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Fraud, so much fraud

science.org

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651–660 of 868 posts

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#651

Post by KajMagnus »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #495
jimbokun wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't require the replication to be successful. Failure to replicate a result is just as valuable as successfully replicating a result.

It is a lot easier to just falsely prove the experiment since the data is already there and the publisher of the paper is not going to push back if you confirm it. Why go through all the work of actually proving/disproving the experiment when you can just change tweak the numbers of the original experiment, say you actually reproduced the experiment, and then move on?

> say you actually reproduced the experiment

And get a nice $100k too for close to zero effort!

(Having in mind: "plus another $100,000 which you could use to publish a replication")

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#652

Post by strbean »

BostonFern wrote: post #569
jonas21 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They just care more about their career. It's not even that. In most fields, you need lab space and equipment and grad students to get stuff done. And to pay for that, you need funding. And to get funding, you need to publish and apply for grants. You have to pay attention to the "career" side of things -- otherwise, you won't get to do the science at all.

That’s exactly the rationale the corrupt senator uses to justify his actions in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

And yet it rings true. Sure, if everyone was a Mr. Smith it would be fine. But with poor incentive structures, people are collectively going to do what they have to do.

The same applies to police who aren't actively corrupt, but don't combat the corruption around them. The ones who do fight corruption end up fired 'with cause' at best, or forcibly committed to mental institution or killed at worst.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#653

Post by slashdave »

CarpaDorada wrote: post #430
slashdave wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you'll realize the academic dishonesty policy is essentially the playbook by which academics behave If you are unable to "extrapolate to all of academia" then I suggest you be more selective in your statements.

I extrapolate to all of academia, but not to all academics (persons working in academia). My methodology is based on my intuition and my experiences. Already in this YC article the comments appear to be akin to the first meeting between battered housewives. You don't have to believe me or others, I'm just issuing a warning to anyone thinking of getting into academia: be alarmed and alert, and always careful. It's not…

Sorry that your experience in academia has been so negative in this regard. If it is any consolation, mine has been the opposite.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#654

Post by vlovich123 »

jshdhehe wrote: post #563
nativeit wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the first things I learned in film school is _nothing_ in a production at that level is coincidence or serendipity. To get to the final script and storyboard, the writers would have gone through multiple drafts, and a great deal of material gets either cut, or retooled to reinforce thematic elements. To the extent that The Simpsons was a goofy cartoon, its writers’ room carried a great deal of intellectual and…

Goofy cartoon but I always thought it was very cleverly done in parts. The laugh followed by "fuck life is actually like that" aftertaste.

The entire writing room was Harvard grads and people who went on to accomplish impressive things in the industry (eg Conan O’Brien was a writer, David X Cohen was a writer and then went on to cocreate Futurama with Groening). The early writing team was one of the sharpest ever assembled and dismissing it as a “goofy cartoon” is missing the talent behind it just like if you dismissed Futurama in that way.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#655

Post by specproc »

lanstin wrote: post #555
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 "…

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

Hmm, sure, but if you want to spot malice, look for the one not taking breaks.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#656

Post by strbean »

stephenbez wrote: post #189
clpm4j wrote: post #166

I'm not a researcher or academic, but when I think of roughly how long it takes me to do meaningful deep work and produce a project of any significance, I'm struck by the fact that his 800 papers isn't a red flag? Even if you allocate ~3 months per paper, that's over 200 years of work. Is it common for academics to produce research papers in a matter of days? From the article: Masliah appeared an ideal selection. The…

People are listed as authors if they advised or contributed to the papers of their grad students or other people in their lab.

This also seems like a problematic practice. Perhaps we should start expecting a shorter author list, and have separate credit for advisers, small contributions, overseeing, etc.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#657

Post by smolder »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #48
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…

You're far from a scientist, so it's easy for you to put scientists/academia on a pedestal. For most of the people who end up in these scandals, this is just the day job that their various choices and random chance led up to. they're just ordinary humans responding to ordinary incentives in light of whatever consequences and risks they may or may not have considered. Other careers, like teaching, medicine, and engine…

And management consulting. But probably not plumbing, where the work product is very concrete and easy to judge.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#658

Post by wg0 »

On a tangent, this video[0] from Sabine Hossenfelder about academics in general is eye opening. In comments, veritasium[1] agrees:

>After finishing my PhD I went to a university-led session on ‘What Comes Next.’ What I heard sounded a lot like “now, you beg for money.” It was so depressing to think about all the very clever people in that room who had worked so very hard only to find out they had no financial security and would be spending most of their days asking for money. I realised that even what I thought of as the ‘safe path’ was uncertain so I may as well go after what I truly want. That led me here.

EDIT: Typos

[0]. https://youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8

[1]. https://www.youtube.com/@veritasium

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#659

Post by ungreased0675 »

lanstin wrote: post #590
chasd00 wrote: post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened all day long during Covid. The answer was never “we don’t know yet” which was at least honest but instead it was always “just trust us”. Exactly like i use to hear from preachers growing up.

The difference between public health and basic research. To stop an epidemic in flight one has to go with ones best guess and that saves lives so they do it.

I’d just like to add that the epidemic wasn’t stopped at all. Everyone still caught COVID.

Were outcomes worse than they otherwise would have been? That’s an impossible question to answer. Are there serious studies on the impact of public health interventions?

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#660

Post by oneshtein »

echoangle wrote: post #644
oneshtein wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's not a model of a human brain, like bicycle is not a model of human legs. It's artificial intelligence. There are similarities, but we cannot use current AI models to study human brain: it's useless for that job. We can create a model of human brain (Artificial Brain) using a bunch of AI models, of course, but it's not done yet.

Well it’s a model just like a Mindstorms NXT (This guy https://www.lego.com/cdn/product-assets/product.img.pri/8547... ) is a model of human bipedal walking. It’s very simplified and basic but that basic idea is there. A model doesn’t have to be useful to study the thing you’re modeling, you can also just be interested in the output because it’s simpler than using the original thing. Modeling a human brain with a neu…

It's model of a humanoid robot. It's not a model of a human.
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