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The Problem of Biased Data and Potential Solutions for Environmental Assessments
Citation:
Suter, G. AND S. Cormier. The Problem of Biased Data and Potential Solutions for Environmental Assessments. Taylor & Francis (ed.), Submitted to: HUMAN AND ECOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT. CRC Press LLC, Boca Raton, FL, 0(0):1-17, (2015).
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose is to alert assessors to the threat of biased data and to suggest methods for minimizing its influence on the quality of environmental assessments.
Description:
The utility and credibility of environmental assessments depend on the use of unbiased data. However, it is increasingly clear that, despite peer review, much of the scientific literature is biased. Sources of bias include fraud, publication bias, research designs, funding bias, investigator bias, suppression, statistical methods, and confounding. Assessors can take precautions against biased data including performing their own reviews of the sources of data, checking for retractions and corrections, requiring full disclosure of methods, acquiring original data and reanalyzing it, avoiding secondary sources, avoiding unreplicated studies or studies that are not concordant with related studies, and checking for funding of investigator biases. Journals, government agencies and other institutions can take many more types of actions to reduce bias in scientific data. Some of these are already being implemented but others will require a greater willingness to enforce scientific ethical standards.
