Scientific reputations and clashing worldviews
In contrast, once someone has been caught plagiarizing or falsifying data, their scientific reputation is permanently shot. If we can’t trust some of your data, we can’t trust any of it.(…)
Businesses by and large do not work to the same tolerances of honesty. Thanks to marketing, almost every business, certainly every big business, is engaged in “shaping public opinion” about its products (or, if you like, “lying”). Whatever the reality at your business, the general perception is that in the business world a certain amount of bullshitting is acceptable, expected, and maybe even admirable–as long as it doesn’t hurt the bottom line.
this is the old bulls**t us-versus-them mentality. Scientists compete to each other, and that’s where the intolerance comes from (in competing markets as well); When overall this competition is balanced by other factors like bonding, hyerarchy or sociality (or a perceived threat to all ‘players’, like criticisms to the whole fields), scientists will tolerate and rationalize their faults much like companies. It all depends on the intragroup X intergroup relations, nothing intrinsic to being a scientist or a business. (which BTW explains this very posture: attacking a different field is part of this ingroup loyalty X FUD towards foreigners).
