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Fraud, so much fraud

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Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#271

Post by mchannon »

mmooss wrote: post #198
mchannon wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This leads to a tragedy of the commons. Say a random nation, say, Sweden, devotes 100% of their governmental and university research budgets toward replication. 70% of the studies they attempt are successfully replicated. 20% are inconclusive or equivocal. 10% are clearly debunked. Now the world is richer, but Sweden? No return on investment for the Swedes, other than perhaps a little advanced notice on what hot new…

Could it be part of the training for young researchers - replicate existing experiments?

I applaud that approach. The first year of a Ph.D. program could be reformulated to become 75% replicating the research of others, preferably that of unaffiliated research organizations.

A lot of this research is very involved and esoteric, requiring specialized equipment found only in one place, so some would be very hard to replicate. If what Theranos was doing (or claiming to do) was easy to replicate, it would've imploded years prior to when it did. So not all fraud could be detected, but a lot of the low-hanging fraud, especially in the psychological and pharmacological fields, could be quickly identified. Such a system would be a substantial upgrade and I applaud your suggestion. A smaller country could blaze the trail, because "big boys", like the U.S., are too set in their ways.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#272

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

timeon wrote: post #258
dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

owenpalmer, as I stated in my side note I will not be explaining myself, my sincere apologies for this. You see there are some things that cannot be taught, or it cannot be easily taught more so for adults i.e healthy skepticism and questioning of statements/facts that come from authority figures ( example:science/religion etc). A person will have to make his or her own effort. External influences especially debates…

Sorry but this seems like bit longer version of 'do your own research'.

No quite, It really depend on what you mean by 'research'. For most people 'research' is just consensus of the experts. On the other hand if by research you mean "test it out yourself" I agree with you. ( not always practical though, so you have to choose a middle ground)

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#273

Post by Balgair »

asdf123qweasd wrote: post #211
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…

At some point, the good scientists leave and the fraudsters start to filter for more fraudsters. If that goes on, its over- the academia has gone. Entirely. It can not grow back. Its just a building with conman in labcoats. My suggestion stands: Give true scientists the ability to hunt fraudsters for budgets. If you hunt and nail down a fraudster, you get his funding for your research.

I mean, the replication crisis had come and gone, about 5 years now. The fraudsters are running the place and have been for at least the last half decade, full stop.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#274

Post by jimbokun »

bonoboTP wrote: post #91
scarmig wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should be able to build an entire career out of replications: hired at the best universities, published in the top journals, social prestige and respect. To the point where every novel study is replicated and published at least once. Until we get to that point, there will be far fewer replications than needed for a healthy scientific system.

> social prestige and respect This one is the showstopper. No matter what you do with rules and regulations, if people aren't impressed by it at a watercooler conversation, or when chatting at a cocktail party at a conference, or when showing a politician around in your lab then nothing else matters. How prestigious something is is not a lever you control.

There needs to be a new norm where prestige and respect is conveyed by having a replicated result. Not just the initial paper.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#275

Post by momoschili »

throwawaymaths wrote: post #256
momoschili wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. The fact that we are seeing this kind of discourse within the scientific community is in my opinion a great argument for the scientific method.

How's this for scientific method. The response to "not trust science" is the inductive step of a model that is validated by the fucking evidence.

not sure what you're getting at

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#276

Post by inglor_cz »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #186
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…

It becomes a survival bias: if people can cheat at a competitive game (or research field) and get away with it, then at the end you'll wind up with only cheaters left (everyone else stops playing).

You could improve the situation by incentivizing people to identify cheaters and prove their cheating. If being a successful cheater-hunter was a good career, the field would become self-policing.

This approach opens its own can of worms (you don't want to overdo it and create a paranoid police-state-like structure), but so far, we have way too little self-policing in science, and the first attempts (like Data Colada) are very controversial among their peers.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#277

Post by inglor_cz »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #262
SpaceManNabs wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> That is not enough to most people. You absolutely nail the most profound pathology of our time. Being a decent, honest, smart, hardworking person is just "not enough" any more. We've created a normatively criminal society.

Was it ever? Ancient texts are full of complaints that people have become immoral, unlike in the Golden Age, which was conveniently long ago.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#278

Post by Balgair »

TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #223
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…

This is why institutions break down in the long run in any civilization. People like you, people of principle are drown out my agents acting exclusively in their own interest without ethics. It happens everywhere. The only solution to this is skin in the game. Without skin in the game the fraudsters fraud, the audience just naively goes along with it, and the institution collapses under the weight of lies.

The iron laws of bureaucracy are:

1) Nothing else matters but the budget

2) Over the long run, the people invested in the bureaucracy always win out over the people invested in the mission/point

Science is just as susceptible to 2) as anything else.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#279

Post by inglor_cz »

jimbokun wrote: post #47
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…

I think the error is putting trust in scientists as people, instead of putting trust in science as a methodology. The methodology is designed to rely on trusting a process, not trusting individuals, to arrive at the truth. I guess it also reinforces the supreme importance of reproducibility. Seems like no research result should be taken seriously until at least one other scientist or group of scientists are able to r…

I think it is fine to put some trust into concrete individual scientists who have proven themselves reliable.

It is not fine to put trust into scientists in general just because they walk around in a lab coat with a PhD label on its front.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#280

Post by j-wags »

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…

I'm mostly out now, but I would love to return to a more accountable academia. Often in these discussions it's hard to say "we need radical changes to publicly funded research and many PIs should be held accountable for dishonest work" without people hearing "I want to get rid of publicly funded research altogether and destroy the careers of a generation of trainees who were in the wrong place at the wrong time".

Even in my immediate circles, I know many industry scientists who do scientific work beyond the level required by their company, fight to publish it in journals, mentor junior colleagues in a very similar manner to a PhD advisor, and would in every way make excellent professors. There would be a stampede if these people were offered a return to a more accountable academia. Even with lower pay, longer hours, and department duties, MORE than enough highly qualified people would rush in.

A hypothetical transition to this world should be tapered. But even at the limit where academia switched overnight, trainees caught in such a transition could be guaranteed their spots in their program, given direct fellowships to make them independent of their advisor's grants, given the option to switch advisor, and have their graduation requirements relaxed if appropriate.

It's easy to hem and haw about the institutional knowledge and ongoing projects that would invariably be lost in such a transition, even if very carefully executed. But we have to consider the ongoing damage being done when, for example, biogen spends thousands of scientist-years and billions of dollars failing to make an alzheimers drug because the work was dishonest to begin with, or when generations of trainees learn that bending the truth is a little more OK each year.

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