Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise? • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#101

Post by injidup » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

OriginalNebula wrote: post #92

injidup wrote: post #20

I recently had the privilege of trying to do the right thing when I identified fraudulent research carried out by an institution in Austria. The initial response of the institution was positive but when I pressed for further details on how such things could happen suddenly nobody anymore would take my call. The research was paid for by a private company to pimp a nonsense product. The research was never published in…

Did you contact Arbeiterkammer, VKI or Peter Kolba?

I contacted and spoke at length with the Austrian Kosumantenschutz. https://www.arbeiterkammer.at/beratung/konsumentenschutz/ind... The product is clearly and at minimum a case of false advertising as there is nothing approaching a computer chip inside. However and though sympathetic the KS/AK said they couldn't do anything and couldn't refer me to anybody who could. I found this rather surprising.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#102

Post by adolph » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

faeriechangling wrote: post #88

adolph wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, maybe its just a coincidence that it was published right when the current dangers of misinformation are so high and so many are failing to believe science.

>failing to believe science Believing in science means believing in falsification and sceptism. This was published during the ongoing replication crisis in medicine where we're finding that more than half of cancer studies don't replicate [1]. This replication crisis hasn't been put on hold and all science is now deemed irrefutable or you are VACCINE HESISTANT and DANGEROUS. I'm mostly confident in the COVID vaccines…

don't replicate != fraudulent

I'm mostly confident in the COVID vaccines <- Is this "mostly" qualifier not the dangerous front end of misinformation and vaccine hesitancy?

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#103

Post by ChrisMarshallNY » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

I'm actually kind of flabbergasted that people -no matter who they are- are automatically given the benefit of the doubt, without question.

I'll bet that a lot of folks just assume that anything they do will be taken at face value, without question or inspection. I also suspect that many "brought and paid for studies" are done this way.

For my own work, I generally assume that most of these studies are pretty much worthless, and tend to do some of my own homework before accepting them. Since most don't concern me at all; it's not a big deal.

Health is just one place this kind of thing happens. Software Development is absolutely rife with bad implementations. I am not in AI, but I have heard from a number of people that AI has a big problem with irreproducible results.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190926055757/http://www.jir.co...

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#104

Post by LadyCailin » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #67

ta988 wrote: post #22

When you want to do a proper work, your grants and papers get rejected because they are not innovatove enough or don't go far enough. So it is not a surprise that people that lied in their applications about what they can realistically do also lie when it comes to reporting results. Unfortunately there is no way out. I stopped counting how many reviewers of my grants disagreed on what was proposed, one saying that it…

I'm sadly amused by all this. The complaint I hear about privately done research is it's all tainted by the profit motive, and so research should be funded by the government, as then it'll be pure and untainted by selfish motives. Of course, government funded motives are just as tainted by selfish motives, if not more. Even worse, the people who make the funding decisions aren't spending their own money, so they have…

> At least with privately funded research, the people providing the money aren't going to fund bullshit fake research.

Citation needed, first of all, but governments are at minimum accountable to voters. Private money is in no way accountable.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#105

Post by nathanaldensr » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 7:31 PM UTC

jgeada wrote: post #58

It is about time to focus on the right problem: management standards that cause this crap to be pushed, and the effective immunity from consequences companies have when they lie. Why blame scientists when power is actually with management? And why let management and investors get away with this? It is about time "limited" liability had a pass through liability for this type of stuff: if you lie, knowingly or not, the…

Unfortunately, you yourself are assuming that the actors in charge of holding people are accountable are themselves trustworthy.

I feel we are approaching a singularity of low trust between people. It's only getting worse. You can't trust the watchers (journals) and you can trust the watchers' watchers (governments and the law). You can only trust yourself at the end of the day.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#106

Post by dpifke » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 7:33 PM UTC

dqpb wrote: post #84

injidup wrote: post #20

I recently had the privilege of trying to do the right thing when I identified fraudulent research carried out by an institution in Austria. The initial response of the institution was positive but when I pressed for further details on how such things could happen suddenly nobody anymore would take my call. The research was paid for by a private company to pimp a nonsense product. The research was never published in…

Can you be sued for asking questions?

You can be sued by anyone, for anything, at any time.

Whether or not that lawsuit has any merit is irrelevant.

With certain exceptions based on subject matter (e.g. SLAPP) or jurisdiction, it still costs money to hire a lawyer to defend against the suit.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#107

Post by diognesofsinope » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

ethanbond wrote: post #28

ta988 wrote: post #22

When you want to do a proper work, your grants and papers get rejected because they are not innovatove enough or don't go far enough. So it is not a surprise that people that lied in their applications about what they can realistically do also lie when it comes to reporting results. Unfortunately there is no way out. I stopped counting how many reviewers of my grants disagreed on what was proposed, one saying that it…

Yep. The incentives in science are all wrong. To maximize your chances of publication (i.e. keeping your job), you have to make the most outlandish claims you can possibly maybe defend. Additionally, the complexity of data/analysis is increasing every day while also the esoteric domain knowledge required to make any progress is deeper and more specialized.

Not only this, academia is a really cushy job.

When I was an economics RA literally half of the econ professors didn't work Fridays and barely worked summers. It was incredible you get paid 150k with that kind of schedule.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#108

Post by mrits » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 7:34 PM UTC

fasteddie31003 wrote: post #100

I've had a thought on how to solve this issue by using basically a research paper futures market. You could implement this with Ethereum Smart Contracts. You have a market around the validity of research papers. You would need some authority that would act as the oracle of the paper's validity. If the paper is found invalid before some time period the people who bet on the paper's truth would lose their money to the…

This could actually make it worse. Companies could pump their own research anonymously

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#109

Post by ineedasername » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 7:35 PM UTC

he set about investigating the trials and confirmed that they hadn’t ever happened. They all had a lead author who purported to come from an institution that didn’t exist

To me, this doesn't mean that simple distrust is the answer. These are basic issues that should be revealed with even minimal due diligence during the editorial & peer review process.

Peer reviewers and Journal Editors should brink a skeptical mindset to article submissions from the outset before they're ever accepted for publication.

After that? Well, whenever research is on an emerging topic there is a certain amount of scientific skepticism you should use. Same if results go against an established consensus on a topic. However this is where the "replication problem" enters the picture because replicating research has a lower status.

When it comes to media reporting, things get even more complicated. New science is messy. You only have to look at COVID research for the past 1.5 years, and when it's an issue of such public urgency, EVERY development hits the public eye, pulling back the curtain on the sausage factor. Because new science is rarely "Hey look what I discovered!" followed by "Yay we all agree!" It's more of a conversation or dialectic, with ever more research revealing the picture a bit more until there's enough to be confidence in a given interpretation. And even there, work proceeds on alternatives.

The above is very much NOT how science is taught to the public in schools. You learn "Darwin Discovered Evolution!", not the significant years-long process of researchers arguing it out, sometimes even with heated vitriol. You learn "Newton Discovered Gravity!", not all of the complexities and disagreements that continue even to today.

Out education systems have failed society when it comes to truly understanding the scientific process. This is why distrust of science increased. Because in past decades awareness of scientific advances often only reached the public after at least part of the sausage was made, meaning now it looks like it's descended into total disarray.

Re: Time to assume that health research is fraudulent until proven otherwise?

#110

Post by adolph » Mon, Jul 19, 2021, 7:36 PM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #87

adolph wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are "vaccines for a specific illness" not in the set "all of medicine?"

Yes. But "all of medecine" is not in the set "vaccines for a specific illness".

Affirming the consequent, sometimes called converse error, fallacy of the converse, or confusion of necessity and sufficiency, is a formal fallacy of taking a true conditional statement (e.g., "If the lamp were broken, then the room would be dark,") and invalidly inferring its converse ("The room is dark, so the lamp is broken,") even though the converse may not be true.

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