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‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

nature.com

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Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#61

Post by pmoriarty »

pvaldes wrote: post #24

Science currently looks like somebody going to fish, with the purpose of caught the best fish in the sea. So first they put the bait inside a plastic box, to weed out all the dumb fishes. Then they put the box inside another sealed wooden box, with a combination lockpad. Because only a really smart fish with skilled fin-paws should be able to figure out how to open also that box. For better measure, they finally put…

"If you put too much requisites and ask for only ideal flawless careers, made in some unicornia university; in the short time the candidates interested in your job position will start lying. After a while all that remain at your door are cheaters"

Are you saying doing science is so hard the only way to succeed is to cheat?

This is a slap in the face to scientists doing honest work.

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#62

Post by [deleted] »

dilap wrote: post #59
j_maffe wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're talking about Academia, not science. The scientific method is not at fault here.

sure, but in practice when people use the word science (as in "trust the science"), they mostly mean research happening in academia

[deleted]

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#63

Post by wyago »

andrewflnr wrote: post #54
gilmore606 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what he means, he's saying the pressure to constantly publish original research (the more original the better!) creates these incentives to become a rat, that is, to cheat.

That's bullshit, though. Pressure is not an excuse to fabricate data, and no one will defend that claim out loud . But what else does a rambly comment about how hard it is for researchers mean under a story about data fabrication? Ed: to be clear, the one making the argument about publishing pressure in a sensible way is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36881029

The original comment calls the people fabricating data "rats" and "cheaters", I'm not sure how you would construe that to be excusing them. The comment is describing that if a system is made to be so difficult you have to cheat to get past it, only cheaters will get past it.

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#64

Post by rcxdude »

andrewflnr wrote: post #54
gilmore606 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not what he means, he's saying the pressure to constantly publish original research (the more original the better!) creates these incentives to become a rat, that is, to cheat.

That's bullshit, though. Pressure is not an excuse to fabricate data, and no one will defend that claim out loud . But what else does a rambly comment about how hard it is for researchers mean under a story about data fabrication? Ed: to be clear, the one making the argument about publishing pressure in a sensible way is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36881029

The point is it's not an excuse, but it's not surprising that given that pressure those who fabricate data have an edge in the system compared to those who don't. (i.e. if you create an environment where the only way to succeed is to be fraudulent then of course it's going to be populated by frauds)

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#65

Post by _cenw »

mjhay wrote: post #30

Stuff involving room-temp superconductors would be about the last thing I'd ever want to fabricate.

Schön got away with it for years.

One of my favorite video essays is a long exploration of that case:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfDoml-Db64

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#66

Post by throwaway106382 »

supazek wrote: post #14
lockhouse wrote: post #9

It feels like karma after being told we had to blindly “trust the science” during the pandemic.

Covid would not have even been recorded if it happened 100 years ago. Start flashing on the screen the numbers of people killed by drunk drivers every week and let’s get something done about that instead of crashing trust in our national institutions —- with no survivors!

> Covid would not have even been recorded if it happened 100 years ago.

https://ourworldindata.org/spanish-flu-largest-influenza-pan...

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#67

Post by rcxdude »

pmoriarty wrote: post #61
pvaldes wrote: post #24

Science currently looks like somebody going to fish, with the purpose of caught the best fish in the sea. So first they put the bait inside a plastic box, to weed out all the dumb fishes. Then they put the box inside another sealed wooden box, with a combination lockpad. Because only a really smart fish with skilled fin-paws should be able to figure out how to open also that box. For better measure, they finally put…

"If you put too much requisites and ask for only ideal flawless careers, made in some unicornia university; in the short time the candidates interested in your job position will start lying. After a while all that remain at your door are cheaters" Are you saying doing science is so hard the only way to succeed is to cheat? This is a slap in the face to scientists doing honest work.

How is it a slap in the face? The point is the metrics by which academia judges science have been divorced from what actually produces good science for a while (and you'll find very few scientists who disagree with that), but it does reward cheaters quite well.

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#68

Post by matthewdgreen »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #10

It may be a person's instinct to immediately blame the researcher, and of course, I definitely think data fabrication is never justified. However, what is the societal problem here? It's the problem that in academia, there are such pressures to publish and be first nowadays that many people will do anything to get ahead. It doesn't help that social media and news sites have introduced a sort of gamification into it.…

> I also don't have much sympathy for the scientific community that has created this environment.

Scientists didn't create this environment: you did. We, as a society, demanded that some sector produce new scientific research at a rate and level that is capable of supporting our economy, and then we allocated a very restricted set of resources for them to do it. And they've done miracles, too! We would literally not be alive today if the scientific community hadn't developed the improvements that allow us to feed, house, and provide energy to 8 billion people. And that's before we get to strictly optional stuff like the computers and networks that power this website.

It's a serious business and obviously that kind of pressure leads to bad results sometimes. But the correct response is to be grateful that we have an engine in our society that produces this basic research (since industry has dramatically lowered spending on basic R&D over the past decades) and try to improve it, not to be pointlessly angry at scientists for living in the system that society's incentives have built for us.

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#69

Post by harishneit »

dotnet00 wrote: post #38
radicaldreamer wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The president of Stanford was caught pressuring his team to fabricate data for years, so this is likely pervasive everywhere in academia nevermind much higher pressure environments with lots of competition like elite institutions in India and China.

Especially because many of them have even less of a stigma against academic dishonesty than in many Western systems. Edit: not to suggest that is anything inherent about people from those cultures.

I think it's more to do with people in those environments not having good alternatives that creates incentive to do anything to get ahead. If we do some self reflection, similar things can be said about Uber & Airbnb et al. Painting this as cultural phenomenon is not productive IMHO.

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#70

Post by rdtsc »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #10

It may be a person's instinct to immediately blame the researcher, and of course, I definitely think data fabrication is never justified. However, what is the societal problem here? It's the problem that in academia, there are such pressures to publish and be first nowadays that many people will do anything to get ahead. It doesn't help that social media and news sites have introduced a sort of gamification into it.…

> It may be a person's instinct to immediately blame the researcher, and of course

However as they teach the little kids, trust your gut instinct. This person didn't just plagiarize this work, but also his PhD thesis: https://www.science.org/content/article/plagiarism-allegatio...

> If we want to fix it, simply outing these fakes will not be enough.

Yes, but without outing these fakes and harshly and punishing them as the first step, we're immediately communicating that this is "ok". "Just fake the data and throw it over the wall, if you get caught, just blame it on pressure and the general academic culture".

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