i will never understand scientific fraud

I used to follow her on Twitter. She'd be constantly berated by some guy in France. Like, dude, if you're arguing with a buster because she combed through your shit and found louse, you've lost twice this game.

Not any guy, our very own Didier Raoult. Unethical, gross, money hoarding, conspirationist and overall public danger Didier Raoult.

If Scientists don't publish they do not get grants. Grants it turns out pay their rent, and things like food, and transportation, and kids summer camp. Failure also has a detrimental effect in the attaining of grant monies. There's a direct line here. For those that choose to go down this road, they do it for as long as they can get away with it, then try to plea bargain.

Academia needs to be restructured, just like everything else
- Hey, that sounds like Communism!1!
  
  Count me in!
Its not just the volume of publishing, but the conclusion of the paper if you publish a paper and the result is boring (the X had negligible impact on Y but its inconclusive) you might still put your grant at risk.
- This is also the reason why failed experiments hardly ever get published: "We tried X to achieve Y but it did not work because of Z" is very useful information for people also thinking about trying X, but good luck publishing that paper.
Yeah, I'm really not surprised this a more widespread thing. Hell, Wakefield got followers to this day buying his dumb books. Fraud pays

My father in law (prior to his passing) worked for the National Science Foundation and his job was to investigate grant fraud like this. Apparently it happens all the time.

- Bo''om left is a great reaction image

Fuck capitalism!

We need housing and food for everyone, then we can all chill out and focus on advancing further.

This hamster wheel of shit is going to kill us all.

but think of the bajilionaires! how will they afford their yachts without stealing value from people!?
- With their bootstraps! And hustle! And so much work that they do 10 days a week!
Uhhh... how will you get that food into childrens mouths before it spoils? how will you store it? also, people have always built their home. are you saying it should be given? thats not very dignified.
- Dignified?
  
  There is a housing crisis in every developed country, millions of people are homeless while there are multiple times more empty units just because 'investments'.
  
  Where is dignity in that?
  
  And for food, we need to support local produce, ideally something like hydroponics, so we can sustain everyone for as little work as possible, leaving the option to pursue better options at their leisure.
Before I decide you're cool or not you have to pass a test.

How do you feel about NATO?
- Not the person you asked but I'm interested if I'm passing the vibe check
  
  I hate that NATO exists, but I see that it has currently a purpose because other forces would and did overpower countries that aren't included in a military alliance with mutual support obligations.
  
  I want NATO to be a thing of the past as soon as possible but that doesn't mean dismantle it and be helpless again. It means we need to get rid of the need for a NATO.
- Based. We need more NATO members, except Turkey cause fuck Turkey trade them for the Armenians. I also aint much of a fan of Hungary.
- Simple - does anything threaten the housing and food? If yes, can NATO stop it? If yes, then yay NATO. Any other case? No thank you.
  
  Demilitarizing the world won't happen in a night, but we all know NATO won't agree to it, so it will have to go eventually.

Because some people just treat it like a silicon valley start-up: say you've got results from your smoke and mirror show and then hope someone actually gets the results.

Fig. 1 - Ninov

Fig. 2 - Schön

Fig. 3 - Hwang

These are fantastic documentaries BTW, highly recommend if you liked Mayday, NOVA, Life, or any long form investigative journalism.
- Good ol" BobbyB does not miss, thank the gods. Memes aside, his work is indeed phenomenal.

Money corrupts absolutely everything: science, politics, people...

Tl;dr: imagine the success and continuity of not only your career but the careers of your employees had a significant element of random chance involved. Welcome to research.

Now former scientist here. I see the typical "people would do this anyways" comments but I'd wager they don't understand what it's like to work in science and academia. It's publish or perish. In the United States, it's an absolute capitalist meat grinder and it can be brutal.

As a lead researcher, you are dependent on securing grant money not only to keep your job, but to keep the jobs of your co-workers and the very lab itself afloat.

How do you secure grants? By showing you have the experience and ability to complete the research.

How do you show you have the required experience and ability? By your lab's record of publishing the results of successful research.

What is successful research? In an ideal world, it would be what was found at the end of an investigation, regardless of if it disproves the null hypothesis or not. In reality, it's the results of research that have further application, either in industry or that disprove the null hypothesis and act as a step to get you further related grants.

What happens when an investigation flounders? So you didn't disprove the null hypothesis. In an ideal world, you publish a paper explaining what happened and everyone knows what not to do in the future. In reality, it's basically unpublishable as journals want what will make them money. Your lab now has the research equivalent of a gap in your resume. You continue with other research and hope it is publishable. If your lab has a streak of bad luck and multiple projects crap out, now it's harder to secure grants. The downward spiral begins.

Is what this researcher did wrong? Absolutely, but I get it. I 100% get it.

We need serious reform that removes the profit motive. A functional research system would better catch fabricated results before they're published. It would alleviate the pressures that drive good people to do bad things in the pursuit of doing further good. It would actually enhance scientific discovery as ALL results would be published and without parasitic publishers as unnecessary middlemen.
- I don't fully understand the field of course, but I appreciate this comment FWIW.
- From the outside it's not obvious how many variables influence scientific research that have absolutely nothing to do with science or the pursuit of knowledge and truth.
  
  Being scientifically literate is insufficient. We must also be highly sceptical and apply critical thinking to the work of other scientists, particularly when large sums of money are involved and the inevitable conflicts of interest that entails.
  
  People with money are able to fund research but they will never be scientists because they are only interested in what is true to the extent it will make money.
This kind of behavior would still exist without money. People would still fake stuff for the clout.
- Sure but money motivates more people than clout alone
Nah. Money is simply the mechanism that reveals true character.
- That is absolute nonsense. Where does the idea that the nastiest expression of desires is the truest come from? It's a completely absurd and unverifiable idea.
  
  People do stuff, putting people in power over others tends to result in the people doing worse stuff. The variable we can tweak here is the power.
- Wow, that's a crock of shit, classist take
I mean, science doesn't pay for itself. You need libraries, you need universities, you need equipment. Only a mathematician can get by with a $5 black board and stack of chalk, and even then not very well.
- And he needs a calculator, because without one he isn't going to be very fast with his research.

I mean thats pretty out-right fraud, but plenty of scientific fraud is more.. idk if I would say nefarious, but certainly as damaging. There is so much pressure to get "certain" results. Its much much more work to detect either intentional or "self-delusioned" statistical fraud. Science is already incredibly difficult when you don't have the pressure on you to generate specific results.

In Paleoanthropology these days, you will not find an article about a hominid fossil discovery that doesn't include some variant of the phrase "forcing Anthropologists to rethink their assumptions". This all derives from the "Lucy" find that truly did force Anthropologists to rethink their assumptions. Before Lucy, it was assumed that the two most unique aspects of humans - our big brains and our bipedal locomotion - evolved together, but the fact that the 3.9 myo Lucy (since revised to 3.3 myo) was fully bipedal despite having a chimpanzee-sized brain threw this assumption out the window. The career successes of her discoverers and analysts prompted everyone else who finds a bit of thigh bone to make similar claims of significance, despite the fact that no other discovery has had any real earth-shattering significance like that.

No fraud but just massive overstating of importance.

"tRuSt tHe sCieNCe!"

This is a joke of course...well kinda. When science is done well it can change the world. Who would be against that?

I don't like the phrase because while the process of science seeks to be as factual and unbiased as possible those in the scientific community are still human. They are fallible, corruptible and can do things for their own personal gain or profit. So to me it could mistakenly misunderstood as "trust science blindly"

But "Trust the science that is validated by multiple reputable sources" just doesn't roll off the tongue as nicely

Trust the process maybe? This post is about the process of science correcting errors after all.
I agree, that phrase seems to be a little misleading with the "trust in God" crowd because to them, that is the ultimate answer, and no other answer would come close to being "right". But "trust the science" is not meant to be the ultimate answer, just a sign pointing you in the right direction, so that you can then check the science to see if it's reliable. So, the science that you're trusting is not theirs, but yours.
- "We did our research!" (flat earthing intensifies)
  
  I'm kidding I see your point
- you can then check the science
  
  Me and what degree? Science is so far beyond what I can understand that I would need to spend years of my life studying a single topic to understand a small sliver of science.
  
  I, and generalizing to we, need to take science on faith as much as anyone in a church. Actually, it's more on faith than in a church because anyone can pray and see what that results in.

Anyone have the Patron?

https://www.patreon.com/elisabethbik
- It really is incredible that we have a way now to fund the jobs that can only be created and performed by a select few individuals. We don't need a corporation to create the job for us, someone with a specific skill shows up and society says "yeah we need one of those."
- Somebody gonna tell her that she's famous AF on Lemmy? 🙇🏽‍♂️🔥
Anyone have the Patrone?

really? never?

$19m in grants

i can't imagine they are just left with the money after
- If you're already committing fraud, what's a little embezzlement sprinkled on top?
- Academic grants can work in a lot of ways. It is common for a significant chunk to be taken as overhead by the university (20-40%). This is generally smaller for senior members of the faculty who bring in more grants. The PI (primary investigator, read: dude with a reputation) tends to get 5-10% to run the program, and then another 30-40% goes to salaries for researchers working under them (read: grad students). The rest, on the order of 20%, goes to capital costs like materials, time on expensive machines, or prototypes.
  
  So this guy probably got paid $1-2M directly for the grants over maybe 3-5 years. Note I haven't looked into his specific situation.
- Criminals don't expect to get caught.

That photo of Richard Eckert looks like the Leo reaction image; like he's thinking 'Oh my God I can't believe they're still buying this shit!'

I thought that so much I took a screen to post to comments. I'm glad I found your comment here. His expression is part smug, part guilt, part wainker.
- I'll never forgive him for what happened at Black Mesa.

The thing that gets me is that these people are all really smart. If someone is willing to lie and do math, why not work at an unscrupulous pharma/finance company? They'd make way more money and do way less work. I'd even argue that fraud in the private sector is less unethical - if investors give money to a fraud they deserve to lose it, and regulators take an adversarial stance and have whole orgs (in theory) policing fraud like the SEC and FDA.

It takes a really particular kind of scumbag to seek a position of public trust, make a bunch of trainees financially and professionally dependent on them, accept taxpayer money intended to help cancer patients, then commit fraud.

Very few people start with big transgressions. Usually stuff escalates.

It's why need systems that don't put humans in situations where bad behaviour is incentivised. Also why we need to be forgiving when someone comes forward with a small transgression, so people don't get stuck in escalating cycles.

I'm sure this guy did some solid research once upon a time.
I don't know about this specific case, but it's common for the big name researchers not to do any actual research or play any direct part in generating their images. That's often done by kids - 25 year old grad students, even 20 year old undergrads - or other trainees. Those people may not appreciate how easy it is to detect image manipulation and are still learning what kinds of 'refining' of imagery and datasets is acceptable, while the PI that pays their stipend or sponsors their visa rages at their inability to get an expected outcome or replicate a previous result.

Not saying there aren't people out there just flat-out frauding, but these are group projects with a structure of trust and pressure that can muddy assignment of culpability. Like any committee or corporate action, it can be tough to say that any one individual is the guilty party or which people where just going along with the group.
I don't think it is a "and then commit fraud". They only got caught for the recent stuff.

Pretty simple reason. Money.

Oftentimes payed by insurance companies or have other financial intrests

It's not just science, although science plays a role in every field. It's everywhere, and why we've reached market saturation with mediocrity, in every field, every business. Those who would exceed mediocrity are ostracized and othered as if excellence is a bad thing, unless they are willing to compromise in other, not public-facing areas.

we've reached market saturation with mediocrity

You're only saying that because our society has decided that being average is bad, and being below average is unacceptable.

This reminds me of der rote liste, the big directory of all pharmaceutical drugs. during the 90s I opened the huge book on random pages and read the details of ~200 drugs. i concluded that maybe 1/50 prescription drugs are truly beneficial.

The amount of grands they get is enough to understand how one might be inclined to continue/prolong the research project they are doing. On the other hand there is the sunk cost fallacy. They spend all this time and effort on a research subject basically staking their whole carriers on it being right or giving results and they can't give up. I'm guessing most is doing it because of the sunk cost fallacy.

Daniel Suelo should do science