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Fraud, so much fraud

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Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#801

Post by nonrandomstring »

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #578
nonrandomstring wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That is not enough to most people. You absolutely nail the most profound pathology of our time. Being a decent, honest, smart, hardworking person is just "not enough" any more. We've created a normatively criminal society.

> Being a decent, honest, smart, hardworking person is just "not enough" any more. Indeed. People want to be able to own a home and/or raise a family, too.

> own a home and/or raise a family

Agreed. And any system that cannot furnish these human basics to decent, honest, smart, hardworking people neither has nor deserves a future. Any criminality people have ought to be directed at that system rather than ones fellows.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#802

Post by Qwertious »

consf wrote: post #798
_heimdall wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it can still be considered science when intentional fraud is involved is a huge problem itself.

Science, at its core, is supposed to be a method of systematically seeking truth through rigorous experimentation, observation, and reasoning. When intentional dishonesty enters the equation, it undermines the entire purpose of the scientific endeavor

Science, at it's core, is figuring out how to make better TVs and phones with longer battery life. Truth-seeking should be done during your lunch break. If you have one.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#803

Post by Qwertious »

drevil-v2 wrote: post #287
antisthenes wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 whol…

>They intuit

They don't need to intuit it; they're outright told not to trust the science, by the parasites who are criticised by other scientists. Like the asbestos industry.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#804

Post by pcrh »

directevolve wrote: post #764
pcrh wrote: post #719

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most neuroscience papers of the type Masliah published are the result of at least 2 person-years of hands-on work (and up to 10 or 15 person-years for large papers).

800 papers over 25 years would therefore need a minimum staff of 64 full time researchers for the entirety of those 25 years. Masliah didn't have this.

For most papers on which Masliah is an author, the majority of the work will have been performed in other labs, with Masliah and those under him contributing to a greater or lesser extent. Such collaborative work is not a bad thing (assuming everyone is honest).

Web.archive has a shot of his now-deleted lab page:

https://web.archive.org/web/20240303093209/https://www.nia.n...

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#805

Post by tester756 »

Dalewyn wrote: post #512
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…

>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.

I'd say in general - concepts from one domain sometimes can be applied/novel in other domain

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#807

Post by AndrewKemendo »

booleandilemma wrote: post #686
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #333

If I have learned anything over 40 years, is that the number of people who actually live in a way consistent with hypothesis testing, data collection, evidence evaluation framework required to have scientific confidence in future action or even claims is effectively zero That includes people who consider themselves professional scientists, PhD‘s authors, leaders etc. The only people I know who live “scientifically” c…

It's funny you mention autism, adhd, and similar. It's something I believe the science is quite shaky on. I've met so many people who self-diagnose with those "conditions", because, I think, they want the world to feel sorry for them, or something.

The American version of the cultural Revolution is about to begin, and everybody recognizes that the labor class is coming

So everybody’s trying to align themselves with a victimized group as closely to reality as possible

To such an extent where people are actively making up victimization reasons such that they can find themselves in an affinity group with other victims so they are safe from prosecution during the troubles

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#809

Post by BiteCode_dev »

Distrust in science is already a big problem as it is, but this is really making it so much worse.

Good luck convincing an anti-vaxer now.

It was already hard before, but now they have plenty of amunition.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#810

Post by yeahwhatever10 »

momoschili wrote: post #63
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…

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.

It's called survivorship bias.
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