Though I'd argue we have the same issue with the media, where they need to be able to operate freely, but are able to cause a lot of harm.
Perhaps there could be some set of rules which absolve scientists of legal liability. And hopefully those rules are what would ordinarily be followed anyway, and this be no burden to your average researcher.
There needs to be a distinction between "I did my science badly" and "I knowingly published false information". Wakefield's paper linking vaccines and autism faked its data to imply a causal relationship between the two for the purposes of financial gain. You should absolutely be able to sue that guy if his paper damaged you in any way. Fuck 'em.
On the other hand, if you publish a study in earnest, but that study is full of mistakes and comes to an incorrect conclusion, you should not be able to be sued. If the study is bad, it would be easy enough to publish a response pointing out flaws with the original study. This is especially true since so many papers are published with the caveat of "this requires future study to confirm".
In order to sue, you should be required to show some sort of malicious action behind the bad science, such as faked data.