[cgiles]

The PDF takes the point of view that it is caused by various forms of cognitive bias. I generally agree with that.

The reason that I don't think it's totally ethically neutral is that it is a basic responsibility of scientists to be on guard against cognitive biases to the best of their ability. It's possibly even the main feature that separates science from non-science.

Cognitive biases can become ethically bad particularly when they intersect with a person's personal interests. For example, if an investigator thinks "I won't be able to publish this result as easily if it diverges too much from the historical values, so I'll just run this experiment again", this is a problem. Even if it occurs totally subconsciously, it is a breach of duty because the scientist should take great care to avoid this kind of thing.

It could be viewed as Bayesian updating, yes. But my main point is that it greatly complicates the process of literature review and knowing how much certainty to assign to a scientific finding. If there are 10 papers saying X, but each one is highly dependent on the last, there is much less evidence for X than there appears to be, particularly to an outsider looking in.