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Fraud, so much fraud

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Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#281

Post by mistermann »

ta8645 wrote: post #65

Everyone seems to acknowledge this is a problem, but refuse to believe it actually affects anything when it comes time to "trust the science". Yes, science is corrupted, but all the results can be trusted, and the correct answer is always reached in the end. So, is it really a problem? Or not?

Another example of the phenomenon where people can realize something when considering it from an abstract perspective but not at a realtime object level is psychological bias and imperfect rationality. If the topic of discussion is an article about bias, rare is the person who will deny the phenomenon, and many enthusiastically admit to suffering from the problem themselves. But if the topic of discussion is something else and one was to suggest the phenomenon may be in play: opposite reaction. During realtime cognition, that knowledge is inaccessible.

I honestly think if some serious attention was paid to this and various other real world paradoxes around us, we could actually make some forward progress on these problems for a change.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#282

Post by Balgair »

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…

Generally, the fields that have a Nobel in them attract the glory hounds and therefore the fraudsters. The ones that don't, like geology or archeology for example, don't get the glory hounds.

Anytime you see champagne bottles up on a professor's top shelf with little tags for Nature publications (or something like that), then you know they are a glory hound.

When you see beer bottles in the trash, then you know they're in it for more than themselves.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#283

Post by inglor_cz »

eig wrote: post #85
ta8645 wrote: post #65

Everyone seems to acknowledge this is a problem, but refuse to believe it actually affects anything when it comes time to "trust the science". Yes, science is corrupted, but all the results can be trusted, and the correct answer is always reached in the end. So, is it really a problem? Or not?

A key skill for any scientist is to differentiate quality work and science that can be easily faked. The Alzheimer's and Parkinson's fields are too easy to fake, and too difficult to replicate. The new ideas are only ~20 years old. Big pharma companies are understandably wary of published papers. When people say "trust the science", they often refer to things like masks, and antibiotics, and vaccines. That science is…

Yeah, we can trust that Ozempic works, because faking or fudging weight loss is close to impossible.

Maybe this indicates the need for better metric.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#285

Post by justonenote »

NemoNobody wrote: post #240
sitkack wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If humanity is to mature, we should be an open book when it comes to incentives and build a world purposefully with all incentives aligned to the outcomes we collectively agree upon. https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/ Charlie Munger's Misjudgment #1: Incentive-caused Bias https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-2yIO8cnvw https://fs.blog/bias-incentives-reinforcement/

Sounds like regulation to me ;) I totally agree with you

What something bottom up, transparent in rules and reward structure and able to iterate quickly instead of something top down?

Also agree with the GP.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#286

Post by circus1540 »

epistasis wrote: post #110
dekhn wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

PhDs and postdocs aren’t fungible. The ones worth working with go to the same top 20-40 programs in their field. Even finding PhDs that have the bare minimum qualification of “caring about the field” can be tough as there are all sorts of weird incentives pushing people towards PhDs. Applies for most other things in science as well. Number of papers has greatly increased. Number of papers worth reading has not increased nearly as much.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#287

Post by drevil-v2 »

antisthenes wrote: post #183
testfoobar wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 caree…

> Similar - when I was younger, I would never have suspected that a scientist was committing fraud. Unfortunately many less bright people seem to interpret this as "never trust science", when in reality science is still the best way to push humanity forward and alleviate human suffering, _despite_ all the fraud and misaligned incentives that may influence it.

In defence of the "less bright people" or deplorables as others have called them - they are deeply suspicious of Science(tm) used as a cudgel.

They intuit that some parasitic entity or entities has latched on to Science and is co-opting it for it's own gain to achieve it's own purposes which run counter to the interests of the people.

The heavy handed Covid response and censorship is a prime example of that.

The whole system has been corrupted and therefore it is not possible to have a de-facto assumption of good faith of the actors.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#288

Post by concordDance »

antisthenes wrote: post #183
testfoobar wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 caree…

> Similar - when I was younger, I would never have suspected that a scientist was committing fraud. Unfortunately many less bright people seem to interpret this as "never trust science", when in reality science is still the best way to push humanity forward and alleviate human suffering, _despite_ all the fraud and misaligned incentives that may influence it.

I'm not sure the two uses of "science" in your post are using the same meanings of the word.

Science is the name given to a few different processes, a body of knowledge and statements by designated spokespersons. Each of these have different flaws and failure modes in different environments and domains.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#289

Post by mistermann »

consteval wrote: post #205
ta8645 wrote: post #65

Everyone seems to acknowledge this is a problem, but refuse to believe it actually affects anything when it comes time to "trust the science". Yes, science is corrupted, but all the results can be trusted, and the correct answer is always reached in the end. So, is it really a problem? Or not?

It's a matter of how established the science actually is. Questioning novel science is one thing but questioning if the Earth is flat or Germ Theory is another thing all together. The problem with skeptics is that they sometimes hang around conspiracists. It's hard to not discount these people when the person next to them thinks black people are biologically inferior. Then when those skeptics don't distance themselve…

Your mind reading and soothsaying are perfectly rational though I suppose, it is only us conspiracy theorists who suffer from delusional cognition?

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#290

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

Glad the title here is "Fraud, so much fraud" and not "Research misconduct". I hope that Masliah is charged with federal wire fraud.

In cases like this where the fraud is so blatant and solely done for the purposes of aggrandizing Masliah's reputation (and getting more money), and where it caused real harm, we need to treat these as the serious crimes that they are.

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