I tried to report scientific misconduct. How did it go? • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by valarauko » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 7:38 PM UTC

rscho wrote: post #292

valarauko wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a postdoc at a medical school, and this hasn't been my experience. At least in our setup, clinical data tends to be channeled into a collaboration with a computational lab who are better stewards of data handling. Is there cherry picking and over selling the results? Sure. Outright dishonesty is something I have yet to see in my current institution (I did see a fair deal of fudging in my graduate institute, thoug…

Well, I think things are beginning to be better managed in some centers. If that's your case, then good for you. In my center, it's basically the wild west and data management is a catastrophe. But are you working the clinical wards? Because things are definitely much better managed in places such as epidemiology units. The true horrors mostly come from clinical researchers digging into excel spreadsheets without kno…

I'm in a computational lab, but I think I understand what you're describing. My medical school was acquired a few years ago by a hospital network, encouraging us to collaborate with our new clinical researchers. The medical school itself had a strong background in rigorous basic research with animal models, and the clinical samples are a relatively smooth transition. The data is obviously nowhere as clean or plentiful as with animal models, but that's to be expected.

So for example, my lab's expertise was in single cell developmental models, primarily for organ development in mice. Extended that to tumors from clinical samples was relatively straightforward. One of my colleagues is working on an autism dataset, but I wouldn't expect that to be nowhere nearly as clean.

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

#322

Post by panabee » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 7:51 PM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #86

panabee wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i have been thinking a lot about this problem. society has innumerable unsolved problems in healthcare, and many talented people who would like to contribute but cannot. in software, the open-source model allows people to advance critical initiatives without quitting their day jobs or making onerous commitments. how can we achieve the same in healthcare, that is let outsiders contribute and advance the state of the a…

I don't know if it will "allow outsiders to contribute" but I would like to see a biotech that makes patent-free drugs. I tried to make nonprofit out of that but there was a lot I didn't understand about how I work, how the world works, and how to get things done, so I will take another crack at it in 5-10 years.

i believe this is not only possible, but will happen sooner rather than later because of advancing capabilities in software, machine learning, and collaboration. we simply need the right people providing capital and launching these biotechs.

re patents, the key is to drive down costs for research and testing. research seems like the low-hanging fruit, comparatively speaking, but it's unclear how to reduce the costs of clinical trials in an uncontroversial way.

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

#323

Post by andrewon » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

nikanj wrote: post #297

andrewon wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked in both academia and industry in biotech field, I have to say that the bar of reproducibility is a lot higher in industry. In academia, the goal is to publish. The peer-review process won't care to repeat your experiments. And the chance that other lab repeating your experiments was slim -- why spending time repeating other people's success? In contrast, in industry, an experiment has to be bullet-proof…

Theranos showed us that's sadly not true. A good story beats reliable results.

I would say the industrial incentive still works pretty well. Theranos didn't follow and eventually couldn't sell products and busted.

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

#324

Post by valarauko » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 8:19 PM UTC

8note wrote: post #307

twic wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend joined a group studying some cell behaviour. They had previously had a big result that they could stimulate this behaviour in defined, serum-free culture by adding a specific factor. Friend was to work on characterising this effect, so his first job was to reproduce the result as a base case. He couldn't. The factor didn't stimulate the behaviour. He asked around, comparing his execution of the protocol with…

This feels like automation would have great benefits for these types of things. Instead of relying on people getting the right technique, you load in their program, dump chemicals into the right vials, then let it run and check the results

Well, a lot of these tasks are already automated (ie, shakers), but most bench workers have their own quirks on existing protocols. Most labs have their own 'dialect' of common mol bio techniques that 'work' in their particular setup. Perhaps the reagent from their particular supplier requires a longer incubation time, or the enzymes are wonky and you need to add more. Everybody I know does washing steps their own way - they say the "official" protocol is too long/cumerbersome/wasteful. More often than not, their own variant of the protocol is documented in their lab books, but not in the publications, where it cites the original protocol.

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

#325

Post by twic » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 8:22 PM UTC

andrewon wrote: post #298

twic wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend joined a group studying some cell behaviour. They had previously had a big result that they could stimulate this behaviour in defined, serum-free culture by adding a specific factor. Friend was to work on characterising this effect, so his first job was to reproduce the result as a base case. He couldn't. The factor didn't stimulate the behaviour. He asked around, comparing his execution of the protocol with…

I imagine the postdoc would have a negative control of not adding the vector? Otherwise its hard to convince people the effect was coming from the vector.

Right, so the effect must have been from the added factor plus some mystery factor in the serum.

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

#326

Post by ncmncm » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 8:29 PM UTC

at-fates-hands wrote: post #264

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 found that the movement you talk about is more about putting your faith in the "scientist" as opposed to the actual "science". It seems much easier to find scientists who will tow your political viewpoint and then people can use them as a resource to prove that unless you take this person's "expertise" as gospel, then it proves you are a science "denier".

"toe"

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

#327

Post by lr1970 » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 8:36 PM UTC

tinyhouse wrote: post #259

hinkley wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could sense this sort of problem even in CS and could not wait to get into an applied position as soon as possible. If you cannot build the thing you’re an expert in, you’re no kind of expert I understand.

It's true CS has this problem. But that doesn't mean you cannot do reproducible research in academia. It's up to you.

In many academic disciplines there are no real incentives for reproducible research. On the contrary, reproducibility helps your colleagues/competitors poke holes in your papers. It is quite perverse that being secretive and sneaky is better for career advancement that being open and honest. This is the underlying root of the problem.

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

#328

Post by pas » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 8:44 PM UTC

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.

Thanks! Could you give a few examples? About what were folks so conservative? Were they stubborn proving/supporting their own paradigm/hypothesis or ... they were just simply not open to any ideas? About methods or about theory? Both?

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

#329

Post by MaxBarraclough » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 8:48 PM UTC

aspaceman wrote: post #317

roel_v wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia itself has descended into the same pathologies you see in 'science' today: a bunch of gatekeepers who, by account of having been there the longest, have set up a moat of rules and 'culture' and such, to the point where newcomers are shut down or drowned out. I'm not saying it's impossible to get in; but only those that sufficiently mould themselves to the existing people and structures will last long enough…

What are you even talking about? I genuinely have no idea. You mind tangibly identifying how Wikipedia has descended into chaos like you say?

They're not the only person to have made an honest effort to improve Wikipedia, only to be met with legalistic hostility and inertia.

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

#330

Post by ncmncm » Wed, Jan 27, 2021, 8:52 PM UTC

stanford_labrat wrote: post #165

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?

Those people can still be useful:

When there is an open question, with important consequences but unclear resolution, it is hard to know the right answer. Somehow, it is easier to know the wrong answer, and that person will reach for it immediately. So, watch him and choose the opposite.

In any group there is such a person, called the Oracle of Wrong, and almost anybody can tell you who it is. He is the one most likely to wear a trilby, and no wrong choice he has made has ever caused him any personal discomfort.