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

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

#361

Post by bongoman37 » Fri, Jan 29, 2021, 6:38 AM UTC

garmaine wrote: post #349

selimthegrim wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What obligation does UW have to listen to him? Better to make a fuss on Twitter and let this get to donors who will have a thing or two to say to the department chair and head of school/deans/provost/president.

As a public institution, UW has an obligation to take seriously and investigate allegations of academic fraud. Besides that they also have a reputation to maintain.

The reputation to maintain is why they will protect the insider over the outsider. Unless it is really blatant or the insider is really junior or new, universities will do everything in their power to silence the allegations.

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

#362

Post by andi999 » Sat, Jan 30, 2021, 1:18 PM UTC

gspr wrote: post #215

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, even proofs are wrong more often than you’d think, but I’m not sure whether math is actually so uniquely broad that other fields don’t suffer from this problem.

Maybe it's not its breadth, but its depth. That isn't to say that other fields aren't deep, don't get me wrong. But the more tightly coupled with the high-level physical world a field is (think for example medicine or biology), the more it is prone to having technologoical advances from the outside make new sub-fields crop up and old ones die. Think of for example the multitude of research areas made possible by gene…

Also math can hinge on small technicalities. Like Andrew Wiles got a pre review for the proof of fermat conjecture and all was well. I depth review later found a serious gap/flaw which fortunately with hard work and luck he could plug. In contrast if you invent the electron microskop and you get images, you still made the invention (even if small or even big details might be wrong, and the result could be better). In other science often the gist is not effected.

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

#363

Post by robertlagrant » Fri, Feb 05, 2021, 8:06 AM UTC

jpeloquin wrote: post #296

robertlagrant wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is of a lack of data publishing. All data should be published; all conclusions published (preferably with the code that generated the conclusions) so corrections can be made and improved conclusions drawn easily.

> The problem is of a lack of data publishing Agreed. If you have any recommendations for long-term public data archival they would be greatly appreciated. OSF recently instituted a 50 GB cap which rules out publishing many types of raw data, and subscription options (AWS, Dropbox, etc.) will lead to link rot when the uploading author changes jobs or retires, or the project's money runs out. Sure, publishing summary…

I have no answers. If the scientific community were cooperative enough it could perhaps come up with a shared platform, but it'd be hard to associate budgets with shared resources.