Cracking down on research fraud • Hacker News Board

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#111

Post by gwerbret » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 1:18 AM UTC

Gatsky wrote: post #109

caterama wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give more details on other causes of research fraud you've seen?

One was a post-doctoral scientist, called X. The lab I was in was asked to take X on by the institute because they had a falling out with another lab, the details of which were not disclosed. A year later, after very poor productivity and various petty issues with other people in the lab, someone checked X's data collection where the original data was available on the instrtument, and found that it was all made up. S…

I agree completely that some people fit that bill; I'd argue however that even for them, the skewed incentives of research success certainly help support that particular approach to fraud. My premise was that most of the people committing research fraud are probably not sociopaths.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#112

Post by ZephyrBlu » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 1:22 AM UTC

jpeloquin wrote: post #105

lettergram wrote: post #40

I 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

The link provided is a three hour video and the speakers are pretty vague about what exactly they're talking about. By 2:20 one of the them is claiming that "we're staring at many scenarios that end in some kind of civil war", which seems extreme if the video really is about mouse studies. Is there really any useful scientific content in there? If so, a timestamp would be appreciated. Moving on to other sources, are…

They go over multiple topics. Check the top comment for timestamps.

If you want to hear the full story I suggest listening to this podcast episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLb5hZLw44s.

It's long, but I found it very interesting.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#113

Post by woofie11 » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 1:26 AM UTC

aspaceman wrote: post #13

woofie11 wrote: post #4

Basic set of checks-and-balances: * Preregistration and adoption of open science practices * Public access to research results, methods, and data, with some exceptions (such as PII) * Federally-funded universities can't use NDAs or non-disparage agreements * Federally-funded universities must respond to records requests under terms similar to FOIA (note that FOIA has requestor pay costs) * Federally-funded universiti…

> Federally-funded universities can't use NDAs or non-disparage agreements Many companies are only willing to enter into research agreements with a lab providing that lab is willing to sign an NDA. This would prevent companies like Google, NVIDIA, Apple, and Facebook from working with research labs. This is especially short-sighted since a student who is working at a federally funded university will have to publish t…

> Many companies are only willing to enter into research agreements with a lab providing that lab is willing to sign an NDA. This would prevent companies like Google, NVIDIA, Apple, and Facebook from working with research labs. This is especially short-sighted since a student who is working at a federally funded university will have to publish their work.

There are different types of NDAs. I'm more concerned about the ones which are used to silence whistleblowers than the types used to protect pre-release product information, PII, or partner trade secrets. That's not a difficult split to make. Tools include: (1) Time bounds on NDAs. (2) Domain bounds on NDAs. (3) Publishing the agreements themselves.

This goes for a broader set of abuses too -- not just research fraud, but also sexual abuse, gross negligence, corruption, etc. A lot of this stuff goes on at elite schools, and lots of people are bullied or bribed into signing their rights to talk about this stuff away.

> This is already true. I have known many faculty whose emails were FOIA-able and as a result, they preferred in-person communication for sensitive topics.

This is not true in general, but it is on some specific government projects. Most normal grants (NSF, etc.), it's definitely not true on.

As a footnote, odds are if faculty weren't willing to conduct business by email, something improper was going on. That thought process is common in a corporate setting, but not in an academic setting.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#114

Post by dasudasu » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 1:26 AM UTC

asciimov wrote: post #106

dasudasu wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The topic of funding is a recurrent one in these types of discussions. There are always more people wanting to do science than what is available in funding. There needs to be a process to allocate resources that takes into account competency for the job. Just granting it at random or equally is probably very very far from optimal if it means that an exceptional PI cannot even do the things to push his/her research to…

> There are always more people wanting to do science than what is available in funding. So why not just fund them? Any process you could create or that currently exists just ends up being gamed by people who understand how to get funding.

There are no ways around that. You cannot feasibly make funding infinite nor do anything about the lack of political will for increasing research funding. Even if funding was to increase dramatically, you'd get people coming up with even more expensive research projects (new particle accelerator anyone?) and there would still be winners and losers of that funding game.

There's also the fact that a PI minting dozens of PhD over their careers, especially in fields with limited industry opportunities, inherently produces a pyramidal scheme that is bound to push people away from science.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#115

Post by canjobear » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

gwerbret wrote: post #77

These 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 s…

Another variant of the incentive problem is more insidious. Many academics are driven by ego, and specifically a desire to be influential. One way to be influential is to have great, original, and correct ideas. This can be a good incentive, but coupled with our human ability to deceive ourselves, it can become pathological. I’ve seen researchers get convinced that their ideas are so beautiful and right-feeling that they just can’t be wrong, and they will torture the data and run experiment after experiment it appears to work. Sometimes this crosses into outright fraud without the researcher even realizing it——after all, the theory is right, so if the data don’t match it they must be wrong!

This problem seems much harder to fix than research funding, because the question is how to allocate prestige and influence, not just money.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#116

Post by woofie11 » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 1:30 AM UTC

logicslave wrote: post #96

shuckles wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have 15 years of finance experience as you “enter your thirties”?

You got me, poor wording. My father worked at a very high level in influential investment funds, I grew up around the industry and understand how it works. I will delete this later because its not something I want to advertise

Isn't there a time limit on deleting / editing comments?

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#117

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 1:42 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#118

Post by jgeada » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 1:43 AM UTC

dasudasu wrote: post #114

asciimov wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are always more people wanting to do science than what is available in funding. So why not just fund them? Any process you could create or that currently exists just ends up being gamed by people who understand how to get funding.

There are no ways around that. You cannot feasibly make funding infinite nor do anything about the lack of political will for increasing research funding. Even if funding was to increase dramatically, you'd get people coming up with even more expensive research projects (new particle accelerator anyone?) and there would still be winners and losers of that funding game. There's also the fact that a PI minting dozens o…

Why not?

We seem to have no problem with infinite funding for Department of Defense and to bail out banks. The amount needed for science is paltry by comparison and typically has much better long term return on investment.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#119

Post by vkou » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 1:53 AM UTC

dasudasu wrote: post #114

asciimov wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are always more people wanting to do science than what is available in funding. So why not just fund them? Any process you could create or that currently exists just ends up being gamed by people who understand how to get funding.

There are no ways around that. You cannot feasibly make funding infinite nor do anything about the lack of political will for increasing research funding. Even if funding was to increase dramatically, you'd get people coming up with even more expensive research projects (new particle accelerator anyone?) and there would still be winners and losers of that funding game. There's also the fact that a PI minting dozens o…

You don't need to make funding infinite, in order to meet the current demand for it.

And increasing funding will not increase demand in lockstep. There are indeed more people who want to do science then there is money allocated to pay them, but the number of those people is not going to vastly increase if 'researcher' continues to be a job that requires years of post-secondary education, has long, shitty hours, and pays peanuts.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#120

Post by vkou » Mon, Jul 27, 2020, 1:57 AM UTC

an_opabinia wrote: post #108

gwerbret wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1) I think the idea of funding "people, not projects" (the Howard Hughes Research Institute's byline; I'm not affiliated with them in any way) is a great one. It would probably involve changing the structure of research programs in other fundamental ways, such as by 2) Limiting the number of graduate students. The current relatively-low barrier of entry into grad school provides cheap, motivated labor for PIs who are…

> Limiting the number of graduate students. Isn't a lot of the graduate school product providing a way for people to immigrate to the United States? The economy around it is pretty complicated and definitely there's way more pressure to supply more, not fewer, spots.

No, the problem is a bit more structural then that.

A single professor trains dozens of grad students over the course of their career. Even if you remove every single foreigner, and every single person who does not want to pursue a career in academia, you still end up with dozens of graduates - per professor.

The number of jobs available for those graduates?

One - that professor's - when he or she retires. And until then, they get to burn the midnight oil, doing grunt work on their projects, in the hopes of competing their dozen collegaues for a shot at that one spot.