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Fraud, so much fraud

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Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#321

Post by lupire »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #186
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…

It becomes a survival bias: if people can cheat at a competitive game (or research field) and get away with it, then at the end you'll wind up with only cheaters left (everyone else stops playing).

Anything not Forbidden is Compulsory.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#322

Post by wredue »

itronitron wrote: post #298
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…

I used to work with someone up until the point I realized they were so distant from any form of reality that they couldn't distinguish between fact or fiction. Naturally, they are now the head of AI where they work.

Hacker news is completely flooded with “AI learns just like humans do” and “AI models the human brain” despite neither of these things having any concrete evidence at all.

Unfortunately it isn’t just bosses being fooled by this. Scores of people push this crap.

I am not saying AI has no value. I am saying that these idiots are idiots.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#323

Post by momoschili »

drevil-v2 wrote: post #287
antisthenes wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Similar - when I was younger, I would never have suspected that a scientist was committing fraud. Unfortunately many less bright people seem to interpret this as "never trust science", when in reality science is still the best way to push humanity forward and alleviate human suffering, _despite_ all the fraud and misaligned incentives that may influence it.

In defence of the "less bright people" or deplorables as others have called them - they are deeply suspicious of Science(tm) used as a cudgel. They intuit that some parasitic entity or entities has latched on to Science and is co-opting it for it's own gain to achieve it's own purposes which run counter to the interests of the people. The heavy handed Covid response and censorship is a prime example of that. The whol…

How are "heavy handed covid response and censorship" a prime example of that?

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#324

Post by searine »

SpaceManNabs wrote: post #100
SpaceManNabs wrote: post #33

I had a feeling academia was just run a ran by people letting blatant fraud, exploitation and abuse of phd students, stealing during peer-review, and just other forms of plagiarism, fraud, and exploitation slide by. They let it slide by because correcting these things would lead to massive changes in academia that might put them out of jobs. Every year that feeling becomes more certain. Glad I quit the track in grad…

alright, am i being downvoted because of my perniciousness to those leading academia, or because I was too sympathetic to the people being exploited?

You are being downvoted because you extrapolating from one fraud case to call all scientists dishonest.

I can do it too. Person named SpaceManNabs made a bad post. There for all posts by SpaceManNabs, and probably all posts on HackerNews are bad. A dishonest lot.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#325

Post by wredue »

dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #170
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…

> At the time (20+ years ago) it didn't occur to me that anybody would intentionally modify images of gels to promote the results they claimed Fraud I suspect is only tip of the iceberg, worse still is delusion that what is taught is factually correct. A large portion of mainstream knowledge that we call 'science' is incorrect. While fraudulent claims are relatively easy to detect, claims that are backed up by ignora…

Science sent us to the moon. “Do your own research” sent millions to their graves.

“Do your own research” is a movement that is fraught with grifting and basically foundationally just fraud to the core.

“Science” definitely has some fraudsters, but remains the best institution we have in the search for truth.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#326

Post by asdf123qweasd »

lupire wrote: post #318
searine wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a ridiculous exaggeration. Yes, like in every walk of life, fraud happens. However, the extreme success of academic science shows that most of it is real, honest, work.

How so? The fraction of academic science that is applied to anything, anywhere, with clearly identifiable impact is both a tiny fraction of academic science, and also often detrimental quality of impact.

Thats not true entirely. There is research, with huge impacts and the money leveraging- keeps it brutally honest. Nothing makes it out of a lab and into a fab, without certainty of the method working at least in lab conditions reproduceable. There are many billions, but not that many billions.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#328

Post by 5mk »

slashdave wrote: post #18
idunnoman1222 wrote: post #6

The amazing part about this to me is that the only reason the authors were caught is image manipulation. The fraud in numbers and text? Not so easy to uncover. Prediction: papers stop using pictures entirely

GenAI will make faking western blots fantastically easy

Yep! Even at the moment you don't even need GenAI, you can just run a dummy gel with X, Y, and Z proteins that will give you desired band patterns.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#329

Post by wredue »

neom wrote: post #11

I'm the furthest thing from a scientist unless you count 3,000 hours of PBS spacetime, but I love science and so science/academia fraud to me, feels kinda like the worst kinda fraud you can commit. Financial fraud can cause suicides and ruin in lives, sure, but I feel like academic fraud just sets the whole of humanity back? I also feel that through my life I've (maybe wrongly) placed a great deal of respect and trus…

Can you go to jail for knowingly defrauding another entity out of money (such as grants). Yes. Absolutely.

Are you going to go to jail for fudging some numbers on your paper, not likely.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#330

Post by mensetmanusman »

dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #178
sitkack wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If humanity is to mature, we should be an open book when it comes to incentives and build a world purposefully with all incentives aligned to the outcomes we collectively agree upon. https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/ Charlie Munger's Misjudgment #1: Incentive-caused Bias https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-2yIO8cnvw https://fs.blog/bias-incentives-reinforcement/

>outcomes we collectively agree upon. lol, what are the chances? The average Joe is interested in Dem vs Rep or what the latest show on Netflix. The average researcher is worried about his livelihood, tenure etc.

Average Joe does not care about politics…
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