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Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

stanforddaily.com

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Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#101

Post by bsder »

ekianjo wrote: post #93
bsder wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Current Science is mostly cargo cult. Such statements are mostly cargo cult. Experiments with known results are finicky. See: "Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass" https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html Experiments with unknown results are ridiculously finicky. You would be stunned at the number of experiments that got lucky and hinge on things like "how strongly stoppered the bottle is" (this normally…

I am an engineer so I know very well that industrial replication is far from easy, but that's a whole different topic here. That's why when manufacturing at scale you implement numerous controls for each step to ensure you remain into "whats known" territory. Now, when you publish a discovery in a paper, common sense demands that you are sure that you results are not random, and the only 100% reliable way to do that…

"Difficult to replicate" does NOT mean "wrong".

The fact that your experimental technique sucks is not my problem, thanks. Go get some better grad students.

And this is before we start getting into medicine which has both ethical and expense issues with running multiple experiments.

Your position is both unrealistic and untenable. Medicine and science would literally grind to a halt.

> the incentives to cheat are obvious and there is nothing in place to prevent them.

The real issue is that Marc Tessier-Lavigne has caused an entire industry to waste millions (possibly billions) of dollars,d elayed Alzheimer's research for decades and will suffer no real punishment. He's 65 years old and has made a shitload of money based on the fraud.

The real question is "How do you punish this in order to disincentivize it?"

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#102

Post by laidoffamazon »

ken47 wrote: post #91
laidoffamazon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be beneficial if every Stanford admit just went to their state schools. The purpose of these institutions isn't to educate, it's to confer status (in a tax efficient and positive-eugenic way)

These schools can offer harder, accelerated courses under the presumption that the floor of the student body’s ability is higher than average. In that sense, the education can be more rigorous and faster. Is that actually the case in practice? I’ve never gone to a mediocre university so I can’t compare. But I can say that aside from intellect, attendees of top universities are not ethically superior to the average pe…

Berkeley is an objectively lower tier school than Stanford that has a 4-5x higher acceptance rate but Berkeley most definitely has a more "rigorous" CS program for undergraduates. Same applies to the honors classes at other public ivies that are accessible to "good students" without the need to be superhuman like the HYPSM+ admits.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#103

Post by jyxent »

wolverine876 wrote: post #58
jyxent wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand. The issue is that many more papers should be retracted. A paper this major that couldn't be replicated still took another decade to be retracted. There are many more papers that are less cited that will never get looked at in enough detail to discover fraud.

You're just making up results, sans data. Your paper won't even pass peer review - on HN.

And you downplay evidence of fraud. You mentioned studies where 1/3 to 1/2 of reviewed papers are found to not be replicable and say they get similar but weaker results. This is evidence of p-hacking or data manipulation. You should expect far less papers to not be replicable given proper statistics.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#104

Post by bryan0 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #64
korginator wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add this point from the article for context: "This retraction is Tessier-Lavigne’s fourth in as many months, a stunning turn of events for a researcher of his stature." That begs the question, how did at least four such cutting-edge research works with fabricated data and results go through the review process unscathed?

There's no evidence of fabricated data, afaik. (That's your own fabrication, apparently.)

Here’s some of the evidence of data manipulation: https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/29/stanford-presidents-res...

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#105

Post by beenBoutIT »

dpflan wrote: post #16
ShamelessC wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True that. I used to feel bad not being able to get into these schools due to mental health issues. Felt insecure. Now I’ve looked around at the community of the Ivy League, the various so called success stories like Zuckerberg, and of course incidents like this. All I see is the rich fucking over everyone else for power and inflating public perception of their intelligence to try and keep actually intelligent people…

I recall Paul Krugman discussing the composition of Ivy League college student bodies, and how legacy admissions allow subpar students to matriculate while the schools have the resources to attract the most intelligent / capable students — so the student body let’s say is half legacy, half brilliant outliers (one maybe consider rich legacies as societal outliers too for different aspects). The brilliant students give…

This is why the objective admission system used by the University of California is so important. Nobody can game their way into a UC and IIRC, being a legacy only DQs you from some financial assistance they offer to 'first in family' to attend.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#106

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #66
wolverine876 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's my anecdote: In extensive exposure to a top-25 global university, and to a top-10 elite one, there was a big difference in the student body and the education. The latter was a different world; the education was innovative, brilliant, demanding at a very high level that I didn't anticipate. The students operated at a different level, world-class talent with shocking intelligence and, for their age, experience,…

I'd love for you to tell me, step by step, what someone that didn't get into a top institution of any kind should take away from this comment. Because all I can take away is that people like me are just objectively inferior compared to you, destined to not be a future leader or professional. Is that not what you are attempting to communicate? I just want to be crystal clear. We all know people like you are superhuman…

Yep, the Ivy League is one mechanism through which classism is perpetuated. The "elite" do think they're better than us, though it's rare that they'd be so gauche as to say it outright.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#107

Post by ken47 »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #102
ken47 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These schools can offer harder, accelerated courses under the presumption that the floor of the student body’s ability is higher than average. In that sense, the education can be more rigorous and faster. Is that actually the case in practice? I’ve never gone to a mediocre university so I can’t compare. But I can say that aside from intellect, attendees of top universities are not ethically superior to the average pe…

Berkeley is an objectively lower tier school than Stanford that has a 4-5x higher acceptance rate but Berkeley most definitely has a more "rigorous" CS program for undergraduates. Same applies to the honors classes at other public ivies that are accessible to "good students" without the need to be superhuman like the HYPSM+ admits.

This is why acceptance rates cannot be considered in a vacuum as a measure of universal quality. Informed people generally understand that there is a lot of overlap in the bell curves of the intellectual abilities of Stanford and Berkeley undergrads. Stanford may generally have a higher stature in that it has a stronger association with wealth, but only fools believe it has the monopoly on student intellect in the Bay.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#108

Post by tptacek »

ken47 wrote: post #100
kasey_junk wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fwiw this refrain was something we heard in the 80s. You’d expect 40 years on to see some of that impact.

We do. Even just recently, US presidents have been cutting off China’s access to US tech out of fear.

If they're so much better than we are at this stuff, why does it matter? Why do they need access to US tech? Our tech is made by idiots who can't pass AP Calculus AB.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#109

Post by ken47 »

tptacek wrote: post #108
ken47 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do. Even just recently, US presidents have been cutting off China’s access to US tech out of fear.

If they're so much better than we are at this stuff, why does it matter? Why do they need access to US tech? Our tech is made by idiots who can't pass AP Calculus AB.

I think the better question is, if we didn't think they were so good at this stuff, why would we limit their access?

I believe the US possesses the human capital within it to compete with the likes of China in terms of STEM, but American society does not value this ability at nearly the same level as Asian (including India) countries.

Anyone who grew up in the US can gut check this. Which is more prestigious: MIT/Caltech or [insert almost any Ivy League]? The average American will pick an Ivy League. That, not our latent ability, is going to be the seed of our eventual dethronement.

Granted many from Asia might also pick an Ivy League, but I'd wager a lot of money that the proportion that picks a tech school will be much, much higher than America.

Re: Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

#110

Post by tptacek »

ken47 wrote: post #109
tptacek wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they're so much better than we are at this stuff, why does it matter? Why do they need access to US tech? Our tech is made by idiots who can't pass AP Calculus AB.

I think the better question is, if we didn't think they were so good at this stuff, why would we limit their access? I believe the US possesses the human capital within it to compete with the likes of China in terms of STEM, but American society does not value this ability at nearly the same level as Asian (including India) countries. Anyone who grew up in the US can gut check this. Which is more prestigious: MIT/Cal…

Why is that the better question? My question seems simpler. Can you answer it?
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