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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?

#331

Post by ncmncm »

speeder wrote: post #253
mam2 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many stories like this and people wonder why the general public is less "believing" in science lately. I. Eh im not sure bad studies is the cause. Scientists, especially doctors, wanting to use their authority i some debates while 2 of them can be saying completely opposed things maybe, however, contribute...

Problem is more serious than that. What is happening is that the bad studies are being used for policymaking. Examples: the "nutrition pyramid" that encouraged carbohydrates and blamed health issues on animal-based food, was later found out to be based on research that was blatantly corrupt, with researchers getting bribes from food industry to manipulate or hide results (a case of hiding results: one researcher that…

Hemp fiber was in competition with wood fiber harvested from Hearst-owned western-US forest land. Hearst also owned a newspaper chain, and found using it an easy way to eliminate the competition. Hemp is both cheaper and better-quality than the wood fiber for paper, but had no newspaper-chain backing.

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

#332

Post by Prcmaker »

rdtwo wrote: post #229
Prcmaker wrote: post #8

I've reported similar misconduct before. Was told the claims were very concerning, and that there was a quite clear problem that would be investigated. A few months later, I was informed the problem had been resolved, though on inspection, nothing had changed. I learned their investigation involved asking the person of interest if everything was legitimate, to which they said yes. Investigation closed. I am truly dis…

I’m surprised it didn’t involve retaliation against you. I know of a few cases at UW where the outcome was retaliation against the reporting party

It hasn't been. My research is now being actively sabotaged.

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

#333

Post by throwawayfrauds »

My previous account on HN was banned by dang after I called out a researcher for scientific misconduct. The researcher contacted dang and complained, and he banned me. So I guess calling out scientific misconduct didn’t go so well here on HN either.

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

#334

Post by selimthegrim »

garmaine wrote: post #110
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…

You should tell UW about this.

This is the sign of someone who has never been in grad school

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

#335

Post by marcus_holmes »

Jolter wrote: post #294
marcus_holmes wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the author, who specifically stated that this task of correcting bad science is unrewarding.

She stated it is unrewarding because the university didn’t reprimand or remove the bad researcher, and because most papers didn’t retract the bad papers. She didn’t produce new studies disproving the results of the existing one, which might have been a more rewarding pursuit for someone who had that inclination. I’m sure the author has other ideas about what research she should do, and it’s not for us to say.

Yeah, I hear this a lot. That the goal of every scientist is to disprove the consensus and overturn bad science. Yet every time I read a blog article by someone who has actually tried to overturn bad science, they say it's an uphill battle against bad incentives, vested interests and academic politics.

If you know of a scientist who has written about succeeding in achieving this objective and had a great time (in the last 20 years), can you point me to their writing, please?

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

#336

Post by lrem »

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?

Funding for the project/department as well as personal career prospects of everyone involved are tied to the publications. Various approaches to analysing those produce importance numbers. (Note: Pagerank was an attempt of doing same to non-scientific publications and we all know how that went.) Said numbers are picked by bureaucracies to determine the objective worth of groups and individuals. Growing said numbers is literally what the livelihood of academics, at least at some stages of their careers, depends on.

So, yes, that's fundamentally "a matter of funding". It can be fixed by academics and bureaucrats agreeing to switch to some other system. On international level. I think if you got the top 20 countries to coordinate, the rest would follow suit. Any bets on when that will happen? ;)

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

#337

Post by thisrod »

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…

Since I read Seeing Like a State, I've started to think "charlatan" whenever I hear the word "science". As in "scientific forestry", "climate science" (scientists who study Earth's climate call themselves meteorologists), "scientific racism". Is "computer science" an exception? I'm not game to speculate.

Which actual scientists describe themselves that way? We're physicists, geologists, botanists, psychologists or whatever. When someone says they're a scientist, it suggests that they're not part of any actual scientific discipline, but making a false appeal to authority.

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

#339

Post by syockit »

osamagirl69 wrote: post #94

This reminds me of the story from R. Trebino about trying to get a correction published--in 123 easy steps! (spoiler alert -- the comment didn't end up being published after the 123 steps) [1] https://frog.gatech.edu/Pubs/How-to-Publish-a-Scientific-Com...

Not really my field, but I got curious and followed the rabbit hole. The article in question would be (in DOI) 10.1364/OL.32.003558, followed by erratum 10.1364/OL.33.002854, and then the comment by Trebino 10.1364/OL.34.002602, which is replied to in 10.1364/OL.34.002603.
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