Comment by newbie789 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by newbie789 | Hacker News Reader

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This website is pretty easy to post on anonymously. It takes five seconds to make a throwaway and another three to post a name.

While I agree that there are frauds out there in academia and elsewhere, I have no reason to believe that you’re not yourself some sort of fraud. You’ve essentially posted “I have direct knowledge of [unspecified academic fraud in which somebody claimed to have direct knowledge of [unspecified academic fraudulent conclusion] but can’t back it up] but won’t back it up”

Your overall point is… what? Fraud of perpetuated by cowardice? Self interest? An overall sense of apathy towards the truth? Your comment could be construed as any of those.

There are people that love to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt without having to rely on being truthful. People that are intentionally misleading with the sole intent of leveraging people’s biases and emotions to confirm folks notions and whip people up into an artificially-created frenzy make statements yours.

Serious questions: 1. Do you actually give a shit about this big fraud you’ve brought up but not revealed? And 2. Why did you post?

> 1. Do you actually give a shit about this big fraud you’ve brought up but not revealed?

To expose it directly here would likely have little effect generally, but would have an outsized effect personally (damaging trust). If it did have an impact it would likely expose those involved (many careers). I am not in the command chain, I have seen the evidence and it's overwhelming. But I'm not in a position to enact the requisite change.

That said, I don't actually give a shit about this particular case. It's widespread, insanely wide spread. Most studies / work cannot be replicated.

> 2. Why did you post?

As an anecdote to highlight something that I've seen. I also linked to several other informational pieces with public accounts (so don't trust mine, fine -- trust theirs).

> To expose it directly here would likely have little effect generally, but would have an outsized effect personally (damaging trust). If it did have an impact it would likely expose those involved (many careers). I am not in the command chain, I have seen the evidence and it's overwhelming. But I'm not in a position to enact the requisite change.

Sorry, I don’t mean to pick at you but… what?

If you were to anonymously post the name of an academic fraud, you personally would necessarily be found out, and it would ruin multiple careers?

The powers that be know who you are, know of the fraud and its nature and those involved? You’ve been privy to this big juicy secret that’s shared by many, but if its content were to be revealed, you would certainly be the one pointed out?

Are you the only person that could reasonably know about and publicly object to this fraud? If so, is it a necessary function of your social or professional life to cover up this fraud? If so, I’ll go back to “why did you post?” (“Sharing anecdotes” isn’t really an answer to “Why did you share this anecdote?”)

Not sure why people are that hostile. I'm sure that identifying someone also can identify you if the circle around the person is small enough, and if said person is powerful enough, people choosing to believe them over him would end careers, yes. He'd have to say "well, i worked on this particular study with him, and the data was made up vs actually collected."

I think its more "how dare you hint scientists are corrupt!" that kind of drives the outrage.

> This website is pretty easy to post on anonymously.

Correct me if I am wrong, but this website, and the owners are in U.S. of A. If so, an appropriate court order would force the disclosure of logs, IP addresses, accounts, etc. There are plenty of examples where sites had to disclose sufficient details to track an 'anonymous' writer down. With multi-million (billion?) dollar endowments on the line, I would be worried to presume just a throw away account would work.

VPNs exists and are trivial to use. As is the TOR browser. Yes it's probably compromised already, but the FBI is not going to show their hand chasing a random libel case.

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