The Rural Voice, 1988-01, Page 28AGRICULTURAL
RESEARCH PART THREE:
BAD RESEARCH
The Good, the Bad, the Ugly, and the Incomprehensible
T
here is a piece of informa-
tion included in the Ontario
Ministry of Agriculture and
Food's "factsheet" on army worms
that is incorrect. The error is not
earth -shattering, nor does it have any
effect on other information in the
sheet, but it is an interesting example
of how the scientific system can fail.
In the section describing the
insect's life cycle, the insects that
appear in the second summer are said
to have over -wintered as a mature
caterpillars or pupae, thereby starting
the new generation in the spring. In
fact, at no stage in its life is this insect
able to withstand the degree of cold
encountered in a Canadian winter, and
the entire generation dies off. A
spring migration of adults from the
southern U.S. and northern Mexico
brings the army worms back into
Canada for the next season.
To understand how there can be
two versions of one insect's life cycle,
we need to go back 100 years or so to
the early days of entomology in
Canada. When the life cycle of the
army worm in Canada was first
worked out, scientists observed larvae
in the fall and adult moths in the
spring. There seemed to be only one
explanation: the insect over -wintered
as a larva or pupa. The scientists did
not imagine that moths migrated, so
that explanation was never considered.
Later, people wanting life-cyle
information on the army worm used
the reports published by these scien-
tists. The facts in the reports were
never verified experimentally — the
explanation was too sensible to be
questioned — and became the stan-
dard version of events. Once there is a
standard version, it gains a life of its
own, and it is very difficult to get out
by Ian Wylie-Toal
of people's minds. So as more
information was gathered about the
insect, inconsistencies were explained
away within the conventional model.
Eventually, however, enough
evidence was accumulated for a
second theory, that the insects blew in
every year from the U.S. The two
theories were informally debated for
decades. Eventually, someone got
around to testing whether or not army
worms could survive the winter, and
discovered they could not. Simultane-
ously, evidence for a migratory theory
developed for the black cutworm
seemed to fit the army worm, and
there was a rapid reassessment. The
orthodox explanation was dropped by
the scientists, but is holding on in non-
scientific publications.
There are several noteworthy
aspects of this little story. The first is
how much science depends on previ-
ous research. If every aspect of a
problem had to be researched anew by
every researcher, very little new work
would get done. Instead, scientists
take published "facts" and proceed
from that point. This means that
faulty information could be used as a
source for new research, generating a
whole series of faulty facts.
Science has done as much as it can
to minimize this risk. All research
papers are scrutinized by other scien-
tists before they're published, and are
rejected if the methods used, the anal-
ysis of the data, or the conclusions
drawn are not acceptable. But of
course this system is not perfect.
Older papers published before vigor-
ous review became common still
circulate. And incorrect analyses can
slip by even the most rigorous review.
Mistakes can also arise out of the
review process itself, when reviewers
reject true but unorthodox findings
because the findings don't conform to
conventional belief. A scientist who
does not believe moths migrate will be
very critical of a paper that suggests
they do, and will find ways to pick the
paper apart and scuttle it. There are
many instances of radical but basically
true explanations being stalled for
years. To overcome human reluctance
in the face of change, new theories
usually must have overwhelming and
irrefutable evidence to support them.
The second interesting thing about
the story is why it took so long to test
whether or not the moths could sur-
vive cold weather. After all, research
has been conducted on army worms
for more than a century, and the over-
wintering habits have been debated for
at least 25 years. Why, then, was the
testing of controversial aspects of the
life cycle done only in the late 1970s?
The answer lies in the economic
structure of scientific work. In Can-
ada, as in much of the world, a scien-
tist's status is determined by the num-
ber of papers published, the quality of
the journals accepting them, and the
originality of the research.
The issue of originality, though
minor compared to the other two, does
have an effect on research. A scientist
who merely repeats old work is looked
26 THE RURAL VOICE