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Comment by bosswipe | Hacker News Reader

Is there any evidence that public labs are producing less science than they have in the past?

I know fraudulent science is performed in many university labs. If you read the papers you will see only what you think is science. But the results are falsified. The slides are fake. So maybe output is high but determining what is true output is hard.

And nearly no one replicates. I'm sorry that I can't give you info. It's not useful to me or my family to prove this. But consider this a warning. If you move subtly enough you might be able to ask the right people without triggering the defensive walls.

I know I sound like a crank, so I understand if your weight on this warning is not high. But it feels wrong to not warn. So I've done my duty to the extent I find comfortable.

FWIW I believe in the scientific process, and I very much like the idea of long-term fundamental science. I'm not a Trumper, or an anti-science loon, or someone who rejects modern epistemology.

I've spent many years in the academic spaces, both in public genetics labs as well as in computer science departments. I've never encountered anything like what you claim, and no one I know in academia has either. Extraordinary claims like yours need proof, no one will or should take you at your word, especially when there is the weight of many others experiences that cut against your claims.

Lior Pachter is pretty good at calling balls and strikes on this sort of thing

Hey, sorry, I googled but he has a lot of work and I couldn't find where he talks about fraud (or lack thereof) in science. If you have a link handy would you mind sharing?

A starting point: https://liorpachter.wordpress.com/2014/02/10/the-network-non...

Much appreciated

That's okay. I understand why you need to apply a near zero multiplier on what I told you but I'm unwilling to get any family member blackballed over outing anyone.

Your epistemological strategy is correct. And for all I know you are more correct. After all, given any random arrangement of points there will be clusters. And assuming you draw circles randomly, some circles will coincidentally appear full of points. But if the circle is the space of visibility of a sapient being, they will mistakenly determine that all of space is full of points simply based on their own circle.

So just because my immediate circle has encountered this enough may not mean that this is common.

Unfortunately, there is no true way for us to safely exchange information on this front for the positive case (there is fraud), only for the negative case (there is no fraud). So I guess we each act as if this circle is the entire plane and maybe the world will apply sufficient pressures to tease out who is right.

FWIW, I believe your anecdote. It doesn’t mean it happens everywhere all the time. You’re posting with your real name and I can’t think of why you’d come to HN to lie about it. I value reading about personal experiences on HN.

> Extraordinary claims like yours need proof

Scientific scam (or scientific mistake, not necessarily deliberate) is well documented in fact. It seems that >1800 published articles were retracted in 2020 by scientific journals, including 72 related with covid [1] so, maybe is not common, but yes, sometimes it happens. There is nothing extraordinary in that idea. The ideology that requires scientists to be a replacement for the figure of the religious saint is stupid.

[1] An example: 5G Technology and induction of coronavirus in skin cells. Biological Regulators & Homeostatic Agents. July 16, 2020. "showed evidence of substantial manipulation of the peer review"

I never claimed it doesn't happen, it's trivial to see that it occasionally does. The OP seemed to be suggesting that it was rampant and widespread, which I have a very hard time believing. Especially to the level of outright fabrication, rather than sloppy work or presenting subsets of real data in a dishonest way.

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