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Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

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Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#201

Post by ModernMech »

bawolff wrote: post #9

It does seem like its way too easy to do this kind of fraud. The study seems extremely easy to replicate (no fancy equipment needed, just ask some people to proofread), and yet nobody did until now. Is there some way to change incentives to get people to try and replicate? Assign undergrads to replicate random research papers?

Fund it. Unfortunately there's hardly any money for regular studies, let alone replication studies. If you want better science there has to be tax dollars behind it. Otherwise corporations choose what gets funded, and they only fund narratives and experiments they think will be profitable for them.

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#202

Post by blackbear_ »

mike_hearn wrote: post #194
blackbear_ wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unnecessarily cynical. > The core problem is people conflating science with Science™. You fell into the same trap by criticizing scientific institutions and the human spirit in an attempt to criticize the scientific method. > What exactly is the scientific method? What a ridiculous argument. What exactly is a hamburger? Just ask around and you will find that nobody agrees if a veggie burger should be consider…

You're right that we don't need a universal definition of hamburger. That's because the government stays out of it, so private individuals can use things like Google Maps reviews to police a common sense definition of hamburger along with quality and other nuance. If governments were forcing everyone to buy anything advertised as a hamburger no questions asked, then the definition of hamburger would matter a lot. The…

Yup, that is also how it works with scientific research: Once an article is published, anybody is free to read it, criticize it, reproduce it. That's because the government stays out of it: private individuals can use things like Google Scholar and Google Search to find other people's reviews and follow-up studies to better understand the quality and nuances of the original research. Consensus is an important part of science just as it is for reviews on Google Maps. Is consensus sometimes wrong? Yes, no doubt. Is it useless? Nope.

> If people can't define it, then that seems to me like a valid criticism of the scientific method.

Please read the hamburger example once more.

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#203

Post by mike_hearn »

blackbear_ wrote: post #202
mike_hearn wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right that we don't need a universal definition of hamburger. That's because the government stays out of it, so private individuals can use things like Google Maps reviews to police a common sense definition of hamburger along with quality and other nuance. If governments were forcing everyone to buy anything advertised as a hamburger no questions asked, then the definition of hamburger would matter a lot. The…

Yup, that is also how it works with scientific research: Once an article is published, anybody is free to read it, criticize it, reproduce it. That's because the government stays out of it: private individuals can use things like Google Scholar and Google Search to find other people's reviews and follow-up studies to better understand the quality and nuances of the original research. Consensus is an important part of…

Peer reviews don't appear in Google Scholar.

The involvement of governments is when they force the public to pay for the studies via tax funded grants, without caring about the quality.

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#204

Post by blackbear_ »

randusername wrote: post #197
blackbear_ wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unnecessarily cynical. > The core problem is people conflating science with Science™. You fell into the same trap by criticizing scientific institutions and the human spirit in an attempt to criticize the scientific method. > What exactly is the scientific method? What a ridiculous argument. What exactly is a hamburger? Just ask around and you will find that nobody agrees if a veggie burger should be consider…

Science as a monolithic institution is a trap. We ought to be able to trust the public with complex realities and contradictions. The scientific method and dogged researchers have brought us many wonderful things, but at the same time fraud happens and the layman might reasonably question to what extent the academy attracts fraudsters and to what extent it creates them. If we can get over the absolutes then we can di…

Totally agree with this framing: trust in public institutions (scientific, governmental, etc.) is a common good that needs to be promoted and safeguarded.

Identifying and punishing fraud is a part of it, whistleblower protection another, modernizing the system so that graduate students are not so dependent on individual advisors yet another idea. More and more personal contact between the public and scientists could be useful too, for example via science fairs, meet & greets and so on.

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#206

Post by dartharva »

edgyquant wrote: post #17
bawolff wrote: post #9

It does seem like its way too easy to do this kind of fraud. The study seems extremely easy to replicate (no fancy equipment needed, just ask some people to proofread), and yet nobody did until now. Is there some way to change incentives to get people to try and replicate? Assign undergrads to replicate random research papers?

Why do we even accept anything as true without replication by default?

[dead]

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#207

Post by dartharva »

freediddy wrote: post #27

No paper should ever be referenced until it has been replicated by an independent group. The replication crisis in science is real, and it won't take long for no one to believe anything anymore.

>The replication crisis in science is real

In psychology, you mean. Many contest if it even qualifies as a science anymore after the complete annihilation of trust it has undergone.

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#208

Post by qmmmur »

mike_hearn wrote: post #194
blackbear_ wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is unnecessarily cynical. > The core problem is people conflating science with Science™. You fell into the same trap by criticizing scientific institutions and the human spirit in an attempt to criticize the scientific method. > What exactly is the scientific method? What a ridiculous argument. What exactly is a hamburger? Just ask around and you will find that nobody agrees if a veggie burger should be consider…

You're right that we don't need a universal definition of hamburger. That's because the government stays out of it, so private individuals can use things like Google Maps reviews to police a common sense definition of hamburger along with quality and other nuance. If governments were forcing everyone to buy anything advertised as a hamburger no questions asked, then the definition of hamburger would matter a lot. The…

Sorry your device owes nothing to academia? Are you referring to a computer? If that’s the case are you mad?

Re: Evidence of Fraud in an Influential Study About Procrastination

#210

Post by qmmmur »

zhivota wrote: post #149

I hope that with LLMs we'll see a lot faster identification of these anomalies. Imagine that this guy taught at MIT and has his own lab at Duke, basically more than 20 years of taking up some of the most prestigious positions in his field, all based on fraud. The butterfly effect this has on science as a practice is huge. Some marginal researcher who actually deserved it was bumped out of those places, and somewhere…

They will be generated faster than they can be detected.
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