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

Fraud, so much fraud

science.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 868 posts

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#511

Post by jfengel »

ipaddr wrote: post #440
jfengel wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far more educated. But certainly not smarter. And it's not at all clear if that education does anything other than magnify their intellectual predispositions. The smart people can make great strides, but the stupid will be stupid louder and harder. And the average may well just be... more average.

IQ levels has risen on average because of nutrients, not using lead and education. An increase in blood lead from 10 to 20 micrograms/dl was associated with a decrease of 2.6 IQ

Risen by a few points. Statistically significant but not really meaningful.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#512

Post by Dalewyn »

testfoobar wrote: post #106
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 caree…

>Charlie Munger's observation

The more I've read about finances the more I've realized it can also be applied to many other things in the world due to its sheer objectivity.

On the other hand, I've also noticed most if not all of it is based on contexts and data from the mid 20th century. Interesting how that turns out.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#513

Post by MichaelZuo »

kenjackson wrote: post #469
jongjong wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good one. In my experience, corruption is almost always disguised as neglect and incompetence. Corrupt people meticulously cover their tracks by coming up with excuses to show neglect; some of them only accept bribes that they can explain away as neglect where they have plausible deniability. It doesn't take much brainpower to do well, just malicious intent and knowing the upper limits. IMO, Hanlon's razor "…

Ehh... I think neglect and incompetence are super common. I have a sink full of dishes downstairs to prove it. I think corruption, while not rare, is still far rarer. Horses over zebras still (at least in the US).

‘Sufficiently advanced’ is the key term, e.g. if your sink was located on the premises of 5 star hotel then that would probably be indistinguishable from malice.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#514

Post by Zamiel_Snawley »

projektfu wrote: post #360
snowwrestler wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replications are not very scientifically useful. If there were flaws in the design of the original experiment, replicating the experiment will also replicate the flaws. What we should aim for is confirmation : a different experiment that tests the underlying phenomenon that was the subject of the first paper.

Replications don't frequently get published but they do get attempted, because any decent researcher is going to replicate a result they rely on to build the next step. Unfortunately, you can get stuck in the mud as I did and be unable to replicate the prior findings. Is it technique or were the original results in error? We'll never know. Building more results without replications is what caused the psychology crisi…

Reproducibility should be a fundamental quality of published experiments.

If the published work under specifies the experiment such that it is unreproducible, that means the results can’t be reliably extrapolated because there are unstated conditions.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#515

Post by stickfigure »

binoct wrote: post #462
echoangle wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What evidence for „AI models the human brain“ do you want? Isn’t a neural network pretty clearly a simplified model of the working of the human brain? What is there to prove?

Neural networks are not a model of the working of the human brain. They are based on an extremely simplified approximation of how neurons connect and function (which while conceptually similar is a terrible predictive model for biological neurons) and are connected together in ways that have absolutely zero resemblance to how complex nervous systems look in real animals. The burden of proof here is absolutely on show…

Neural networks are much closer to modeling a brain than other approaches to AI, ie symbolic reasoning. There will always be differences (it's machine, not meat), but it's fair to say the approach is at least "brain like".

Your position sounds like a No True Scotsman fallacy.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#516

Post by ineedasername »

Tangential but related: My young tween child a couple of days ago:

“I hate AI, I don’t know what’s real anymore”

I think we’re about to see something much more extreme than the early ‘net days of “photoshop!” rage at clever fakes

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#518

Post by dennis_jeeves2 »

HappMacDonald wrote: post #455
dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As they say: the scum rises to the top, true for academia, politics etc, any organization really. Quote: "The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing" My own nuanced take on it: Incompetent people are quick to grab authority and power. On the other hand principled, competent people are reluctant to take on positions of authority and power even when offered. For these people positions…

I would add c) often entail incalculable risk for any who aren't already corrupt enough to be climbing into bed with other evil powers or blackmailing, extorting, or exploiting their way into a safe haven and a golden parachute. Who willingly remains vulnerable before the Sword of Damocles?

That is a very astute observation. Unfortunately a situation like that cannot be fixed.

Only an organization that is built ground up, which NEVER compromises on the quality of people, as they grow, is the only way out. This is easier said than done, because this often means that people who build organizations, will have to spend nearly 100% of their time looking and screening potential candidates for 'leadership' positions. What generally happens is that when organizations grow they have to hire people in order to keep business running, and they often compromise.

Now there is a way out of this problem, if the founders of an organization are rich. In which case they can spend 100% of their time screening candidates, without having to worry about growing the business. But even this task is not easy, as one can often go on for years before one finds a candidate who has sufficient integrity, wisdom and intelligence, and perhaps most importantly willing to exercise power/authority when needed.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#519

Post by kmeisthax »

mden wrote: post #46
madmask wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, science fraud is terrible. It pollutes and breaks the scientific method. Enormous resources are wasted, not just by the fraudster but also by all the other well meaning scientists who base their work on that. In my experience no, most fraudsters are not evil people, they just follow the incentives and almost non-existent disincentives. Scientist has become just a job, you find all kinds of people th…

"most fraudsters are not evil people, they just follow the incentives and almost non-existent disincentives" Maybe I'm too idealistic but why does following incentives with no regard for secondary consequences not evil?

Because we're cowards, and declaring vast swatches of our economy and society to be evil is not good for our future prospects. In other words, you can't tell people not to put radium up their asshole!

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#520

Post by infamouscow »

ricksunny wrote: post #171
infamouscow wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Manhattan project was a government project that was run like a startup. If such a project happened today, academic scientists would be trying to figure out ways to bend their existing research to match the grants. Then it would take another 30 years before people started to ask why nothing has been delivered yet.

Sounds like Eric Weinstein'a take (which I appreciate) on theoretical physics research.

I also like Eric Weinstein, but the non-physics aspects of his perspective are essentially the philosophy of Curtis Yarvin distilled and presented in a way that's more digestible to classic liberals.
Post reply on HN