Josie Ford

CLAIMS of “fake news” within the UK Houses of Parliament are nothing new. This time, however, the charge has been laid not at the door of politicians, but of scientists. And it was scientists themselves making the claims. They came at a meeting I attended last week where the British Neuroscience Association (BNA) launched a fightback against bad science with its “Credibility in Neuroscience” campaign.

The problem isn’t just that some findings turn out to be wrong. It is, after all, the point of science to be constantly questioning, testing and refining hypotheses. The BNA campaign claims that the entire structural edifice of …