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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?

#161

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #123
op03 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We hear it all the time. Its an ancient story. The history of science is full of these stories. Misguided/driven/ambitious people are always looking for shortcuts and they will find them. Its like dealing with mosquitos, cockroaches, weeds, software bugs and cancer. It never ends.

I think the point of GP's story is that this isn't just one or two bad apples here and there, but it's endemic in that domain - and most likely in others too (I'm leaning to believe that; it's not the first story like this I've read in recent years). Being an endemic problem means you have to switch your assumptions; when reading a random scientific paper, you're no longer thinking, "this is probably right, but I mus…

Yup, I was taught this as part of graduate school.

Nobody ever said it was fraud, they said things like they wouldn't share the data and I couldn't replicate.

In general, the incentives for shoddy science (get Nature papers or find a new career) tend to reward bad behaviour, and I just wasn't able to find something unexpected and pretend it had been my hypothesis all along (it's almost impossible to publish a social science paper where you disconfirm your major hypothesis).

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

#162

Post by fingerlocks »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #88
gspr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just be aware that it's not always like this, and that some fields are less prone to it than others. In my 8 years in research mathematics, I didn't see a single case that would come close to this horror show (not that mathematics is free of unethical behavior, of course). Collaborating with biologists, however, I got exposed to a world far more backstabby than I've since experienced in the corporate world.

I think this is largely because results in math are easily verifiable compared to chemistry, or as an even worse example, the social sciences. The latter are also suffering from the replication crisis the most.

Math has a different problem. Because of the wide breadth of the field, and highly specialized nature of problems, it can take a very long time for anyone to actually verify a result with confidence. If ever. Unless you’re doing something famous like P!=NP, there might not be many people capable of checking your work in a reasonable amount of time.

The story of Fermat’s Last is a great example, what would have happened if that wasn’t a famous problem?

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

#163

Post by Traster »

KirillPanov wrote: post #54

> They said, no, "It's a China thing." This needs to stop being an acceptable answer. Not just in academia, but also in politics, in business, in the naming of viral strains, ...

I don't know if it's true that this is a particularly chinese thing. But I don't think it's impossible that a country with a very different culture has a very different attitude towards fraud and cheating and that manifests. If theere is more scientific fraud in one group of publishers we need to be aware and tackle that.

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

#164

Post by m12k »

hobofan wrote: post #158
m12k wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right - the big question of the day is not just "how do we counter disinformation?" but "how do we counter it at scale?" The bad-faith actors of the world have realized how incredibly cost effective disinformation is in an online world that can massively amplify messages, and which algorithmically selects for divisiveness and "engagement" rather than factually and utility. We need a CAPTCHA for trut…

Isn't the answer well know (improving education and encouraging critical thinking), but unsatisfying because it is hard to implement and changes only crystalize slowly? If everyone were to e.g. request sources for claims instead of taking them at face value that would act similar to a CAPTCHA and prevent the spread of misinformation.

Sure, but again, we need a solution that scales, and there's no empirical evidence that this is a scalable solution. We also wouldn't need this if everyone would just be nice to each other and not spread disinformation in the first place, but that's not really much of a realistic solution either, just wishful thinking.

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

#165

Post by stanford_labrat »

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 did my undergrad at UW and was heavily involved with the GS department.

There’s only so many people this could be lol, really makes me wonder.

Edit: found who it is. Why am I not surprised?

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

#166

Post by Vinnl »

DarkWiiPlayer wrote: post #159
jacquesm wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More and more evidence that the magazine based publication route is a net negative to science.

Question is, why don't scientists just put everything on public platforms (read: github) and call it a day? Is it only a matter of funding, or do other factors also play a role in that?

Because nobody reads it there and, more importantly, funders don't recognise the work you've done there. The "prestige" (as indicated by the scientific-looking but mostly inaccurate "Impact Factor") of the journal you publish in determines how good they think your work is.

I wrote about that a while ago here: https://medium.com/flockademic/the-ridiculous-number-that-ca...

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

#167

Post by noobermin »

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…

This is so dastardly common sometimes I'm surprised science works at all.

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

#168

Post by andi999 »

arethuza wrote: post #156
pas wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does conservative mean in this context? Could you explain it a bit? Thanks!

Apologies, I meant conservative in the sense of resistance to contemplate new ideas rather than the political sense. Somewhat naively I had assumed that academic research was where people would be most welcoming of at least discussing new ideas, whereas I found the opposite to be true.

Actually in some sciences they are. But anything touching medicine... forget it.

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

#169

Post by mjburgess »

arethuza wrote: post #108
jdsalaro wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry but this saddens me to no end, even I did better science during my BSc and MSc; it's not just disheartening, it's frightening. Reading this almost made me feel ill to my stomach. I don't know what else to say at the blatant disregard for scientific ethics and sense of duty. And we complain that the public at large doesn't trust us "educated" folk, well I can't see why...

My own, rather bitter, experiences with academic research in the early 1990s led me to suspect that by trying to "manage" academic research at a large scale was utterly counter productive and was optimising for all the wrong things (publications, career progression, money, politics) and was actually dramatically reducing the amount of actual science being done. I left, co-founded a startup and never regretted it for…

Is that small-c conservative? Or do you mean rightwing? (curious, I assume the former...)

In either case pretty much all humans are profoundly small-c conservative, "big change projects" on society-scale do often end in war/death/etc. At least, it's probably 50/50 whether its a "National Health Service" or a "World War".

However the reason is deeper than that: evolution does not care if you're thriving, it cares that you are breeding. So you're optimized for "minimum safety" not "maximum flourishing".

So if things are stable then you will prefer to stay in them for as long as possible. It is why people need to "hit rock bottom" before they can be helped, often, ie., their local-minimum needs to become unstable so they will prefer the uncertainty of change.

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

#170

Post by cornel_io »

Chinese researcher is full of shit and fabricates results, news at 11.

For the haters, this is not racism but nationalism, China super incentivizes bullshit research at a high level these days, and it's gotten bad enough that we're starting to distrust any "work" that comes out of it.

I don't know what the solution is, other than to subject Chinese submissions to more stringent and specifically non-Chinese review.

That's absolutely nationalist, and arguably racist, but it's also smart.

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