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Fraud, so much fraud

science.org

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Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#101

Post by hacksoi »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #87
Lionga wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#102

Post by artificialLimbs »

MetaWhirledPeas wrote: post #87
Lionga wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

How did those teachings work out for the fraudsters?

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#103

Post by SpaceManNabs »

artificialLimbs wrote: post #102
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.

How did those teachings work out for the fraudsters?

Most of them become distinguished in academia, and only a few get punished if they are too blatant or piss off too many people (see recent ivys losing their presidents over academic fraud).

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#104

Post by nkrisc »

tredre3 wrote: post #79
dekhn wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use EM radiation for illnesses and doctors apply them. It's one of the most important diagnostic and treatment options we have. I think what you're referring to is invalid therapies ("woo" or snake oil or just plain ignorance/greed) but it's hard to distinguish those from legitimate therapies at times.

> We use EM radiation for illnesses and doctors apply them. Do you have examples of usage as a treatment? I can only think of rTMS (whose effectiveness is contentious).

Jaundice in babies is treated with EM radiation in the 420–470 nm range.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#105

Post by SpaceManNabs »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #88
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…

> Would I have been more successful What are you talking about? You _are_ successful. You're not a fraud like all those other tossers.

That is not enough to most people. And if it is enough for others, then it is probably because they were fortunate enough to fall back on something better.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#106

Post by testfoobar »

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 - when I was younger, I would never have suspected that a scientist was committing fraud.

As I've gotten older, I understand that Charlie Munger's observation "“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.” is applicable everywhere - including science.

Academic scientists' careers are driven by publishing, citations and impact. Arguably some have figured how to game the system to advance their careers. Science be damned.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#107

Post by jltsiren »

hansonkd wrote: post #66
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?

Like all things in life that have risks of fraud, negligence or potential failure, insurance could be the answer. Want to publish in a peer reviewed paper? Well then your institution or you should take out a bond or insurance policy that guarantees your work is accurate. The insurance amount would fluctuate based on how big of impact this study could have. Is it a drug that will be consumed by millions? Big insurance…

In other words, you are suggesting more stringent peer review conducted by insurance companies. And because insurance companies are too small to have sufficient in-house expertise on every topic, the reviews will be usually done by external consultants. The costs might be from $10k for simple papers to hundreds of thousands for large complex papers.

The insurance model does not really work when the cost of evaluating the risks far outweighs the expected risks.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#109

Post by kzz102 »

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…

In my view, prosecuting the bad actors alone will not fix science. Science is by its own nature a community because only a small number of people have the expertise (and university positions) to participate. A healthy scientific discipline and a healthy community are the same thing. Just like the "tough on crime" initiative alone often does not help a problematic community, just punish scientific fraud harshly will not fix the problem. Because the community is small, to catch the bad actors, you will either have insiders policing themselves, or have an non-expert outsiders rendering judgements. It's easy for well-intention-ed policing effort to turn into power struggles.

This is why I think the most effective way is to empower good actors. Ensure open debate, limit the power of individuals, and prevent over concentration of power in a small group. These efforts are harder to implement than you think because they run against our desire to have scientific superstars and celebrities, but I think they will go a long way towards building a healthy community.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#110

Post by epistasis »

dekhn wrote: post #97
nonrandomstring wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Would I have been more successful What are you talking about? You _are_ successful. You're not a fraud like all those other tossers.

To me, at the time, successful would have been getting a tenure-track position at a Tier 1 university, discovering something important, and never publishing anything that was intentional fraud (I'm OK with making some level of legitimate errors that could need to be retracted). Of those three, I certainly didn't achieve #1 or #2, but did achieve #3, mainly because I didn't write very much and obsessed over what was s…

Most often #1 is sought after as the prerequisite for achieving #2. And due to the structural factors on the number of positions available, funding available, and supply of new PhDs and postdocs, it's most often a really good idea to avoid #1 these days.
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