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I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go?

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Re: I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go?

#51

Post by ALittleLight »

op03 wrote: post #47
dnautics wrote: post #31

In graduate school, in my lab there was a grad student who was kind of an unlikely "professor's pet". He was tall and had surfer's long hair with a bit of a hippie aesthetic. Anyways, he was also really completely clueless about how to do science correctly, but also, I guess, really good about playing politics (there was a time when he asked me to put some bacterial plasmid DNA on my mammalian cells. I told him "it d…

Dont worry about it. It becomes a trap and many of them loose their minds as them dig themselves into deeper and deeper holes not knowing what else to do. Source: shrink in the family at a univ counselling center. At the end of the day they are misguided people. Even though there is a high price, their function is to train the survival skills of the honest folk who rise up the food chain. And dont have any doubt they…

The problem isn't that such people are getting away with unearned good feelings and so the fact that some may feel bad later isn't a solution or a reason not to worry. The problem is that they are wasting scientific resources (e.g. the time of the careful intern trying to reproduce flawed results), polluting research by publishing misleading findings, and discouraging legitimate research.

Re: I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go?

#52

Post by Ecstatify »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #44
dnautics wrote: post #31

In graduate school, in my lab there was a grad student who was kind of an unlikely "professor's pet". He was tall and had surfer's long hair with a bit of a hippie aesthetic. Anyways, he was also really completely clueless about how to do science correctly, but also, I guess, really good about playing politics (there was a time when he asked me to put some bacterial plasmid DNA on my mammalian cells. I told him "it d…

I am not doubting your story, but I know plenty of solid careful scientists doing honest work and being successful. One of these successful scientists self-retracted a high impact paper after he discovered that he had made a data coding mistake. It was painful, but he did the right thing of his own accord, even though it halted work on several follow-up papers that he was drafting.

How is their story related to you knowing scientists?

Re: I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go?

#53

Post by SubiculumCode »

Ecstatify wrote: post #52
SubiculumCode wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not doubting your story, but I know plenty of solid careful scientists doing honest work and being successful. One of these successful scientists self-retracted a high impact paper after he discovered that he had made a data coding mistake. It was painful, but he did the right thing of his own accord, even though it halted work on several follow-up papers that he was drafting.

How is their story related to you knowing scientists?

I am simply providing a counter-example of academic integrity to make the point that one's personal experiences, good or bad, may not reflect what is generally true of academica/science.

Re: I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go?

#55

Post by obscura »

SulfurHexaFluri wrote: post #19
Johnny555 wrote: post #16

The article mentions Brandolini’s Law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.” It's the first time I've heard it, but it's a very appropriate observation in today's world where misinformation travels faster and wider than correct information. If you're just making stuff up, it's much faster than looking up sources.

Its no wonder there is a trend now of just outright rejecting information presented when our "trusted" sources of information are very susceptible to malice and error without any real tools to combat it. My current view is that academic research should not be used as proof of anything and only as the starting point for your own research. And by your own research I mean your own actual tests. The papers can point you…

I don't see how this is practical. You could spend a lifetime testing the work of others and still not get through it all, let alone get to working on anything original. Progress is made by building on the work of others.

Re: I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go?

#56

Post by asheldon »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #18
chaoxu wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about the following process? Each person gets randomly assigned to one of the two groups, when one group is full, move the rest to the other group. Does this make sure every equal partition have the same probability of showing up?

> Does this make sure every equal partition have the same probability of showing up? I'm not sure, but I wouldn't bet against it. But what is the value of having an exactly equal partition? On second thought, the algorithm you describe processes people in a particular order, and it is much more likely to put two people who both occur near the end of the list into the same bucket than to put them in different buckets.…

I agree. It would be simpler to shuffle the list of people, then split the list in half.

Here's a proof this algorithm doesn't work by counter-example (N=6)

Consider a list of 6 elements. Elements 5 and 6 must be in the same bucket 50% of the time and different buckets 50% of the time. For this to be true, after we place the first 4 elements into their buckets according to this algorithm, there must be space left in both buckets 50% of the time and in only one bucket 50% of the time.

Sequences of the first 4 coin flips where neither bucket is filled, followed by possible ending sequences, and the odds of the prefix.

AABB(AB, BA) = 1/16th

ABAB(AB, BA) = 1/16th

ABBA(AB, BA) = 1/16th

BBAA(AB, BA) = 1/16th

BABA(AB, BA) = 1/16th

BAAB(AB, BA) = 1/16th

Total: 3/8ths

Sequences of the first 3-4 coin flips where one bucket is filled, followed by possible ending sequences, and the odds of the prefix:

AAA(BBB) = 1/8th

BBB(AAA) = 1/8th

AABA(BB) = 1/16th

ABAA(AA) = 1/16th

ABBB(AA) = 1/16th

BBAB(AA) = 1/16th

BABB(AA) = 1/16th

BAAA(BB) = 1/16th

Total: 5/8ths

Since one bucket is filled 5/8ths of the time after 4 elements are processed according to this algorithm, the final two elements will be in the same bucket 5/8ths of the time, not the expected 4/8ths of the time.

Re: I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go?

#57

Post by rscho »

dnautics wrote: post #31

In graduate school, in my lab there was a grad student who was kind of an unlikely "professor's pet". He was tall and had surfer's long hair with a bit of a hippie aesthetic. Anyways, he was also really completely clueless about how to do science correctly, but also, I guess, really good about playing politics (there was a time when he asked me to put some bacterial plasmid DNA on my mammalian cells. I told him "it d…

Also describes medical research. Only it's even worse. Problem is, you have no choice if you want to work in a university hospital. The system essentially tells you "you'll be doing shit science... or you'll leave!". Been at it for more than 10y, and no hint of change in sight. This is going to be really, really hard to change unfortunately.

Re: I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go?

#58

Post by wesleywt »

dnautics wrote: post #31

In graduate school, in my lab there was a grad student who was kind of an unlikely "professor's pet". He was tall and had surfer's long hair with a bit of a hippie aesthetic. Anyways, he was also really completely clueless about how to do science correctly, but also, I guess, really good about playing politics (there was a time when he asked me to put some bacterial plasmid DNA on my mammalian cells. I told him "it d…

I am also from a molecular biology background and saw this often. We call these guys the "Golden Boys". They are super successful, but completely useless. If you still believe live is fair, wake up sunshine.

Re: I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go?

#59

Post by wesleywt »

op03 wrote: post #47
dnautics wrote: post #31

In graduate school, in my lab there was a grad student who was kind of an unlikely "professor's pet". He was tall and had surfer's long hair with a bit of a hippie aesthetic. Anyways, he was also really completely clueless about how to do science correctly, but also, I guess, really good about playing politics (there was a time when he asked me to put some bacterial plasmid DNA on my mammalian cells. I told him "it d…

Dont worry about it. It becomes a trap and many of them loose their minds as them dig themselves into deeper and deeper holes not knowing what else to do. Source: shrink in the family at a univ counselling center. At the end of the day they are misguided people. Even though there is a high price, their function is to train the survival skills of the honest folk who rise up the food chain. And dont have any doubt they…

No they don't. In my experience they become professors or get hired by top tier companies like Roche.

Re: I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go?

#60

Post by dxdm »

maximilianroos wrote: post #27
thaumasiotes wrote: post #10

This is pretty interesting stuff, but one note: > The correction explains away the failures of randomization as an error in translation; the authors now claim that they let participants self-select their condition. This is difficult for me to believe. The original article’s stressed multiple times its use of random assignment and described the design as a "true experiment.” > They also had perfectly equal samples per…

Here, "random assignment" means randomly assigning half the participants to each of two bins, I think.

How do participants get assigned to the respective halves?
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