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Harvard Teaching Hospital Seeks Retraction of 6 Papers by Top Researchers

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Re: Harvard Teaching Hospital Seeks Retraction of 6 Papers by Top Researchers

#21

Post by tgv »

asylteltine wrote: post #7

I don’t trust anything coming out of academia anymore. First we had over 50% of psychology being nonsense, then sociology (not surprising), then the hard sciences too. But then we also have the rampant ideology problem where you are forbidden from even researching certain topics/questions and if you do, you are blacklisted. They need a hard reckoning. What happened to science? Who cares what the ideological implicati…

Academia publishes, because academics are forced to publish. Psychology has a subject that's harder than physics, both experimentally and theoretically, and bad research practices. Sociology we can politely ignore. So yes, it has turned into a mill that produces garbage.

Still, some things are worth researching, but finding out what's true (or true-ish) will take a lot of time. Don't trusting findings that haven't been reproduced, stay skeptical of theories that hinge on a far-reaching interpretation of the data, and downright ignore publications with surprising claims. It's not nice, but it's realistic.

Re: Harvard Teaching Hospital Seeks Retraction of 6 Papers by Top Researchers

#22

Post by PedroBatista »

kenjackson wrote: post #3
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #2

I think the Crimson article mentioned in this article has better info about the actual details of the alleged manipulation: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/22/dana-farber-iss...

I do sometimes wonder if the same attributes that puts people at their top of their fields is the same atribute that makes them more willing to sacrifice their integrity for prestige... It seems like this just happens too frequently (or maybe it just appears that way because these are media reported).

Yes.

For a sector/area/industry that deals with "hard facts" and Science, it's "surprising" how much of these groups and institutions run on prestige, greed and ego.

We are talking about institutions run by these people who have annual budgets of BILLIONS of dollars, sometimes I feel most people view these schools and institutions like just one step above their local high-school, nothing is further from the truth.

Re: Harvard Teaching Hospital Seeks Retraction of 6 Papers by Top Researchers

#23

Post by kr0bat »

asylteltine wrote: post #7

I don’t trust anything coming out of academia anymore. First we had over 50% of psychology being nonsense, then sociology (not surprising), then the hard sciences too. But then we also have the rampant ideology problem where you are forbidden from even researching certain topics/questions and if you do, you are blacklisted. They need a hard reckoning. What happened to science? Who cares what the ideological implicati…

Hold on, I've heard of the replication crisis - though I don't know the scale - but are you saying that over 50% of "hard science" is bunk? I find that hard to swallow.

Re: Harvard Teaching Hospital Seeks Retraction of 6 Papers by Top Researchers

#24

Post by WalterBright »

PedroBatista wrote: post #22
kenjackson wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do sometimes wonder if the same attributes that puts people at their top of their fields is the same atribute that makes them more willing to sacrifice their integrity for prestige... It seems like this just happens too frequently (or maybe it just appears that way because these are media reported).

Yes. For a sector/area/industry that deals with "hard facts" and Science, it's "surprising" how much of these groups and institutions run on prestige, greed and ego. We are talking about institutions run by these people who have annual budgets of BILLIONS of dollars, sometimes I feel most people view these schools and institutions like just one step above their local high-school, nothing is further from the truth.

I.e. people are human, regardless of their position, prestige, etc.

Re: Harvard Teaching Hospital Seeks Retraction of 6 Papers by Top Researchers

#26

Post by asylteltine »

kr0bat wrote: post #23
asylteltine wrote: post #7

I don’t trust anything coming out of academia anymore. First we had over 50% of psychology being nonsense, then sociology (not surprising), then the hard sciences too. But then we also have the rampant ideology problem where you are forbidden from even researching certain topics/questions and if you do, you are blacklisted. They need a hard reckoning. What happened to science? Who cares what the ideological implicati…

Hold on, I've heard of the replication crisis - though I don't know the scale - but are you saying that over 50% of "hard science" is bunk? I find that hard to swallow.

I don’t think hard sciences are 50% but still too high. But that’s just the data people looked at. There are so many papers and studies being submitted, who knows how many times a researcher fudged a few values to make the effect size bigger? I personally witnessed this in academia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis

Re: Harvard Teaching Hospital Seeks Retraction of 6 Papers by Top Researchers

#27

Post by breckenedge »

goalieca wrote: post #16
39838sjdjn wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what direction of causation you have in mind but as someone in academics (tenured professor etc) I think the answer is definitely yes. One thing that should be setting off alarm bells now is how often these scandals in the last couple of years have involved people who are in very high-level administrative positions at these institutions. Not only because of the values that might be instilled downward in…

If you take incentivation to the extreme, look no further than the publishing criteria for academic positions in China. https://www.nature.com/articles/463142a

Anecdotally I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on recommended systems and it blows me away how many Chinese papers there are (papers written by researchers in China) and how many claim to beat the current “state-of-the-art” often without saying what that is.

Re: Harvard Teaching Hospital Seeks Retraction of 6 Papers by Top Researchers

#28

Post by jefe_ »

rickydroll wrote: post #20
newman8r wrote: post #13

I've been thinking about how with the rise of LLMs, we're going to uncover A LOT of "bad studies" over the next decade. Could be some sort of mass reckoning. Probably better to admit it all now than be uncovered in 5 years.

I would prioritize looking for financial and corporate fraud. It would have a much bigger impact on society than looking for any problems with academic studies. If we can take down those people and bar them from ever having anything to do with finance in the future, I think that would have an important impact on the ethics and behavior of the next generation.

It seems to me that taking down fraudulent academic researchers and barring them from ever having anything to do with research in the future would also have a significant impact on the ethics and behavior of the next generation. If technology is lowering the barriers to fraud detection, why should it be applied to one sector over another?

Re: Harvard Teaching Hospital Seeks Retraction of 6 Papers by Top Researchers

#29

Post by jassyr »

divbzero wrote: post #14
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #2

I think the Crimson article mentioned in this article has better info about the actual details of the alleged manipulation: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/22/dana-farber-iss...

The original blog post alleging falsified data was published by Sholto David earlier this month: https://forbetterscience.com/2024/01/02/dana-farberications-...

This is an incredible post, thanks for the link! The researches are quite literally photoshopping study images! How is this even legal? Plain vanilla fraud.

Re: Harvard Teaching Hospital Seeks Retraction of 6 Papers by Top Researchers

#30

Post by jassyr »

svnt wrote: post #15
matthewdgreen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's confusing because some of the incidents had image manipulation, but apparently no evidence of deceit. Some others involved data collected at labs not belonging to the four authors accused. But there are six papers being retracted, but no real details in that article on who did what and what exactly happened there.

“No evidence of deceit” but the data show no effect while you accidentally published an image from some supposedly “early/exploratory” analysis that does show an effect. What would be the evidence of deceit you’d expect to find here? A video of a monologue by the evil villain disclosing their intention to deceive readers because they believe no one will reproduce their analysis before they get their promotion?

I agree. You can infer that falsely creating positive results leads to funding leads to prestige, fancy dinners and fancy homes, fancy educations and large inflated egos.
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