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Fraud, so much fraud

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Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#551

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

ls612 wrote: post #424
daedrdev wrote: post #28

Is there no liability for the author? There are billions of dollars wasted in drug trials and research that can be tied to this fraud. Surely they can face some legal issues due to this?

The line between outright fraud, bad methods correctly implemented, messy data, and implementation bugs is fuzzy. Trying to criminalize anything not very very clearly #1 quickly turns into a case of “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”. You think groupthink in academia is bad just wait until professional disputes lead to jail time for the loser.

The fact that some areas are gray shouldn't prevent us from demanding legal consequences when the fraud is gross and deliberate, as appears to be the case here.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#552

Post by Lerc »

roca wrote: post #316
Lerc wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually AI will also be able to reliably audit papers and report on fraud. There may be newer AI methods of fraud, but it will only buy you time. As both progress, committing to record a fraud generated by technology will almost certainly be detected by a later technology. I would guess that we're within 10 years of being able to automatically audit the majority of papers currently published. That thought must giv…

The problem is that detecting fraud is fundamentally harder than generating plausible fraud. This is because ultimately a very good fraud producer can simply produce output that is identically distributed to non-fraud. For the same reason, tools that try to detect AI-generated text are ultimately going to lose the arm's race.

It's not a race though. Once the fraud is committed to record it can no longer advance in sophistication. Mechanisms for detection will continue to advance.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#553

Post by growingkittens »

This is all because science is systematic (step by step), not systemic (considering the whole system).

Both perspectives are required to understand reality. [1]

It's time to update science.

[1] "Systems Engineering: A systemic and systematic methodology for solving complex problems." Joseph Kasser, 2019. p. 17

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#554

Post by shusaku »

jboggan wrote: post #144

When I was in my doctoral program I had some pretty promising early results applying network analysis to metabolic networks. My lab boss/PI was happy to advertise my work and scheduled a cross-departmental talk to present my research in front of ~100 professors or so. While I was making a last-minute slide for my presentation I realized one chart looked a little off and I started looking into the raw data. I soon rea…

> My conclusions were flat out wrong and there was nothing to salvage from the data.

Wow that’s pretty crazy. I have to say many times in my career I’ve been writing a paper and realized “** there’s a bug”, and had to redo everything. But the overall conclusion never changed because the idea was grounded from several different angles(usually the pieces fit together even better). One bug might invalidate your result, but even if your code was correct the underlying assumptions behind the code could be wrong! I think the real issue was your boss wasn’t active enough in your work to make it robust to coding mistakes.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#555

Post by lanstin »

jongjong wrote: post #456
klenwell wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think my favorite Simpsons gag is the episode where Lisa enlists a scientist (voiced by Stephen Jay Gould) to run tests to debunk some angel bones that were found at a construction site. In the middle of the episode, the scientist bicycles up to report, dramatically, that the tests "were inconclusive". In the end, it's revealed that the bones were a fraud concocted by some mall developers to promote their new mall.…

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 "…

Barry Apppelman, for a long time the boss of all the Unix engineers, said malice was preferable to incompetence because malice would take breaks.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#557

Post by ClumsyPilot »

frickinLasers wrote: post #466
nordsieck wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's amazing to me is that journals don't require researchers to submit their raw data. At least, as far as I know. The only option for someone who wants to double check research is to completely replicate a study, which is quite a bit more expensive than double checking the researcher's work.

Journals are incentivized to publish fantastic results. Organizing raw data in a way that the uninitiated can understand presents serious friction in getting results out the door. The organizations who fund the research are (finally) beginning to require it [0][1], and some journals encourage it, but a massive cultural shift is required and there will be growing pains. You could also try emailing the corresponding au…

> The organizations who fund the research are (finally) beginning to require it [0][1], and some journals encourage it

Feels like wrong way round - organisations paying for journals should be demanding it as proof?

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#558

Post by shusaku »

mchannon wrote: post #271
mmooss wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I think this suggestion contains the implicit bias that “replication isn’t important or challenging”, hence you leave it to trainees. Actually, replication is incredibly challenging. Put PhD students on it, and they’ll be convinced the original study was fraud for 4 years until they finally have the skill to get it right!

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#559

Post by anonygler »

I didn’t get the Covid vaccine because of all the medical research fraud I’ve witnessed as a grad student.

Remember things like this the next time you try to mandate injections with no long term research.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#560

Post by ClumsyPilot »

infamouscow wrote: post #153
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…

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.

> The Manhattan project was a government project that was run like a startup.

Run directly by the government employees, and directly hiring the nessesary people to work for the government. today we would call that socialist or some such, opposite of 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

You missed important step- such a project today would start by the government handing out grants, stimulus and tax breaks. If they directly hired the nessesary people, there would be no fighting for grants. People do what incentives demand

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