Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president

stanforddaily.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 143 posts

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

#131

Post by mike_hearn »

arp242 wrote: post #80
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.

> The issue is that many more papers should be retracted. The reality is we don't know. Should it be more than 8 out of 10,000? Almost certainly, since quite a lot of papers barely get any attention after publication. But should the number be 10 out of 10,000? 20 out of 10,000? 100 out of 10,000? We don't know. And boring papers without any interesting conclusions published just for CV reasons also don't really matte…

It's going to be really field dependent. Computer science has fewer problems than social psychology for example.

To put a figure on it, consider that about 0.04% of papers are retracted but about 2.5% of scientists admit in polls to having engaged in fraud. Obviously though most fraudsters won't admit to it (they often convince themselves it's not fraud via mental gymnastics), so another way to approach it is to ask them to estimate what proportion of other scientists commit fraud. Then they answer 10%.

It's a bit hard to know how many papers are published per year, I've seen estimates of anywhere from 2 to 5 million. If 10% of scientists are committing fraud and they were all detected, that would yield on the order of maybe half a million to a million retractions per year, as we'd expect fraudulent scientists to be much more productive than the ones that play fair.

But fraud isn't the only reason that papers should be retracted. You'd expect serious non-fraud problems to be a reason too. If papers were retracted for all the reasons non-scientists imagine papers are retracted, e.g. being foundationally based on another paper/dataset that's been retracted, using invalid methodologies, internally inconsistent statistics, serious software bugs etc, you could probably get up to 50% or more in some fields.

This sounds absurdly high but is the number estimated by Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet. And according to Marc Andreessen, when he asked if it could be true that half of all biotech research was fake the head of a major US funding agency actually laughed at this figure and said no, in biotech it's more like maybe 90% is fake. So the problem does seem to be huge.

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

#132

Post by laidoffamazon »

wolverine876 wrote: post #122
laidoffamazon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Here are my thoughts: The first step is to put aside subjective biases, put aside ourselves completely, which is necessary to reading and listening effectively - curiously and objectively. You may fear or hate those things, but you brought them to the conversation; they aren't what I wrote about. (For example, I never said I attended either institution, or that the students there are somehow superior.) Another step:…

> and their student bodies are exceptional? It's a cheap way out of the conversation

> I'm not inferior to anyone on the planet

These appear in tension, yes? It’s pretty clear that I’m inferior to anyone at Harvard including Claudine Gay, and my life is far worse than anyone there and will not get better. It’s also clear that people like you would definitely believe people like me are subhuman “NPCs” because we didn’t accomplish enough in high school if you bristle at censoring your admiration for this exceptional, superhuman cohort of people. If they’re superhuman, I can only conclude I’m under human, yes?

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

#133

Post by laidoffamazon »

ken47 wrote: post #95
laidoffamazon wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reed is a pretty selective and well regarded school, unlike the schools I got into.

It’s nowhere near the stature or notoriety of Princeton, Harvard, Yale, etc. It feels like you’re moving the goalpost. Anyway, maybe you should change the way you measure yourself.

How else would I? Seems pretty clear how society views people like me

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

#134

Post by JumpCrisscross »

ken47 wrote: post #112
tptacek wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I don't think China "needs" American tech. My impression is that, while they have not yet reached technological parity with America, given the country's intellectual capital and culture, that can only remain true for so long. And it only "matters" to the extent that we care about whether China surpasses the US technologically within a few generations. If you don't care, then I suppose it shouldn't matter to you.

> don't think China "needs" American tech

This is objectively false. Unless you believe fighter jets, semiconductors and AI are obsolete.

> whether China surpasses the US technologically within a few generations

China is experiencing demographic collapse. If they can’t gain the upper hand within about a decade, the opportunity will have likely passed as the surplus capital it has enjoyed to date as a result of its demographic dividend will reverse.

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

#135

Post by wolverine876 »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #132
wolverine876 wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are my thoughts: The first step is to put aside subjective biases, put aside ourselves completely, which is necessary to reading and listening effectively - curiously and objectively. You may fear or hate those things, but you brought them to the conversation; they aren't what I wrote about. (For example, I never said I attended either institution, or that the students there are somehow superior.) Another step:…

> and their student bodies are exceptional? It's a cheap way out of the conversation > I'm not inferior to anyone on the planet These appear in tension, yes? It’s pretty clear that I’m inferior to anyone at Harvard including Claudine Gay, and my life is far worse than anyone there and will not get better. It’s also clear that people like you would definitely believe people like me are subhuman “NPCs” because we didn’…

I can only refer you back to the GP. All your words are brought by you to the conversation; none by me. I not only disagree with you, some directly conflicts with what I've said.

The tension is only if you accept some external definition of yourself. That's why I talked about external and internal in the GP. Harvard can't possibly love you; in a sense, nobody can love you; you can only love yourself (and then, there's there's room for personal love from others - but never Harvard). The same goes for me and everyone else.

All that matters is what you give to yourself. If you give yourself the parent comment, that's what you will have, even if Harvard begged you to come - lots of externally successful people are very unhappy for that reason. If you give yourself love and value, then you will have that, again regardless of what Harvard says about you. Harvard is orthogonal to the outcome.

You are not inferior to anyone. But only you can tell yourself that. You won't hear me until you tell yourself and believe it. But I really mean it.

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

#136

Post by wolverine876 »

andrewflnr wrote: post #127
wolverine876 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data is right there at the top of my comment.

You made a claim about an "impression" on HN. You cite data about the actual phenomenon. Interesting.

I didn't understand your prior comment. I don't feel the need to backup my impression of HN by doing personal research.

I wrote,

> Reading HN, one might get the impression that it's much higher [than eight out of every 10,000 are retracted]

You wrote,

> I certainly don't get that impression at all, and it doesn't seem like anyone else in this thread does either

People in the thread seem to disagree with the data, not my impression. They think the fraud rate is much higher than the data implies, which supports my impression.

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

#137

Post by andrewflnr »

wolverine876 wrote: post #136
andrewflnr wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You made a claim about an "impression" on HN. You cite data about the actual phenomenon. Interesting.

I didn't understand your prior comment. I don't feel the need to backup my impression of HN by doing personal research. I wrote, > Reading HN, one might get the impression that it's much higher [than eight out of every 10,000 are retracted] You wrote, > I certainly don't get that impression at all, and it doesn't seem like anyone else in this thread does either People in the thread seem to disagree with the data, not…

Are you serious? I can see people say explicitly in replies to you what they actually disagree with. Are you not capable of distinguishing between the claims "this stat is false" and "it's bad that this stat is true", or "this stat doesn't imply what you think it does"?

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

#138

Post by CoastalCoder »

laidoffamazon wrote: post #65
wolverine876 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you attended any of those institutions? That's not my experience at all. The education was off-the-charts good. In more detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38829116

Of course not, I wouldn't get in. But I never said the education is bad. I just said their purpose is not to educate. Morill Act institutions were developed to educate, and by accepting the vast majority of people that apply University of Oklahoma will always exist to educate. The same cannot be said for Brown or Stanford.

I got master's in CS from Brown. Fwiw, I was really pleased with the instruction.

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

#139

Post by laidoffamazon »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #138
laidoffamazon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course not, I wouldn't get in. But I never said the education is bad. I just said their purpose is not to educate. Morill Act institutions were developed to educate, and by accepting the vast majority of people that apply University of Oklahoma will always exist to educate. The same cannot be said for Brown or Stanford.

I got master's in CS from Brown. Fwiw, I was really pleased with the instruction.

Again, never said the education was bad! Just that their purpose isn’t to educate as evidenced by the fact that they don’t let in 95% of those that apply. Maybe Brown MSCS is 94%, I don’t know.

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

#140

Post by ken47 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #134
ken47 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think China "needs" American tech. My impression is that, while they have not yet reached technological parity with America, given the country's intellectual capital and culture, that can only remain true for so long. And it only "matters" to the extent that we care about whether China surpasses the US technologically within a few generations. If you don't care, then I suppose it shouldn't matter to you.

> don't think China "needs" American tech This is objectively false. Unless you believe fighter jets, semiconductors and AI are obsolete. > whether China surpasses the US technologically within a few generations China is experiencing demographic collapse. If they can’t gain the upper hand within about a decade, the opportunity will have likely passed as the surplus capital it has enjoyed to date as a result of its de…

What I meant is that China will be able to - at least - replicate all of these things within a few generations, even without us handing over the tech to them. As an aside, I don't see why India wouldn't be capable of the same, as their society also imparts much higher status to STEM education than us, although they probably won't have the same magnitude and type of motivation as China.

> China is experiencing demographic collapse. If they can’t gain the upper hand within about a decade, the opportunity will have likely passed as the surplus capital it has enjoyed to date as a result of its demographic dividend will reverse.

Even if their population collapses, their (STEM-proficient) population will still significantly outnumber America's - especially if America continues to implicitly funnel its brightest into non-STEM fields through societal pressure.

Post reply on HN