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Fraud, so much fraud

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Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#761

Post by cwalv »

enugu wrote: post #591
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…

Many solutions involving posting data in repositories or audits are being discussed in the comments. But given that many people are saying that they noticed and quit academia, how about also creating a more direct 'whistleblower' type of system, where complaints (with detailed descriptions of the fraud or a general view on what one sees in terms of loose practices) goes to some research monitoring team which can then…

> how about also creating a more direct 'whistleblower' type of system

There needs to first be a system of checks and balances for this to work. The people at the top already know and condone the behavior; who are the whistleblowers reporting to?

"We represent the top scientists in our field; these are a group of grad students. Who are you going to believe?"

And of course they can easily shut anyone down with two words: "science denier"

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#762

Post by smolder »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #696
smolder wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Plenty of plumbers cut corners, too. Their work gets judged by non-experts, so the bad ones will try to pass off a bad job.

Perhaps, but the "does it leak?" bar is at least easy to qualify.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#763

Post by BlueTemplar »

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.

The problem is simplifying into the same word "science" both the scientific method (with a pretty good track record, though it does have some blind spots), and groups of people claiming to engage in it (the tendency of which is to become corrupt, the faster the more powerful they are).

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#764

Post by directevolve »

pcrh wrote: post #719
DevX101 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's kind of like, when reporters say a CEO built [insert ridiculously complex product here], ex: ascribing the success of OpenAI to Sam Altman, or Apple to Steve Jobs. Sure there were important in setting the direction, and allocating resources but they didn't actually do the work. Similarly, the heads of famous science labs have lots of talented scientists who want to work with them. The involvement of a lab direct…

800 is a lot, even for someone with a big lab. More than likely many of those authorships were "honorary", that is Masliah "lent" his (once-famous) name to help others publish their own work. He likely provided little actual contribution to many of these papers. As such one would normally only give an author "full" credit (and responsibility) if they appear as either first or last in the list of authors. In the biosc…

Over 20 years, that’s 40 per year on average. He’s emeritus from UCSD and I don’t see his old lab page online, not sure how big it was. But my PI’s lab had 13 last year and has 11 people. If Masliah had around 33 people that would be a pretty normal papers per capita.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#765

Post by robotelvis »

pc86 wrote: post #711
robotelvis wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you aren’t going to get tenure unless you distort your results and it’s hard to change established habits. That, and you select for the kind of people who are willing to fake results to further their own careers.

Yeah I agree with you, I guess I just keep coming back to "make the punishment so eye-wateringly harsh very few people are stupid enough to try it." Most types of fraud carry a $100-250k monetary penalty and up to 20, 25, 30 years in prison. The number of people willing to fabricate research data decreases dramatically if you're going to have to pay the grant back from your $20/hr warehouse job after you spend the be…

The flip side is that if punishments are eye watering harsh then people will be even less willing to inflict them.

Bear in mind also that the vast majority of academic fraud isn’t cut and dried easily proved. It’s p hacking or “accidental” flaws in an analysis, or forgetting to mention some important detail.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#766

Post by nobody9999 »

I_am_uncreative wrote: post #594
nobody9999 wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Every few years you can vote left or right, If you're talking about the US, you can vote center-right (Democratic) or far right (Republican). There is no viable left wing party in the US.

From whose perspective and what are we considering right and left? The Democratic party is left of center on social issues, even compared to Europe.

>he Democratic party is left of center on social issues, even compared to Europe.

Actually, the Democratic Party is mostly libertarian (or classically liberal, if you like, which is, inherently right wing) on social issues -- preferring to allow people to make their own choices WRT their bodies rather than seeking government control of reproductive health and other forms of bodily autonomy.

Individual rights and personal agency are not "left wing," except in the eyes of the authoritarian far right (or far left) who seek control over all else.

So no. The Democratic Party has a solidly center-right agenda/ideology -- no collectivism, individual rights not curtailed by the state, freedom of thought and religion, etc.

Despite what some folks may say, there are no Marxists in the US Democratic Party.

That's not to say that the Democratic Party is the ideal. Far from it. But to place them on the absolute "left" is ridiculous on its face.

It's only "left wing" as compared with the far right (read: evangelical christians, white nationalists, xenophobes, etc.) Republican Party who want to limit women's reproductive choices, force the religious doctrines of the Christian church down everyone's throats and spout xenophobic and long debunked genetic tropes related to melanin content.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#767

Post by cwalv »

NemoNobody wrote: post #194
vasco wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pick up an old engineering book at some point, something from mid 1800's or early 1900's and you'll quickly realize that the trust people put on science isn't what it should be. The scientific method works over a long period of time, but to blindly trust a peer review study that just came out, any study, is almost as much faith as religion, specially if you're not a high level researcher in the same field and have sp…

Is absolutely as much faith as religion. Just the basic assumption that the universe didn't come from anything is as baseless as that it does.

> Just the basic assumption that the universe didn't come from anything

That's not a scientific assertion though. It's just what many people would say many/most scientists believe

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#768

Post by throwup238 »

vasco wrote: post #584
momoschili wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going to need some citations here since the texts that I'm familiar with from that time period are "A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism" by Maxwell (mid-late 1800s) and "A History of the Theories of Aether and Electricity" by E. T. Whittaker, neither of which mentions anything of the sort. I suspect you are choosing from texts that at the time likely would not have been considered academic or standard.

Sure, check out Audel's Electric guide, 1927 print, volume 10, for example. This is a series of books intended for practitioners at the time, in wide circulation in the USA. The "Electric Therapeuthics" section changed a lot with each edition so it's even interesting to compare across older versions if you can find multiple. I didn't want to reference specific old niche books but if you're willing to ebay it, I guess…

The Internet Archive has a copy: https://archive.org/details/audels-electric-library-vol-10/p...

The electro-therapeutics chapter starts on page 658

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#770

Post by linhns »

wredue wrote: post #325
dennis_jeeves2 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At the time (20+ years ago) it didn't occur to me that anybody would intentionally modify images of gels to promote the results they claimed Fraud I suspect is only tip of the iceberg, worse still is delusion that what is taught is factually correct. A large portion of mainstream knowledge that we call 'science' is incorrect. While fraudulent claims are relatively easy to detect, claims that are backed up by ignora…

Science sent us to the moon. “Do your own research” sent millions to their graves. “Do your own research” is a movement that is fraught with grifting and basically foundationally just fraud to the core. “Science” definitely has some fraudsters, but remains the best institution we have in the search for truth.

"Scientists dream about doing great things. Engineers do them."
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