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Fraud, so much fraud

science.org

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Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#111

Post by ARandomerDude »

layer8 wrote: post #73
mden wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"most fraudsters are not evil people, they just follow the incentives and almost non-existent disincentives" Maybe I'm too idealistic but why does following incentives with no regard for secondary consequences not evil?

IMO “evil” is a misconception. People have different beliefs and psychological needs, and placed in certain incentive structures that has the outcomes that we see. You can call certain behaviors “evil”, but that doesn’t explain anything about why the behaviors occur.

If someone raped your wife and set your children on fire, you would probably rethink your stance on evil.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#112

Post by abigail95 »

eig wrote: post #44

This sort of behavior is only going to worsen in the coming decades as academics become more desperate. It's a prisoner's dilemma: if everyone is exaggerating their results you have to as well or you will be fired. It's even more dire for the thousands of visa students. The situation is similar to the "Market for lemons" in cars: if the market is polluted with lemons (fake papers), you are disincentivized to publish…

you don't need regulation for a stable durable goods market. income and credit shocks cause turnover of good quality stock in the secondary market.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#113

Post by schmidtleonard »

dekhn wrote: post #62

These sorts of articles raise so many thoughts and emotions in me. I was trained as a computational biologist with a little lab work and ran gels from time to time. Personally, I hated gels- they're finicky, messy, ugly, and don't really tell you very much. But molecular biology as a field runs on gels- it's the priimary source of results for almost everything in molbio. I have seen more talks and papers that rested…

Similar story: computational biologist, my presentations involved statistics so people would come to me for help, and it often ended in the disappointing news of a null result. I noticed that it always got published anyway at whichever stage of analysis showed "promise." The day I saw someone P-hack their way to the front page of Nature was the day I decided to quit biology.

I still feel that my bio work was far more important than anything I've done since, but over here the work is easier, the wages are much better, and fraud isn't table stakes. Frankly in exchange for those things I'm OK with the work being less important (EDIT: that's not a swipe at software engineering or my niche in it, it's a swipe at a system that is bad at incentives).

Oh, and it turns out that software orgs have exactly the same problem, but they know that the solution is to pay for verification work. Science has to move through a few more stages of grief before it accepts this.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#114

Post by yawnxyz »

Reminder that these people are only caught because they photoshopped Western blots.

Even more widespread is when PIs just throw out data that don't agree with their hypothesis, and make you do it again until the numbers start making sense.

It's atrocious, but so common that if you're not doing this, you're considered dumb or weak and not going to make it.

Many PIs end up mentally justify this kind of behavior (need to publish / grant deadline / whatever) — even at the protest of most of the lab members.

Those who refuse to re-roll their results — those who want to be on the right side of science — get fired and black balled from the field.

And this is at the big famous universities you've all heard of

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#115

Post by pmarreck »

hacksoi wrote: post #101
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do hate the player. People are taught ethics for a reason: no set of rules and laws are sufficient to ensure integrity of the system. We rely on personal integrity. This is why we teach it to our children.

If people can get away with it, they will do it. Rules and punishments for breaking them exist for a reason.

My sole rational argument for Christianity is that it has made the societies that it is, or was, infused with, more honest than the ones that were not.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#116

Post by AlbertCory »

masswerk wrote: post #86
AlbertCory wrote: post #29

Once, at 3Com, Bob Metcalfe introduced a talk by one of his MIT professors with the little joke, "The reason academic politics is so vicious is that nothing's at stake." The guy said, "That depends on whether you consider reputation 'nothing.' " I guess what that shows is, you can always negotiate and compromise over money, but reputation is more of a binary. An academic can fake some work, and as long as he's never…

But this is really a societal/political issue: since we decided that economic capital is king and symbolic capital not that much… (This is really the story of the last four decades or so.)

There are some people who think everything is "a societal/political issue."

But that one-dimensional view is boring. Life is more than politics.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#117

Post by ljosifov »

Lionga wrote: post #78
dekhn wrote: post #62

These sorts of articles raise so many thoughts and emotions in me. I was trained as a computational biologist with a little lab work and ran gels from time to time. Personally, I hated gels- they're finicky, messy, ugly, and don't really tell you very much. But molecular biology as a field runs on gels- it's the priimary source of results for almost everything in molbio. I have seen more talks and papers that rested…

Don't hate the player hate the game. Governments made scientist only survive if they show results and specifically the results they want to see. Otherwise no anymore grants and you are done. Whether the results are fake or true does not matter "Science" nowadays is mostly BS, while the scientific method (hardly ever used in "science" nowadays) is still gold.

You have agency. Yes - the system provides incentives. However, you are not some pass-through nothingness to just accept any incentives. You can chose to not accept the incentives. You can leave the system. You're lucky - it's not a totalitarian system. There will be another area of life and work where the incentives align with your personal morals.

Once you bend your spine and kneel to bad incentives - you can never walk completely upright again. You may think and convince yourself that you can stay in the system with bad incentives, play the game, but still somehow you the player remain platonically unaffected. This is a delusion, and at some level you know it too.

Who knows? If everyone left the system with bad incentives, it maybe that the bad system collapses even. It's a problem of collective action. The chances are against a collapse, that it will continue to go on for some time. So don't count on collapse. And even if one was to happen in your time, it will be scorched earth post collapse for some time. Think as an individual - it's best to leave if you possibly can.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#118

Post by throwawayofcour »

hacksoi wrote: post #101
MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do hate the player. People are taught ethics for a reason: no set of rules and laws are sufficient to ensure integrity of the system. We rely on personal integrity. This is why we teach it to our children.

If people can get away with it, they will do it. Rules and punishments for breaking them exist for a reason.

> If people can get away with it, they will do it.

This isn't true of everyone, but assuming it is increases the likelihood that it will become so. Because if everyone is trying to get away with it, why shouldn't I? That sort of breakdown in trust is high up on my list of worrying societal failure modes.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#119

Post by abigail95 »

daedrdev wrote: post #28

Is there no liability for the author? There are billions of dollars wasted in drug trials and research that can be tied to this fraud. Surely they can face some legal issues due to this?

any lawyers know if it's wire fraud to get paid to do academic research and lie about the results?

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#120

Post by layer8 »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #111
layer8 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO “evil” is a misconception. People have different beliefs and psychological needs, and placed in certain incentive structures that has the outcomes that we see. You can call certain behaviors “evil”, but that doesn’t explain anything about why the behaviors occur.

If someone raped your wife and set your children on fire, you would probably rethink your stance on evil.

Nope. “Evil” still provides no explanation and no understanding of why and how things happen there. It’s the same thing as believing in miracles created by a god.
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