How Different Kind of Bias Impact Research
Bias still exists in the whole world although many people claim that bias brings various negative effects on the whole world and bias should be eliminated. Biases brought many negative effects on scientific research, resulting in slowing down the development of science, the inaccuracy of scientific research and reduced authenticity.
Bias slowed down the progress of science. Gender bias is part of them. There is a huge unbalance of genders for the scientists in some area of research such as geophysics and biomedicine. The lack of female is a type of the lack of diversity, which caused different ideas to be less. The research indicates that women have different views for a problem due to their different life experience compared with males, so the lack of female in the scientific research results in some wonderful ideas cannot be came up (Vanessa, A., 2018). The absence of some ideas is not the only way that the progress of science was affected, the gender bias also caused a loss of talents. The research carried in the Yale University indicates that women are 20% less likely to be hired for a position in scientific researches even they have the similar applications as male (Moss-Racusin et al, 2012). This means there are many extraordinary female scientists cannot get the chance to participate in science and be replaced by some males who are not as good as them, which is not good for scientific research since fewer talents can contribute to the research.
Bias reduces the accuracy of the scientific research. Selection bias in one of the systematic errors and it often caused the scientists cannot select the sample that can represent all of the objectives. For example, when researchers studied the average hsCRP (high sensitive C-reactive protein) concentration for people in Croatia, they used the sample from volunteer blood donors rather than recruiting individuals from a general population. The result of the hsCRP concentration was lower than the real level because volunteer blood donors were usually those who thought themselves were healthy so they were unlikely to have those diseases which might cause changes in hsCRP concentration (Šimundić, 2013). The inaccuracy of the scientific research may lead scientists cannot get the correct solution.
Bias causes decreased authenticity of scientific research, which makes the scientific research cannot provide objective and correct results. Citation bias is also one of the systematic errors and it refers to that the researchers or the sponsors of the experiment are unwilling to publish some unfavorable results. For instance, generally, industry funded trials are 4 times more likely to have a flattering result. This is because those negative data were hidden and those positive data that could support the industry's opinion was highlighted and used repeatedly to convince customers that the drugs are effective (Ben, 2012). This kind of bias leads the audiences cannot get objective information about the research and mislead others to make wrong decisions.
In conclusion, bias has many negative effects on the scientific research, which slows down the development of science, affected the accuracy of the scientific research and affected the authenticity of the scientific research.
