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‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

nature.com

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Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#121

Post by pvaldes »

BSEdlMMldESB wrote: post #16
chubbnix wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this academia’s moment? People have been publishing bad science since its inception, its why we made tools like peer-review which predate the internet.

there was this: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/may/07/too-greedy-m... also the scandals in standford and harvard. also this https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=202307201... which is bad because the academia is intended to be above this "petty geopolitics". as far as I know academic collaboration didn't quite stop either during the cold war, but I was born after it was over so I don't really k…

Also this:

https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2023-04-20/one-of-th...

"One of the most internationally cited scientists, Ai Koyanagi, forced to renounce her controversial contract with a Saudi university"

"The psychiatrist, currently employed in Spain at the Sant Joan de Déu Research Institute, declared that her main place of work was King Abdulaziz University, with the aim of elevating the Arab institution in the international rankings"

And is not the only researcher in that gravy train:

"Seven highly cited Spanish researchers [employed by Spain], paid by universities in Saudi Arabia to increase their prestige [posing as fake full-time employees of that Universities]"

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#122

Post by ohbleek »

_cenw wrote: post #65
mjhay wrote: post #30

Stuff involving room-temp superconductors would be about the last thing I'd ever want to fabricate.

Schön got away with it for years. One of my favorite video essays is a long exploration of that case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfDoml-Db64

Thank you for recommending this! I just finished it and this is one of the best video essays I’ve ever seen.

Do you have any more recommendations?

Or suggestions of channels to check out?

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#123

Post by gfdsgvbcd »

Zetice wrote: post #98
gfdsgvbcd wrote: post #73

my wife spent a year trying to reproduce some data that her research depended on only to eventually find out that it was fraudulent. the original researcher even admitted this to their lab, and he retired and his lab was shut down. no retraction was ever published. my wifes lab tried to publish a paper showing that the original research was fraudulent and the journal was not willing to publish it. she has since left…

I never understand why folks who have bad individual experiences end up extrapolating that experience to represent an entire area (field, subject, industry etc.). Or to put it another way, I understand the impulse, buy why not self reflect a bit to figure out if that impulse has merit (it doesn't)? Surely the fact that, overall, we do make meaningful and real scientific progress over time (we may now have room temper…

most scientific research is completely useless, science done for the sake of science with no real practical application

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#124

Post by Zetice »

gfdsgvbcd wrote: post #123
Zetice wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never understand why folks who have bad individual experiences end up extrapolating that experience to represent an entire area (field, subject, industry etc.). Or to put it another way, I understand the impulse, buy why not self reflect a bit to figure out if that impulse has merit (it doesn't)? Surely the fact that, overall, we do make meaningful and real scientific progress over time (we may now have room temper…

most scientific research is completely useless, science done for the sake of science with no real practical application

Maybe, but you certainly don't know that going in, and the value of the occasional profound discovery more than covers for the dead ends.

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#125

Post by feoren »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #87

From the article -- "...after researcher Jan Hendrik Schön at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, was discovered to have falsified data. In Schön’s case, and in his own experience, Muller says, 'people who fake data tend not to do it just once'." I think this is the "money shot" here, but I admit I am biased :-). I got into a heated debate years ago over the "harshness" of treating students who cheated on an exam.…

> In that case Universities will have to expel their entire student bodies!

Liars think everyone lies; cheaters think everyone cheats. I suspect these were university administrators, which is a job that I can definitely see attracting know-nothing losers who cheated their way through college. So of course they think everyone else did too. I was never aware of even a single instance of cheating among anyone I knew at college (although I was not exactly an inquisitor about it either). I suspect the rate of cheating is much lower than these admins think it is, and also support expelling everyone who is conclusively caught cheating. Conclusively is the big caveat, though: we'd have to be very, very sure. This means a lot more than running their essay through a "plagiarism checker", "AI checker", or some other lazy approach.

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#126

Post by Ericson2314 »

troupe wrote: post #47
Ericson2314 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fundamental problem with research academia is that we scaled it up massively without introducing more division of labor.

Interesting. I'm not sure I fully understand what you are saying though. Can you expand on that?

It's all throwing PhDs at novel research. Boring reproducing known things is just one type of support work that is neglected. There is a vast "supply chain" of work that allows novel research to be done, and we've neglected it.

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#127

Post by kthejoker2 »

motohagiography wrote: post #111

The world needs an academic fraud Jubilee. We could probably design a cryptographic protocol where you can submit a paper for retraction if and only if all other papers above a threshold are also retracted. A kind of pre-commitment hash for a multi party prisoners dilemma. Reality is, the way bureaucracies work is the only way to survive in it is to become compromised so that all the other compromised people in it ca…

A literal "Truth and Reconciliation" commission. I like it.

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#128

Post by mock-possum »

fluoridation wrote: post #102
ChuckMcM wrote: post #87

From the article -- "...after researcher Jan Hendrik Schön at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, was discovered to have falsified data. In Schön’s case, and in his own experience, Muller says, 'people who fake data tend not to do it just once'." I think this is the "money shot" here, but I admit I am biased :-). I got into a heated debate years ago over the "harshness" of treating students who cheated on an exam.…

No, corruption arises when people lose faith in the system and its rules. Using harsh punishments doesn't work, if some people can pull strings with acquaintances to get themselves out of trouble. A system where every infraction has a minor punishment can work without corruption, if everyone believes everyone else will act honestly.

Is kicking someone out of academia because they show themselves to be dishonest overly harsh though?

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#129

Post by mock-possum »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #109
cycomanic wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The serious question that arises from your argument is, should we apply this stance to all parts of life. Should drivers loose their licence indefinitely if they drive to fast or park wrong? Should we chop of the hand of thieves (or maybe forbid them to enter any stores)?

The difference is a college degree is a cert issued by the state. It's not unfair for part of the cert is the presumption that the person is honest. And to deny cert to people known to be dishonest. Disclosure. I never cheated in college and have a hunch that people trying to make excuses for cheaters are cheaters themselves.

Yeah same, it’s crazy to me that everyone would so casually make excuses for exposed liars.

Re: ‘A very disturbing picture’: another retraction for controversial physicist

#130

Post by hcta »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #10

It may be a person's instinct to immediately blame the researcher, and of course, I definitely think data fabrication is never justified. However, what is the societal problem here? It's the problem that in academia, there are such pressures to publish and be first nowadays that many people will do anything to get ahead. It doesn't help that social media and news sites have introduced a sort of gamification into it.…

This post seems almost completely vacuous to me. I guess you could read it to mean that if a person cheats, there must be some "societal problem" causing it. That would seem to imply you believe society could in principle be 'fixed' s.t. no one is ever incentivized to cheat. Is that what you mean? Or simply, s.t. fewer people are incentivized to cheat. In that case, duh. But fewer to what extent? And are there any actual constructive suggestions forthcoming?
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