Bluntly put, peer review is an overwhelming, unpaid, unsatisfying, time-expensive task. The only step forward is to force the release of both data and implementation, at least for the highest ranked journals, this possibly opening more unpredictable cans of worms. It is the elitist academy model on one side, not working any more, against the democratisation of research, still and just a torrential flow of noise.
Cracking down on research fraud
71–80 of 227 posts
Re: Cracking down on research fraud
#72Earlier 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…
I agree that business isn't really the right model for academics but the problems imho is that what an "outstanding academic track record is" has become so ambiguous that it's practically meaningless -- and I say this as a former tenured prof at an R1 institution.
I could write a book about this stuff. The stories I could tell about what's behind those "outstanding academic track records"...
The problem, if anything, is trying to apply a business model to academics, equating research quality with federal grant dollars, taking away real intellectual freedom protections, and then ignoring all the ponzi scheming and exploitation that occurs. Everyone has their heads in the sand, knows academics (at least biomedical research) is full of BS, and just goes on pretending like it's not because no one knows of a good alternative, or doesn't have the courage or power to change things.
What's funny [sad?] to me is that your description of PMs sounds exactly like the most credentialed, accomplished researchers I know on paper.
It's interesting to me regarding some of the examples in the linked piece. Ghostwriting reviews, for example, is actually seen as a good practice in a lot of circles because it provides experience to grad students with the review process. Those guest authorships? Very grey area between that and collaborative authorships. It's not the grunt work, it's the idea, right? Or is it that ideas are a dime a dozen, and actually doing the work is important? I can't tell which it is anymore -- it seems to depend on what benefits those in power.
Someone else posted something about how 1% of research is fraud, and 80% is bad. I think the percent of fraud is probably higher, the percent bad research is lower, and the difference is much more fuzzy than you'd think initially. The really difficult thing is that tiny incremental contributions is how things actually work. No one wants to admit this though. Bad research is actively incentivized, and there's credit bubbles everywhere.
The worst problem is that this credentialing bubble is everywhere with everything, as another posted noted. The problem isn't the credentialing per se, it's how it's detached from reality, the real demands of the tasks. Having a credential doesn't mean that the person is competent for all the tasks it nominally encompasses; conversely, those tasks don't necessarily require the credential that's often demanded.
Re: Cracking down on research fraud
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That’s the fault of the person falsifying data, not the person reporting the fraud.
Yeah but it still happens, and to people you care about who didn't deserve it.
Re: Cracking down on research fraud
#74hi i am new form this app or sum but can someone tell me about it come on.-_-
Re: Cracking down on research fraud
#75[deleted]
Re: Cracking down on research fraud
#76Similar to research fraud, I want the medical field examined for anti-science fraud. I caught my Physician recommending an expensive and dangerous surgery that could be done by a dentist or surgeon. I asked if there was data, she said yes. There was no data. And the trend was using lasers rather than surgery since it's safer. I confronted her and she said- "If you ask a physician, they will recommend a physician. If…
ha
Re: Cracking down on research fraud
#77These issues of research fraud come up often, but the root of the problem is a bit more subtle.
In North America at least, biomedical research labs operate largely as fiefdoms of the individual principal investigators (PIs). The actual research work falls almost entirely on the backs of grad students and postdoctoral fellows. The grad students need to generate "good" data in order to graduate, the postdocs need the same in order to gain real employment (with only about 10% gaining faculty positions themselves after many years of postdoctoral training). The PIs need such "productivity" from their trainees in order to gain the funding that keeps the labs going. The PIs themselves face success rates in grant applications that are often 10% or lower and, particularly early in their careers, their job security depends almost entirely on their ability to secure grant funding.
These competitive pressures create enormous incentives for otherwise conscientious people, all the way along the hierarchy described above, to fudge their research data. Research fraud is thus a direct outcome of a fundamentally-broken approach to the structure of research funding.
There are exceptions to that approach, however. The not-for-profit Howard Hughes Research Institute [1], and to an extent the intramural research programs of the NIH [2], offer funding for PIs to do what they do best, without the pressure of competing for scant funds. Coincidentally, some of the best science comes out of these sites.
1: https://www.hhmi.org/scientists 2: https://irp.nih.gov/about-us/what-is-the-irp
Re: Cracking down on research fraud
#78I think there is outright fraud and subtle fraud. For instance, most mouse studies specifically as it relates to aging, drug safety, and cancer research should be thrown out. This is well covered here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pRCzZp1J0v0 That’s not the only issue, but it’s a known issue, everyone is ignoring as it relates to all studies with the most common mice
This Weinstein mouse model thing is blown completely out of proportion, and is only so prominent because his own brother Eric put it on The Portal.
The point is that everyone knows mouse models are imperfect, but they are still useful. Pointing out one of the ways they are imperfect is fine. Pretending this is a nobel prize winning earth shattering discovery that is suppressed by the establishment is just annoying. Research about how mouse models are imperfect comes out all the time, eg there was a paper about how the relatively sterile lab environment changes the murine microbiome and immune system. Why aren't these researchers on Joe Rogan's podcast?
Re: Cracking down on research fraud
#79Earlier 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…
>The credential is almost all that matters, as long as they dont mess up massively.
Maybe the west coast is different but everyone I know (including a fair number of people who went to Harvard) who's in any position of power didn't have "tool around doing whatever and don't F up" as their career summary until that point. They had success upon success. While some of them didn't necessarily choose big grand things to spend that time doing, they were all successful at it. Nobody just went with the flow.
The "not bad but not great either" people who were just lucky enough to have opportunity early on but don't have the skill to keep turning the opportunity into success (or just want to chill and raise a family) tend to seem shoehorned onto career paths that dead end somewhere in middle management.
Re: Cracking down on research fraud
#80The 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…
[deleted]