Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

crystalprisonzone.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 363 posts

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

#231

Post by rdtwo »

mjburgess wrote: post #176
lanevorockz wrote: post #109

The belief that any research is automatically true is so bogus and so abused that industries and lobbyists came to rely on it. It’s sad that then people blindly push as “it’s science”. Main issue is the sheer amount of papers being published and the lack of capacity of the body of experts to read all of it. I guess it’s the professionalisation of research. People publish papers to improve their rankings and not becau…

This comment really clarified an issue: This is a slow-moving disaster for scientific credibility, and therefore for national safety and security. There's going to be a point within two decades where "reproducibility crisis" is not a localised phenomenon, and "expert" misconduct is paraded out by the papers. Totally destroying our societies ability to govern itself based on expert information. The early stages are al…

I think the outcome is more likely to be that papers from the US are just assumed to be highly suspect in quality sort of how papers from China and India are now.

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

#232

Post by Blikkentrekker »

dlvktrsh wrote: post #209
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it be racist? I have noticed in English-language discourse that often, shall-we-call-it, “non-white countries” are “races” but “white countries” are “nations”. Also, Christianity and Judaïsm are religions, but Islām is a race. Explain me that.

it's built into their culture it's hard to even blame them. I say this as politely as I can

“their culture” being the Chinese culture, or the Anglo-Saxon culture?

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

#233

Post by jjoonathan »

Radim wrote: post #189
mlang23 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is worse. If you mention that you are not trusting every scientific results per se, you're being labeled as stupid and uneducated . This sort of absolute reasoning is making the distrust even worse. How can you have trust in a in a system that is unwilling to publicly admit its shortcomings? Trust and honesty come in pairs.

This science-bro movement scares me too. "But SCIENCE said so! You're a SCIENCE denier!" It feels like a religion, with its own T-shirts and all. Appeals to authority, intellectual posturing… often from people with little understanding of the actual science. Honest insiders are way more careful with any absolute statements. No wonder there's a (also scary) rise of conspiracy theories. How do people not observe those…

I don't like the science-bro movement, but I also think they might fill an important niche. The anti-science movement has too many people and too much time and too high of a (answer time / question time) gish-gallop ratio for scientists to possibly engage with. If scientists try to fight the anti-science crowd, they will lose.

Science bros, for all their faults, can trade blows on more even footing, and that's something. Perhaps even a vitally important something. Even if science bros aren't great at science proper, their contribution to societal consensus formation might be as important as the underlying science itself!

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

#234

Post by analog31 »

xkde wrote: post #198
Radim wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This science-bro movement scares me too. "But SCIENCE said so! You're a SCIENCE denier!" It feels like a religion, with its own T-shirts and all. Appeals to authority, intellectual posturing… often from people with little understanding of the actual science. Honest insiders are way more careful with any absolute statements. No wonder there's a (also scary) rise of conspiracy theories. How do people not observe those…

I think people have to get more serious about separating science as a procedure from scientism (that is, philosophical issues that are often discussed in tandem). When one uses the phrase, “science denier”, it often means, “you don’t agree with my philosophy/metaphysics/economic policy” rather than “you deny these particular facts”, which causes people to be rightly concerned. I’m not optimistic that this is going to…

I tend to limit my use of "science denier" when an organization or its followers systematically deny scientific knowledge on multiple unrelated fronts.

Interestingly, I have read that in the 1920s and 30s, there was actually an organized relativity denialist movement, that wrote articles and held public protests.

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

#235

Post by read_if_gay_ »

remram wrote: post #211
read_if_gay_ wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evidently it’s not perfect here but yes, it’s less sketchy, because there’s far worse out there.

All you're arguing is that it's "not the most sketchy" not that it's less sketchy than the average. And you're offering no proof or example of that either.

If you're going to get hung up on technical details, note that GP didn't ask whether it's less sketchy than average, just whether it's less sketchy.

Finding concrete proof or examples is obviously hard in this subject matter (how are you going to prove something as abstract as sketchiness), but here's one observation: predatory conferences mostly only exist outside the West. To be even more concrete, two of the most infamous predatory publishers (WASET and OMICS) are based in Turkey and India respectively. You generally won't find something nearly as sketchy in the West.

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

#236

Post by Blikkentrekker »

remram wrote: post #214
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information travels very quickly through a medium that wishes it to be true. You will find that the ability of the human mind to be critical, to refute with very salient arguments is suddenly acute when the mind doesn't wish it to be true, and this definitely also applies to H.N. comments. That H.N. in this case is so accepting to this one side of the story suggests to me that this is the side it seems to want to be…

In your mind, is that "one side" that misconduct happens? Do you think the opposite side "it never happens" is reasonable? No one here is trying to argue that it happens all the time or more often than not, I'm wondering if that's what you think we're reading.

I find that rarely when a side has an “opposing side” that either side is reasonable

In this case, “misconduct happens” is not opposite to “it never happens” and I do not find the comments to echo the former sentiment as much as “Academia has become so ripe with either outright malice, or an inability to catch earnest mistakes, that virtually no research can be trusted.”

> No one here is trying to argue that it happens all the time or more often than not, I'm wondering if that's what you think we're reading.

No one is indeed arguing that, but what many, including me, are arguing is that nothing can really be trusted any more because it's a coinflip whether data is even reproducible.

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

#237

Post by Blikkentrekker »

Aeolun wrote: post #218
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Information travels very quickly through a medium that wishes it to be true. You will find that the ability of the human mind to be critical, to refute with very salient arguments is suddenly acute when the mind doesn't wish it to be true, and this definitely also applies to H.N. comments. That H.N. in this case is so accepting to this one side of the story suggests to me that this is the side it seems to want to be…

On the other hand, we are presented with the raw data that makes the author of this article suspicious.

Even in the face of such evidence, it often turns out that when the other side tells it's story it's more reasonable than that and there are explanations.

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

#238

Post by remram »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #236
remram wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your mind, is that "one side" that misconduct happens? Do you think the opposite side "it never happens" is reasonable? No one here is trying to argue that it happens all the time or more often than not, I'm wondering if that's what you think we're reading.

I find that rarely when a side has an “opposing side” that either side is reasonable In this case, “misconduct happens” is not opposite to “it never happens” and I do not find the comments to echo the former sentiment as much as “ Academia has become so ripe with either outright malice, or an inability to catch earnest mistakes, that virtually no research can be trusted. ” > No one here is trying to argue that it hap…

There are definitely two sides to your story then :) Not necessarily to the top comments I have read. It might be a more important story though.

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

#240

Post by toxik »

tolbish wrote: post #24
rkagerer wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of " a lie can run around the world before the truth has got its boots on ". That precise quote is from Pratchett but there are similar, earlier citations https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/07/13/truth/

Aren't these all variations on well known aphorisms such as "publish or perish"?

Publish or perish is the opposite of "silence is golden" more than a statement on the speed of lies and truths.
Post reply on HN