Taking our worst failings seriously

Working through the McClellan controversies and the way they are treated, it eventually occurred to me that there is a much larger Civil War history problem of which McClellanology is just a small indicator.

Further, I have come to understand that this problem goes beyond Civil War history and permeates the culture.

A couple of weeks ago I commented to my brother on how wretched science has become in the same way as Civil War history and how very carefully we have to treat any claims by scientists, doctors, pharma, and so on.

Now, here comes The Lancet.

In their quest for telling a compelling story, scientists too often sculpt data to fit their preferred theory of the world. Or they retrofit hypotheses to fit their data. [...] The good news is that science is beginning to take some of its worst failings very seriously. The bad news is that nobody is ready to take the first step to clean up the system.

The leading Civil War historians will deny there is any problem in our little world. We have yet to confront "worst failings."