Scientific fraud is a culture problem. We need a hard reset on universities - remove grants and FAFSA support for uni's for a few years. Those that survive prove they are tied to industry and aren't just coasting on welfare.
Researchers taking on fraudulent science
31–40 of 87 posts
Re: Researchers taking on fraudulent science
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
The root cause it too many people for the funding available. If a single scientist can spend $250k per year it's obvious that even rich economies can only support so many of them. Whenever you have this situation you inevitably lead to selection criteria which can, and will, be gamed.
It's not just the funding but the jobs themselves. Universities and even the funding bodies want to show shiny easy-to-digest numbers to their stakeholders to justify tuition and government funds. Which means these institutions in turn expect those numbers from their researchers, who then are happy to comply and build their paper mills and citation cartels, solving no real problems at best and producing fake data at…
I think this issue is universal to any human work group. It would be worth studying it to better understand these patterns.
Re: Researchers taking on fraudulent science
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
>This is a huge problem. When fraud is rewarded over legitimate research we lose so many times. I’d generalize this further and say we have an underlying economy and society that rewards fraud over what should be happening widespread. It’s happening everywhere and lying seems to be one of the best strategies to success. With competitive pressures increasing, it’s often even worth the risk. This may have always been t…
>> There’s few if any establishments I trust anymore. Sorry, but that's tin foil hat territory. Everyday I trust my bank to handle my money fairly, the gas station to give the right amount of gas, the labels on food and medicine to be accurate, the weather report, etc. etc. I am sure there are problems with virtually every institution that need to be addressed. But I am surrounded by reliable information and trusted…
Society works on trust. That said, my bank/credit card company would not work with us when we were scammed with
$10k of obviously fraudulent charges. Our next recourse will have to be legal action. There are reports of gas stations using more ethanol than labeled. I saw a tiktok last week on someone who brought in their own scale to walmart and the packaged meat was labeled at like 6 lbs but was actually under 5. My tax guy has fucked up 3yrs in a row so now I get to become a tax pro. The US govt owes me $40k and is dragging their feet sending me my money. The guy who repaired some external trim only used finish nails so it ripped out in the last wind storm. The company that installed my windows just ignored code and didn't install tempered glass where required so I had to fight them on that when someone pointed it out to me. I could go on and on.
Re: Researchers taking on fraudulent science
#34In my opinion, the solution to all of this is to get rid of the whitepaper system all together.
From now on, all scientists who want to publish science, they publish their work in the form of a video. They film themselves doing the science and then put that video on YouTube, or maybe some science specific version of youtube. Other people can then watch the video and determine for themselves if the science is valid or not.
Its much harder to fake science if there is a video involved. Its too easy to make fake science if all you have to do you "prove" it is write some words.
Re: Researchers taking on fraudulent science
#35I love these people's work. At the same time I don't think any of this really addresses the root causes of the problems, which are career, university administrative, and field (i.e., recognition and attention) incentives. The whole paradigm we use, and the way we treat scientists and fund research, is broken. It feels a little bit like bailing water out of your boat with teacup on one side while ignoring the gaping h…
But how do we “solve” those incentives? There will always be winners and losers, and since successful fraud is by definition indistinguishable from genuine success, there will always be people trying to game the system. The only effective solution I see is making fraud harder to hide. (There’s also making the penalty for fraud higher and trying to instill integrity, but the problem is some people will still take the…
The major issue with research is how only successful results are viewed as worth while, and study results without a "positive" out come is viewed as a failure. So this means researchers are incentized to p-hack or falsifying results since they need more funding.
The reality is these negative results are just as useful and can either help other researchers avoid dead ends or they might have a not great result but with some refinement to methodology might be worthwhile for further study.
Researchers should be judged on the quality of the research they perform, not their outcomes. A well crafted study that shows that further research shouldn't be done should be just a well received as a well crafted study showing more research should be done. The focus should be on the design of the study first, since no matter what the results it adds to the corpus of knowledge in a meaningful way
Re: Researchers taking on fraudulent science
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> There’s few if any establishments I trust anymore. Sorry, but that's tin foil hat territory. Everyday I trust my bank to handle my money fairly, the gas station to give the right amount of gas, the labels on food and medicine to be accurate, the weather report, etc. etc. I am sure there are problems with virtually every institution that need to be addressed. But I am surrounded by reliable information and trusted…
Society works on trust. That said, my bank/credit card company would not work with us when we were scammed with $10k of obviously fraudulent charges. Our next recourse will have to be legal action. There are reports of gas stations using more ethanol than labeled. I saw a tiktok last week on someone who brought in their own scale to walmart and the packaged meat was labeled at like 6 lbs but was actually under 5. My…
Yeah we need to inspect things carefully because we are getting scammed and lied to all the time. Olive oil being cut, fish being sold as the wrong species, supplements containing random other substances, there are a million examples in products in particular.
Re: Researchers taking on fraudulent science
#37In my opinion, the solution to all of this is to get rid of the whitepaper system all together. From now on, all scientists who want to publish science, they publish their work in the form of a video. They film themselves doing the science and then put that video on YouTube, or maybe some science specific version of youtube. Other people can then watch the video and determine for themselves if the science is valid or…
In most theoretical/abstract pursuits, from math to comparative literature, "doing the science" means "writing the text of the paper" - and nothing else; shall I film myself doing that?
On second thought, maybe I could make a video of how I manage all of those dirty LaTeX tricks to squeeze my paper into less pages, at least there's some tangible payoff there...
Re: Researchers taking on fraudulent science
#38One of the many troubling things about recently exposed patterns of fraudulent science: every dishonest scientist or professor is taking up a position and funding that could've instead gone to any of surely numerous people with much more integrity.
Permit all the cronyism and gaming around university hiring and admissions, and don't hold universities responsible for unethical behavior of their faculty and graduates, then maybe this is what you get.
And since this is HN casting stones in glass houses: Permit all tech industry fratbro conventions around hiring (e.g., some that originated as naive and classist "did you take the same Stanford classes that I did", then were cargo-culted), and don't hold the companies responsible for the growth pump&exit investment scams, nor the criminal incompetence around infosec and correctness, then maybe that's what you get there.
Re: Researchers taking on fraudulent science
#39In my opinion, the solution to all of this is to get rid of the whitepaper system all together. From now on, all scientists who want to publish science, they publish their work in the form of a video. They film themselves doing the science and then put that video on YouTube, or maybe some science specific version of youtube. Other people can then watch the video and determine for themselves if the science is valid or…
In most theoretical/abstract pursuits, from math to comparative literature, "doing the science" means "writing the text of the paper" - and nothing else; shall I film myself doing that? On second thought, maybe I could make a video of how I manage all of those dirty LaTeX tricks to squeeze my paper into less pages, at least there's some tangible payoff there...
> "doing the science" means "writing the text of the paper"
The point is to show your work. You film yourself setting up the experiment to prove that you actually did the experiment. You also film yourself collecting the results, proving that you actually got the results you claim.
The only kind of science that consists of "just writing the paper" is math. Math will be exempt from this requirement. Fake math is not an epidemic
Re: Researchers taking on fraudulent science
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
But how do we “solve” those incentives? There will always be winners and losers, and since successful fraud is by definition indistinguishable from genuine success, there will always be people trying to game the system. The only effective solution I see is making fraud harder to hide. (There’s also making the penalty for fraud higher and trying to instill integrity, but the problem is some people will still take the…
> since successful fraud is by definition indistinguishable from genuine success This is absolutely false in real science and that you say it seriously is proof of just how far gone the academy is. Needless to say no matter how much you fake your data or results, nature is not so easily fooled.
You're misinterpreting the quote You're responding to.