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Cracking down on research fraud

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Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#51

Post by logicslave »

opportune wrote: post #27
logicslave wrote: post #6

The root of the problem is that we allow people with high esteemed credentials to run society. They jumped through a hoop. "You got straight As at 14 - 18 years old and got into an ivy league school as a result? Here run this venture fund." "You got a PhD in Economics with a good publication by P-hacking your secret data? Here take a run at the FED with power over the US Economy. Your Phd shows that you are the man f…

All three of those examples are missing a step of like 5-20 years in the middle. Nobody is running a venture fund as a 22 year old ivy grad (barring someone who's taking over for their family member, but in that case it has nothing to do with being an ivy grad), nobody is running the FED right out of a PhD, nobody is a director at a big corporation right out of a PhD. Presumably once those people are in such high-pow…

Part of the point is that the gap in the middle often doesn't matter. I've hung around the Stanford crowd and as I enter my thirties I am awestruck by the opportunities they have regardless of what they have done since graduation. The credential is almost all that matters, as long as they dont mess up massively.

A common path is:

Graduate Stanford => Work at Mckinsey => Get hired into VC.

Graduate Stanford => Raise 15 Million dollar series A with your buddy => Doesn't matter what happens you will end up rich.

It's not a cynical opinion, I have seen it myself and I am doing very well for myself. I worked under an Economics PhD who was the number one in his class (top 5 phd program) and graduated top of his undergrad at UPenn. His incompetence relative to his credentials shattered my respect for the way that we allocate positions of power

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#52

Post by Kednicma »

viburnum wrote: post #33
ramraj07 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was not faced with such a shitty situation, and I probably would have done the same as well, but the right thing would have been to report it.

If you report it then the grant money is gone and everybody in the lab loses their job and all the PhD students are derailed.

Ideally, yes! That would be the best outcome.

I don't know why people always see dens of corruption and think that they ought to be protected, because of the jobs of the folks doing the corrupt work. Jobs are not the point of life, and we should accept that some jobs are bad jobs which should be eliminated.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#53

Post by ktaylora »

rumanator wrote: post #31
ktaylora wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industry kinda already has. Products launched. Teams managed. A candidate's publication record is a conversation starter during interviews, but I feel like years of experience at a company working on launching a successful project is a much more valuable currency.

> Industry kinda already has. Products launched. This suggestion is so detached from both the problem and the very nature of academia that it's straight-out laughable. I mean, what do product launches have to do building knowledge on the state of the art, identifying a novel idea, doing the iterative work to refine the idea, and finally document it to the public? Product launches at best require you to manage people…

Spoken like someone toiling away on their third postdoc position.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#54

Post by apsec112 »

logicslave wrote: post #51
opportune wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All three of those examples are missing a step of like 5-20 years in the middle. Nobody is running a venture fund as a 22 year old ivy grad (barring someone who's taking over for their family member, but in that case it has nothing to do with being an ivy grad), nobody is running the FED right out of a PhD, nobody is a director at a big corporation right out of a PhD. Presumably once those people are in such high-pow…

Part of the point is that the gap in the middle often doesn't matter. I've hung around the Stanford crowd and as I enter my thirties I am awestruck by the opportunities they have regardless of what they have done since graduation. The credential is almost all that matters, as long as they dont mess up massively. A common path is: Graduate Stanford => Work at Mckinsey => Get hired into VC. Graduate Stanford => Raise 1…

I think most people who raise series A and then fail don't get rich. I've certainly known people who raised more than that, couldn't make the business work and then wound up personally bankrupt.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#55

Post by logicslave »

CannoloBlahnik wrote: post #49
logicslave wrote: post #6

The root of the problem is that we allow people with high esteemed credentials to run society. They jumped through a hoop. "You got straight As at 14 - 18 years old and got into an ivy league school as a result? Here run this venture fund." "You got a PhD in Economics with a good publication by P-hacking your secret data? Here take a run at the FED with power over the US Economy. Your Phd shows that you are the man f…

This is absolutely not the reality of a PhD. On what planet do people with those backgrounds get those positions out of their PhDs? What's the basis for this entire comment?

The basis is spending 15 years in NYC high finance and having multiple close groups of friends who graduated from Stanford, work in tech, raised VC, etc

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#56

Post by [deleted] »

tlb wrote: post #35

Estimating from my own reading, 1% of research is fraud and 80% is worthless for other reasons. Numbers vary between fields. If that's the case, what's the argument for why we should spend time doing something about the 1%? Solving 100% of the 1% wouldn't change the overall situation much. Possible arguments include: - Fixing the 80% is hard, but fixing the 1% is satisfying (to the aggressively conventional-minded, a…

[deleted]

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#57

Post by ameliaquining »

tlb wrote: post #35

Estimating from my own reading, 1% of research is fraud and 80% is worthless for other reasons. Numbers vary between fields. If that's the case, what's the argument for why we should spend time doing something about the 1%? Solving 100% of the 1% wouldn't change the overall situation much. Possible arguments include: - Fixing the 80% is hard, but fixing the 1% is satisfying (to the aggressively conventional-minded, a…

The author is arguing for an expansive definition of fraud that includes things like p-hacking. Probably a lot more than 1% of research is p-hacked; that general category of problem might even account for a majority of your 80%.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#58

Post by opportune »

logicslave wrote: post #51
opportune wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All three of those examples are missing a step of like 5-20 years in the middle. Nobody is running a venture fund as a 22 year old ivy grad (barring someone who's taking over for their family member, but in that case it has nothing to do with being an ivy grad), nobody is running the FED right out of a PhD, nobody is a director at a big corporation right out of a PhD. Presumably once those people are in such high-pow…

Part of the point is that the gap in the middle often doesn't matter. I've hung around the Stanford crowd and as I enter my thirties I am awestruck by the opportunities they have regardless of what they have done since graduation. The credential is almost all that matters, as long as they dont mess up massively. A common path is: Graduate Stanford => Work at Mckinsey => Get hired into VC. Graduate Stanford => Raise 1…

I'm familiar with this path as well, and have myself also probably benefited significantly from a slightly lower tier version of it.

I think the issue is more that we have a lot of positive feedback cycles/signal boosting that occur based on early career opportunities. I don't think research fraud is necessarily part of it though, because once you're accepted into a PhD program at a top program you're probably going to graduate anyway; same with undergrad. But the signal boosting is very real, and I find it especially problematic given how much luck there is in things like getting into a certain college.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#59

Post by logicslave »

apsec112 wrote: post #54
logicslave wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the point is that the gap in the middle often doesn't matter. I've hung around the Stanford crowd and as I enter my thirties I am awestruck by the opportunities they have regardless of what they have done since graduation. The credential is almost all that matters, as long as they dont mess up massively. A common path is: Graduate Stanford => Work at Mckinsey => Get hired into VC. Graduate Stanford => Raise 1…

I think most people who raise series A and then fail don't get rich. I've certainly known people who raised more than that, couldn't make the business work and then wound up personally bankrupt.

Possibly, but when you raise it at 24 or 25 years old it looks extremely impressive and sets you up for upper management at other companies.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#60

Post by opportune »

bsder wrote: post #42
opportune wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All three of those examples are missing a step of like 5-20 years in the middle. Nobody is running a venture fund as a 22 year old ivy grad (barring someone who's taking over for their family member, but in that case it has nothing to do with being an ivy grad), nobody is running the FED right out of a PhD, nobody is a director at a big corporation right out of a PhD. Presumably once those people are in such high-pow…

> it's certainly possible they've lied and cheated their entire career but it's definitely less likely they'll make it that far that way. The number of people who make "correct, active decisions" is vanishingly small. It's less they've cheated than "Did you really make correct decisions or did your coin just come up heads 8 times in a row?" Other people may have been as smart or smarter, but if the coin flip went tai…

See sibling comment. I agree there is a lot of survivorship bias but the reality is more like the first coin flip has a 25% chance and all the subsequent ones are closer to like 80-90% because there are a lot of positive feedback mechanisms you can take advantage of to maximize early career advantages
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