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Cracking down on research fraud

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Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#121

Post by moralestapia »

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…

>labs operate largely as fiefdoms of the individual principal investigators

To add to the injury, you wouldn't believe the extent of the actions to which some PIs become engaged in order to attain/preserve their 'power'. Illegal, unethical and pathetic.

The core problem is that PIs are human, and humans are flawed. The solution (if there is one) should take this into account, and somehow try to reduce it systematically, at an institutional level. The problem is that the ones that make the rules are not going to fight against themselves ... I wish I had something more to add, but that's it, that's the state of the field.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#122

Post by dasudasu »

jgeada wrote: post #118
dasudasu wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The funding for the military is far from infinite, and the US is actually pretty "privileged" as far as how much money trickles down to grants for seemingly unrelated stuff through DARPA and other similar agencies.

The discussion on how much money should be allocated to research is a different one, and it's always going to be finite. In the end, funds for research as conducted in universities have to be extracted from societal economic outputs, be it from taxes or otherwise, which is sadly not infinite.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#123

Post by jostmey »

I’ve seen lots of “questionable” research, so much, that I rarely read papers published by other researchers because chances are the data is junk, and I’m in academic biomedical research!!

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#124

Post by [deleted] »

jgeada wrote: post #118
dasudasu wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#125

Post by wombatpm »

rumanator wrote: post #44
cblconfederate wrote: post #24

Equalize the field, radically remove research hierarchies. Liberate research funding from pointless bureaucracies and 4-year grants and instead pay scientists to work on whatever they like most. Let science be fun again I always return to this article from David Hubel (of Hubel&Wiesel): https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(09)00733-8 I arrived at his lab around noon and found him working alone, recording f…

> Liberate research funding from pointless bureaucracies and 4-year grants and instead pay scientists to work on whatever they like most. Bureaucracy exists to ensure that funds are indeed spent on research instead of jet skis and shiny toys, and hierarchies are established to focus work on specialized topics pertaining to the state of the art of a field of research. All your suggestions do is ensure that less funds…

Bureaucracy exists to ensure the university gets their cut. When I was there the university took 40% off the top for overhead.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#126

Post by dodobirdlord »

jgeada wrote: post #118
dasudasu wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would be far more fair to say that we have no problem with infinite funding for non-discretionary entitlement spending, since that's most of that the Federal Government spends money on. Military spending in the US is not wildly outside of the norm for the developed world as a percentage of GDP, and money spent to "bail out banks" is a rounding error in terms of spending, and has historically turned a profit for the Federal Government. One of the largest sources of research funding in the US is actually the Department of Defense.

As for why research doesn't get more funding, sadly there is a faction in the US government that is opposed to universities and to government spending in general, and views research funding as easy to cut without provoking public outcry among their core voting demographics. This is the same reason that the Department of Defense is now such a large part of research funding, that same voting demographic is far more vocally opposed to reducing military spending.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#127

Post by BurningFrog »

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…

Sounds a lot like the Catholic Church sending pedophiles to new areas after their child raping gets discovered.

Neither system seems sustainable.

Re: Cracking down on research fraud

#130

Post by jasonhong »

dasudasu wrote: post #97
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…

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…

To followup, I believe there's a subtle problem with funding in general, which is that increasing the funding available means that more research positions will be created, which means that eventually grant proposals go back to the same dismal funding rates they were before.
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