Groupthink in Science

David M. Allen, M.D. is a board-certified psychiatrist and professor emeritus of psychiatry at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. He received his medical degree from the University of California San Francisco in 1974 and completed his psychiatric residency at the University of Southern California Medical Center. He is the former director of psychiatric residency training at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, a position he held for 16 years. Additionally, he has done research into personality disorders and is a psychotherapy theorist. He is the author of three books for psychotherapists: A Family Systems Approach to Individual Psychotherapy, Deciphering Motivation in Psychotherapy, and Psychotherapy with Borderline Patients: an Integrated Approach. Dr. Allen developed a model of psychotherapy called unified therapy, a treatment designed to alter dysfunctional relationship patterns between adults and their primary attachment figures which he believes trigger and reinforce repetitive self-defeating and self-destructive behavior patterns.

Introduction: Definitions, Manifestations, and Theoretical Issues.- Groupthink in science: an introduction.- Thomas Kuhn and the huge hurdle of changing normal practice.- Altruism, professionalism, and the filtering of information.- Evolution of reason giving.- The mental and interpersonal mechanisms of groupthink maintenance.- Five case examples of how important ideas were initially attacked or ridiculed by the professions.- Mobbing and shunning behavior in science.- Competitiveness and careerism in academia and academic politics (scientific fraud).- Manipulation and Use of Social Influence in Science: The Financing, Design, and Dissemination of Research Studies and Results.- The politics of the acceptance of articles to preferred journals.- Political correctness in science.-  Post-modernism and science.- The difficulty of publishing findings that contravene accepted wisdom.- Issues in obtaining research funding.- Manipulation of research design and methodology to serve pre-existing biases.- Peer review problems.- Lawsuits to prevent the advance of science.- When conjecture becomes fact.- Problems arising from the well-meaning intentions of IRBs and HIPPA.- Problems arising from the lack of political diversity in some academic disciplines and university departments.- Examples and Personal Experiences.- Business interests aligned with academia: the case of Big Pharma.- Public health and the conflict between science and markets: illustrations from tobacco and lead.- Science confronts human sexuality.- Why what you see isn't what you get: understanding the promulgation of social psychological myths.- Groupthink blocking progress in neonatology: the case of Martin Couney.-  Vaccination/anti-vaccination.- Bias, disguise, and co-opted science: altruism as "scientized" ideology across the English professions.- Hurting by helping to support women's participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.- Perception is not reality: a critique of current models of sex addiction.-  The tyranny of the normal curve: how the "bell curve" distorts educational research and practice.- Bad drugs, bad science.- A priori false assumptions that a characteristic is positive or negative in psychological research. - Chapter Authors Discuss Possible Overarching Solutions to the Problems Addressed in this Book.