Genady Posted July 19, 2023 Share Posted July 19, 2023 Quote The report concluded that the fudging of results under Tessier-Lavigne’s purview “spanned labs at three separate institutions.” It identified a culture where Tessier-Lavigne “tended to reward the ‘winners’ (that is, postdocs who could generate favorable results) and marginalize or diminish the ‘losers’ (that is, postdocs who were unable or struggled to generate such data).” Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, will retract at least three papers (stanforddaily.com) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Fabian Posted July 19, 2023 Share Posted July 19, 2023 It got noticed and exposed. In a roundabout way that has to be good news. Science is built around documentation and making it widely available for evaluation and critique by their peers. In fields with few participants and little outside interest I suppose data tampering can go unnoticed for longer but cheaters who have to document their lies will always be at risk of exposure. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StringJunky Posted July 19, 2023 Share Posted July 19, 2023 Peer review is seen to be working. It seems a bit naive to think that ones deception won't be noticed in the long term. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genady Posted July 20, 2023 Author Share Posted July 20, 2023 What is especially disturbing to me in this case is the scale. 20 years, president of Stanford, multiple institutions, many people ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Peterkin Posted July 20, 2023 Share Posted July 20, 2023 No doubt the corporate sponsors were pleased and therefore the board of governors was pleased, so they didn't delve too deeply. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StringJunky Posted July 20, 2023 Share Posted July 20, 2023 (edited) 41 minutes ago, Genady said: What is especially disturbing to me in this case is the scale. 20 years, president of Stanford, multiple institutions, many people ... That will probably be a wide discussion, going forward, on dealing with similar cases in the future. Probably, the main problem is that the person is high impact and institutionally powerful, and that's why it took that long to discover. A bit like the emerging corruption in amongst some of the Supreme Court judges.... nobody is looking over their shoulder. Reverence of such lofty individuals needs to be expelled and for them to be seen in more realistic terms by acknowledging that everyone is fallible to deception and corruption. Edited July 20, 2023 by StringJunky Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CharonY Posted July 20, 2023 Share Posted July 20, 2023 2 hours ago, StringJunky said: Peer review is seen to be working. It seems a bit naive to think that ones deception won't be noticed in the long term. Actually outright falsification (if done well) are really hard to spot in a peer-review process. While there are calls for open data to address these issues, there are a huge load of limitations (both structural and practical). There is no easy solutions, but one obvious red flag is the culture that he cultivated. If you force your team to get a specific result, well, there is a good chance that you get it, if you just demand hard enough... But I do agree, the fact that these issues are exposed is on a whole a good thing. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genady Posted July 20, 2023 Author Share Posted July 20, 2023 Unfortunately, the problem is not limited to a few certain persons. Yes, obviously it is a good thing that these issues are exposed. That's why we need police. Medicine is plagued by untrustworthy clinical trials. How many studies are faked or flawed? (nature.com) Quote Investigations suggest that, in some fields, at least one-quarter of clinical trials might be problematic or even entirely made up, warn some researchers. They urge stronger scrutiny. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheVat Posted July 20, 2023 Share Posted July 20, 2023 Seems to have some parallels to the Baltimore Affair, back in the late 80s. Cell biologist David Baltimore also resigned from the presidency of a university, was also connected to a researcher who had been accused of falsifying data (though she was later exonerated IIRC), was also criticized for not retracting a paper when irregularities came to light. It's been problem for decades, and medical fields are especially prone to such problems, with all the corporate pressures to find treatments in lucrative areas of research. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exchemist Posted July 20, 2023 Share Posted July 20, 2023 15 hours ago, StringJunky said: Peer review is seen to be working. It seems a bit naive to think that ones deception won't be noticed in the long term. Yes, but the issue here is that it is not deception per se. It's more subtle than that. As I understand it, it is rewarding researchers that manage - whether by good science, luck or bending their findings - to get the sort of results the big man hopes for, to support his theory. And presumably by burying the careers of those unfortunate researchers that can't replicate the findings, or get positive results. In medicine in particular, there seems to be a culture of the big man: the eminent doctor or surgeon whom everyone wants to consult, whom everyone wants to study under and who has extensive powers of patronage. So, without any actual overt malpractice, a system can be created that is biased towards finding convenient rather than inconvenient results. And then the temptation to fabricate, to discard -ve data and so forth is there. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CharonY Posted July 20, 2023 Share Posted July 20, 2023 2 hours ago, TheVat said: It's been problem for decades, and medical fields are especially prone to such problems, with all the corporate pressures to find treatments in lucrative areas of research. Well, I am not sure about corporate pressures. In some cases, where there is corporate funding or support, that could be the case, but often it is just the publish or perish pressure in academia that makes people fudge, encourage fudging or at least ignore evidence for fudging. Also remember in most labs much of the work is done by students who might not continue in the field but are desperate to graduate and/or postdocs who are desperate for a faculty job (or really, any job). There is a bit of a pattern here, I think. Medical research (which is very different from practice, but there also areas researching medical practice) is fundamentally biological, but requires higher precision and demands more impact than (but is also better funded) which may put more pressure on folks. At the same time I think it is quite self inflicted as medical research is also quite averse to fundamental research aspects, which could help creating a better foundation. Also the pessimist in me also sometimes thinks that stuff comes out more in medical research as there can be trials which ultimately invalidate results, whereas if someone messes up (knowingly or not) something regarding an exotic bacterium and has rather mundane results, know one would care to follow up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StringJunky Posted July 20, 2023 Share Posted July 20, 2023 (edited) 4 hours ago, TheVat said: Seems to have some parallels to the Baltimore Affair, back in the late 80s. Cell biologist David Baltimore also resigned from the presidency of a university, was also connected to a researcher who had been accused of falsifying data (though she was later exonerated IIRC), was also criticized for not retracting a paper when irregularities came to light. It's been problem for decades, and medical fields are especially prone to such problems, with all the corporate pressures to find treatments in lucrative areas of research. The elephant in the room imo is Andrew Wakefield of MMR 'fame' that precipitated the antivaccination mess. Edited July 20, 2023 by StringJunky Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genady Posted August 11, 2023 Author Share Posted August 11, 2023 An unhappy continuation of the subject, There’s far more scientific fraud than anyone wants to admit | Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus | The Guardian Quote Retractions have risen sharply in recent years for two main reasons: first, sleuthing, largely by volunteers who comb academic literature for anomalies, and, second, major publishers’ (belated) recognition that their business models have made them susceptible to paper mills – scientific chop shops that sell everything from authorships to entire manuscripts to researchers who need to publish lest they perish. ... The lengths to which scientists go to fight allegations of fraud is part of the reason the rate of retraction is lower than it should be. They punish whistleblowing underlings, sometimes by blaming them for their misdeeds. They sue critics. Although they rarely prevail in court, the threat of such suits, and the cost of defending against them, exerts a chilling effect on those who would come forward. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
studiot Posted August 11, 2023 Share Posted August 11, 2023 Well here is some better news to be pleased about. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66464437 How is sign language adapting to climate change? Published 12 hours ago Watch: how do you sign 'carbon footprint' in BSL? By Victoria Gill Science correspondent, BBC News For deaf children, teachers and scientists, talking about things like "greenhouse gases" or "carbon footprint" used to mean spelling out long, complex scientific terms, letter by letter. Now they are among 200 environmental science terms that have their own new official signs in British Sign Language (BSL). The deaf scientists and sign language experts behind the update hope the new vocabulary will make it possible for deaf people to fully participate in discussions about climate change, whether it's in the science lab or classroom. "We're trying to create the perfect signs that visualise scientific concepts," explains Dr Audrey Cameron. Dr Cameron, who is profoundly deaf, leads the sign language project at Edinburgh University, which has just added the new terms to the BSL dictionary. ....etc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CharonY Posted August 11, 2023 Share Posted August 11, 2023 2 hours ago, Genady said: An unhappy continuation of the subject, There’s far more scientific fraud than anyone wants to admit | Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus | The Guardian I don't think that this is a surprise and honestly, while paper mills might make it easier, it is not necessarily the driving force. The peer-review process is not well-suited to detect outright fraud. And a reason why folks are willing to risk their reputation is the insane competitive pressure in the field (especially leading up to tenure). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genady Posted August 11, 2023 Author Share Posted August 11, 2023 1 hour ago, studiot said: Well here is some better news to be pleased about. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66464437 How is sign language adapting to climate change? Published 12 hours ago Watch: how do you sign 'carbon footprint' in BSL? By Victoria Gill Science correspondent, BBC News For deaf children, teachers and scientists, talking about things like "greenhouse gases" or "carbon footprint" used to mean spelling out long, complex scientific terms, letter by letter. Now they are among 200 environmental science terms that have their own new official signs in British Sign Language (BSL). The deaf scientists and sign language experts behind the update hope the new vocabulary will make it possible for deaf people to fully participate in discussions about climate change, whether it's in the science lab or classroom. "We're trying to create the perfect signs that visualise scientific concepts," explains Dr Audrey Cameron. Dr Cameron, who is profoundly deaf, leads the sign language project at Edinburgh University, which has just added the new terms to the BSL dictionary. ....etc I agree that this is good news. However, I am surprised. I don't know BSL and I know that it is quite different from ASL, which I am studying right now. I am surprised that BSL would require long spelling without special signs for these terms. For example, in ASL, I'd simply sign "green"+"house"+"effect", which are three very short and common signs. Here is the explanation of this effect in ASL, using only standard signs: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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