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Fraud, so much fraud

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Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#831

Post by NoPie »

fluoridation wrote: post #428
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.…

Well, the incentive is that he didn't want to run the tests out of laziness (i.e. he lacked an incentive to run them). He ran to Lisa to give his anticlimactic report not to be deceptive, but rather he just happened to be cycling through that part of town and just needed to use the bathroom really badly.

It's actually quite clever from the part of the scientist.

The incentive would be money, maybe the pay for doing this test was not good enough.

Or maybe the scientist was motivated by thirst of discovering something good for humanity like cure for cancer and didn't want to get distracted by other things. Funding is also needed but angel bones are clearly impossibility. Why even spend time on disproving that? But if she had engaged in discussion with people clearly believing in this nonsense it would have taken too much time. Saying, the tests are inconclusive lets her be distanced from all this and allow people to leave her alone, mostly that the groups will continue their disputes among themselves.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#833

Post by rebanevapustus »

cdaringe wrote: post #733
rebanevapustus wrote: post #725

I was the victim of a pretty bizarre super in-your-face academic theft. Someone snooped a half-finished draft of mine off GitHub and...actually got it published in a real journal: https://forbetterscience.com/2024/05/29/who-are-you-matthew-... In spite of having a full commit log (with GitHub verified commits!!!) of both the code AND the paper, both arxiv and the journal didn't seem to care or bother at all. Anyhow,…

Can you speak more to the “not caring at all” bit? I believe you, but how did you engage them? Did you end up publishing your work eventually? forbetterscience seems like a good idea, but the writing style, the images, and even the about page gave me pause on if this is a reliable site for trustworthy science commentary

After almost a year, with an unsurmountable amount of open-source evidence and the thief having had every single paper he has ever written retracted for fraud!! the best the journal did is to add a notice: https://www.mdpi.com/2674-113X/2/3/20

Arxiv cared even less. They allowed the thief to DMCA strike me multiple times. He even managed to take down the real version of the paper by claiming that it was his: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.04214

> Did you end up publishing your work eventually

No. When I tried to do so, I was actually rejected from a conference because their plagiarism detecting system labelled that I was trying to publish something that already been published (what was stolen).

It was very traumatic.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#834

Post by rebanevapustus »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #749
cdaringe wrote: post #733

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you speak more to the “not caring at all” bit? I believe you, but how did you engage them? Did you end up publishing your work eventually? forbetterscience seems like a good idea, but the writing style, the images, and even the about page gave me pause on if this is a reliable site for trustworthy science commentary

>I believe you, but how did you engage them? From the article, it seems the engagement came in the form of DMCA take-down requests from university lawyers... which the publication then largely ignored for a considerable period of time (possibly due to counter-DMCA). In an unrelated scientific field, EE, I recently witnessed how the DMCA process could be used by an "engineer" to silence criticism of his hybrid vehicle…

He managed to DMCA strike the corrected version of the paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.04214

We then contacted Stanford, and somehow got their legal team to message Arxiv telling them that Matthew is a fraudster.

In spite (!!) of Arxiv removing his stolen version thanks to Stanford's email: https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.14810

They refused to lift the obviously spurious DMCA claim on mine.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#835

Post by TheMagicHorsey »

worik wrote: post #485
TheMagicHorsey wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why institutions break down in the long run in any civilization. People like you, people of principle are drown out my agents acting exclusively in their own interest without ethics. It happens everywhere. The only solution to this is skin in the game. Without skin in the game the fraudsters fraud, the audience just naively goes along with it, and the institution collapses under the weight of lies.

> The only solution to this is skin in the game. Another solution is the opposite, no skin in the game Remove cocrete incentives and pay salaries

Salaries without skin in the game leads to failure. People just trade for their own benefit within and outside the system.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#836

Post by consteval »

notheyarent wrote: post #779
consteval wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of how established the science actually is. Questioning novel science is one thing but questioning if the Earth is flat or Germ Theory is another thing all together. The problem with skeptics is that they sometimes hang around conspiracists. It's hard to not discount these people when the person next to them thinks black people are biologically inferior. Then when those skeptics don't distance themselve…

Nobody fucking cares about politics mate. People can’t breath with them on hot crowded city buses or for 9 hours straight when working. Your just a cuck who wore his face happy trying to justify his cowardice now to himself. Nobody else is interested in your shit ideas and theories

See, this is what I mean. People who take a skeptical approach to masks aren't doing it for scientific reasoning, they're doing it to avoid being a "cuck".

This type of mentality actively discredits skeptics, because nobody wants to be lumped in with that. There're genuinely very smart people who were/are skeptical of many Covid policies, but unfortunately, they have to stand next to you. Which, of course, makes them look very stupid. It's a tough problem.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#837

Post by consteval »

mistermann wrote: post #289
consteval wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of how established the science actually is. Questioning novel science is one thing but questioning if the Earth is flat or Germ Theory is another thing all together. The problem with skeptics is that they sometimes hang around conspiracists. It's hard to not discount these people when the person next to them thinks black people are biologically inferior. Then when those skeptics don't distance themselve…

Your mind reading and soothsaying are perfectly rational though I suppose, it is only us conspiracy theorists who suffer from delusional cognition?

> it is only us conspiracy theorists who suffer from delusional cognition

Of course not, but if you, say, think the Earth is flat you are delusional. That's just what it is, and I'm not gonna hand hold crazy people when I tell them they're crazy.

The issue is when crazy people assimilate, or rather try to infiltrate, groups of educated skeptics. Now they all look crazy, and that's a problem.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#838

Post by chasum »

georgeecollins wrote: post #34
chasum wrote: post #9

[flagged]

It's wrong to think that because there is reports of fraud or systematic error in science you shouldn't trust it. I'm sure all those things exist. But they also exist in every other institution with a lot less self-reflection and self-correction. Nassim Taleb said that people think weathermen are terrible predictors of the future. He says meteorology is among the most accurate sources of predictions in our lives. But…

blablabla - tldr, you're very very smart.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#839

Post by uslic001 »

So things haven't changed in the 30 years since I left academic medicine. Par for the course given how grants and funding are carried out. This will continue to happen as the system design guarantees this outcome.

Re: Fraud, so much fraud

#840

Post by pbreit »

dasudasu wrote: post #759
DigitalPaladin wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm assuming /s above. Because the amount of pencil-whipped "peer review" feedback I've received could fit in a shoe box, because many "reviewers" are looking for the CV credit for their role and not so much the actual effort of reviewing. And there's no way to call them out on their laziness except maybe to not submit to their publication again and warn others against it too. And, to defend their lack of review, all…

I never understood how peer reviewers are supposed to "validate" a paper and how they’re tacitly thought to be doing so by the general public. Authors make claims based on data reviewers don’t have direct access to, from experiments they obviously can’t supervise the execution. They’re forced to accept the claims at face value. In my experience (and I’ve been on both sides), it’s more about overall quality and impact…

I would say peer review is guaranteed to have major problems either with researchers writing what their peers will approve and reviewers being afraid to diverge from the party lines.
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