20 percent - seems as good as any other guess.
The surprise is that so many regard scientists as superior to the general population in ethics -should there be such a thing.
Rather the rule is that nearly everyone, certainly professionals, support their employer, institution, industry, or association by at one level ignoring unpleasant news, then by slanting evidence, and some of them actually make up data. The field of climate science is full of that. Having a single source of money, such as government, is a good indicator that there will be more fudging than is usual.

I would go along with 20% of scientists are wrong. But by defending their theory and trying to get it funded and put into use is not being a crook. It' may be being incorrect but that doesn't make them crooks. It is important to make this delineation. If you are speaking of presenting a theory to fellow scientists and you know it's fraudulent, chances are you'll be shot down quickly and won't have the opportunity to be a crook. If, on the other hand, you make a convincing argument to the public about a theory you know is false particularly in order to make a profit, you are a crook. A con man. In other words, Al Gore.

"Several differently framed searches in two large academic databases supported the easy claim that misconduct, fraud and hoax were unknown in science before 1950 and remain rare today. The JSTOR database contains three million full length articles from 1200 journals, almost all peer reviewed academic periodicals, with significant titles going back before 1900. Searches uncovered zero articles about misconduct in scientific research from 1900 to 1950. [The Piltdown Hoax was an exception, but was so egregious as to be considered an outlier.] From 1950 to the present, 40 articles addressed the related problems. An obvious upswing occurred after 1987. The Gale CENGAGE Learning PowerSearchTM database covering 1980-2010 yielded 56 titles. Of course, many were reports of headline news about Jan Hendrik Schön and other immediacies in (nominally) peer-reviewed news magazines such as Science, Nature and Science News.

"On the other hand, a relatively recent academic research survey reported that misconduct is shockingly common. Fifteen years ago, “A Social Control Perspective on Scientific Misconduct” by Edward J. Hackett appeared in The Journal of Higher Education (Vol. 65, No. 3, pp. 242-260). A survey covering the five years 1983-1988 of members of the Council of Graduate Schools found that 40% (118) received allegations of possible misconduct. Those institutions whose external funding exceeded $50 million “were far more likely than others (69% to 19%) to hear such allegations.” The same article cited a 1991 survey of AAAS members in which 27% of 469 respondents claimed to have “personally encountered or witnessed scientific research that they suspected was fabricated, falsified or plagiarized during the past ten years.” In that same issue of the JHE, Mary Frank Fox wrote: “During the last fifteen years, hardly a year has gone by without the surfacing of a notorious case of misconduct in science.” She then cited nine by name." -- ("PROCEDURAL MISCONDUCT BY SCIENTISTS: PREVENTION AND REMEDIES" By Michael E. Marotta; PHYS 406: Ethical Issues in Physics; Dr. Patrick L. Koehn; Eastern Michigan University; Winter 2010.)

You are right. Academic misconduct is not rare.

Yep, think government funding prostitutes.

Hi, Mike:) What is the evidence for this claim?

I can well believe the stories of fraud in science and medicine--especially in the science *of* medicine.

Which is worse? Crooks--or would-be tyrants like Floyd Ferris?

Here we see the utility of the John Galt Method of scientific research and application. In Galt's Gulch, and at the Twentieth Century Motor Company before Gerald Starnes, Senior died, a scientist worked for a businessman. He devoted his work to inventing something that businessman could build and sell on a large scale. Because to John Galt, there is never any such thing as "non-practical knowledge," nor any kind of "disinterested" action.

In John Galt's world, private investment and R&D budgets take the place of government grants. The focus stays on invention rather than some cloudy category some wag calls "abstract knowledge."

Sure, there's a place for the development of abstract knowledge. And the way the scientist finances that, is to develop insights that might be applicable to far more than just one business, and then offer those insights as lectures or white papers--for a price. That is what John Galt does in the Gulch: the John Galt Lecture Series on Theoretical Physics.

Crooked science wouldn't last a year, or even that long, in Galt's Gulch.

And the university system would no longer have the authority to judge what is sound, and what is unsound, science.

Noting that Hogan is a science fiction writer and Baen is a science fiction publisher, the fact remains that the argument is valid. Here in the Gulch, when I questioned Darwinism, the mainstreamers called me "ignorant about science" and admitted to refusing to read anything on the subject.

"Fertile hybrids demonstrate the limitations of strict Darwinian taxonomy." -- http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2012/...

"The mechanism of evolution has not been discovered. No consistent theory exists. Random mutations adapting to changing environments was the first suggestion. When subatomic radiation was discovered, that became a proposal. Now, epigenetics may indicate another, more powerful, model. Darwinian evolution does not explain the lack of intermediate forms. Scientists have bombarded fruit flies and mice with every radiation known and produced no new species." -- http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2014/...

" It is challenging to consider that we have about the same number of genes as mice and fish; but we have far fewer genes than plants. " -- http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2013/...

My highest recommendation is for James Hogan's, "Kicking the Sacred Cow."
From the publisher:
As bestselling author James P. Hogan demonstrates in this fact-filled and thoroughly documented study, science has its own roster of hidebound pronouncements which are Not to be Questioned. Among the dogma-laden subjects he examines are Darwinism, global warming, the big bang, problems with relativity, radon and radiation, holes in the ozone layer, the cause of AIDS, and the controversy over Velikovsky. Hogan explains the basics of each controversy with his clear, informative style, in a book that will be fascinating for anyone with an interest in the frontiers of modern science.
Samples from the book:
http://www.baen.com/chapters/W200407/074...

_Embargoed Science_ by Vincent Kierman (University of Illinois Press, 2006). Major academic journals such as Nature, Science, the New England Journal of Medicine, and a hundred or so others, have a policy of announcing important publications by sending press releases to major mainstream media on the condition that the reporters not publish until the journal does. The result is loud bursts of astounding science stories breaking on our awareness ... which then fade … until the next time. The true costs include the loss of reflection and review, as contradictory findings roll out over the years without in-depth comparison and contrast. Another cost is the loss of independence both of the news media which will not pursue a story beyond the press release; and also among the scientists who are constrained to divulge only what they publish in peer-reviewed journals.
"Four Books About Bad Science": http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2013/...

100% of the scientists? among the IIASA Society, are crooks. Most of them do not even have formal training in Climate Science. The Chief Scientist is an Anthropologist with some training from Al Gore.
I had copied their Statutes in August 2009. It is no longer available on their website.
The IIASA is a closed group. Real scientists like Dr Patrick Michaels are not members of the group.
"Regular members are scientists who have spent at least one month working at IIASA---"
"Extra-ordinary members are non-scientific people who express a special interest in IIASA, and wish to support its' work."
Honorary members are those persons who, express a special interest in IIASA, and wish to support its work."
"All members have the right to vote in the General Assembly."
This group of so-called scientists is more political science than real science.
As a Mechanical Engineer, with extensive knowledge of thermodynamic and heat transfer I dispute their findings.
I have personally researched and evaluated the data and have found it to be inadequate to substantiate their claims.
The historical temperature data for the oceans comes mostly from Weather Buoys. The National Data Buoy Center publishes an interactive map showing the location of all of the buoys. www.ndbc.noaa.gov As you can see from this map,almost all of the buoys are between 20 degrees South latitude and 60 degrees North latitude. Very little data is available for the South Pacific, South Atlantic, and both of the Poles.
The IPCC group of so-called scientists have taken a very meager, hopelessly inadequate historical data set and great manipulation present us with a result that the world's temperature has increased by 1/2 of a degree over 50 years and postulate that CO2 is destroying our planet. They offer no margin for error. This is preposterous and I think very unscientific. The IPCC group of scientists who are climatologists are frauds. Most of the nonscientific members have a political agenda.
The objective of the theory of man-caused global warming is governmental control of the energy sector of our economy. This will be the final nail in the coffin of Freedom.
I have designed a Micro-Grid solar energy system that will economically provide for all of the energy and water needs of an off-grid independent self sustaining community. Anyone interested in being part of "Independence", Texas?

_When Science Goes Wrong: Twelve Tales from the Dark Side of Discovery_ by Simon LeVay (Plume Penguin, 2008). LeVay lays out his facts in careful narratives. In many cases, he interviewed the key actors, albeit some years after the events. He marshals the pros and cons before stating his final conclusion. The cases come from a several sciences, including volcanology, criminology, meteorology, microbiology, genetics, and nuclear physics.

In 1993, geologists attended a conference in Columbia where the Galeras volcano had become active. They visited the calderon, climbing down into the crater. When it erupted, most of them were killed. Among the survivors was the only scientist actually wearing the protective gear mandated by the National Science Foundation. Some of the victims were in jeans and sneakers.

The case from criminal forensics about Josiah Sutton of Houston, Texas, took DNA evidence past the confines of even the Innocence Project. In this case, the so-called gold standard of physical criminalistics proved to be fool’s gold. The police lab had committed a series of mistakes, some perhaps accidental and careless, others apparently purposefully fraudulent. The victim wrongly identified two men as her attackers. When the DNA samples matched neither man, the prosecutor insisted on their guilt, and posited the existence of a third unidentified attacker. This is a common ploy with prosecutors who refuse to admit their mistake.
"Four Books About Bad Science":http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2013/01/four-books-about-bad-science.html