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Comment by px1999 | Hacker News Reader

px1999

This is a widespread problem. A close friend went through a similar experience collaborating at another supposedly reputable Canadian university.

He reported the academic dishonesty (copies of figures from another paper presented as new experimental results), and the university went to great lengths to keep the whole thing quiet.

5 years later, the lead researcher who faked the results still works at the university, the paper has not been retracted, and my friend left what became a pretty hostile lab (and AFAIK is still under NDA)

At that point, what is left aside from trying to publicly remove your own name from a paper you know is fraudulent?

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modern academia has become a meta game where its more about being able to navigate the system(get grant funding, go with status quo to get tenure, collude with others for citations, etc.) rather than actually being good at the field. We spend drastically more government money on research funding than in the past yet get less in return

see the Alzheimer's amyloid plaque cartel- https://www.statnews.com/2019/06/25/alzheimers-cabal-thwarte...

https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2019/12/31/Amyloid-plaques-m...

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

> modern academia has become a meta game where its more about being able to navigate the system rather than actually being good at the field.

Sounds like the entire history of academia (and most human endeavors, honestly)

> We spend drastically more government money on research funding than in the past

You didn't define "in the past" but pure science spending has generally declined as a percentage of GDP and has barely changed in inflation adjusted dollars in the last twenty years.

> yet get less in return*

As measured how?

Don't get fooled by that stat. In actual dollars not inflation adjusted dollars. If the US is making 10% more because exports of coal the fact that they spend 3% on coal investment means science gets more money at a lower percentage.

> Don't get fooled by that stay.

Which stat? The poster didn't provide any.

> In actual dollars not inflation adjusted dollars.

Scientists are paid salaries and need to eat and stuff, so it doesn't really make sense to me to ignore inflation there.

I agree, as someone who's seen how the sausage gets made, it's discouraging that such a noble endeavor remains so vulnerable to financial conflict of interest from the individual to the institutional level.

We'll still ultimately learn more about what's true in our universe, but it will take even longer and be more expensive than necessary.

How are the activities you listed a meta game instead of just a regular game with no Greek prefix?

If the game is scientific research, the metagame is as described.

Thanks. I thought the game was ego satisfaction.

Agreed. I do sometimes wonder if academia shouldn't be blown up and replaced wholesale with something different.

The new thing would have to have different incentives, or the same problems would just re-occur.

Why blow it up? Just create something that parallels it, and organize it in a way you think will work better. Then we can decide which one to blow up once we see how it measures up.

Some examples of where this is being done: open-access journals, study pre-registration, requirement to publish source code. No one's saying the old way is banned now, it exists in parallel with all those innovations. Some will stick, others will fizzle out.

> Just create something that parallels it

... then see your new system get attacked from all angles by the existing establishment. Smears on TV, 'fact-checkers' in social networks, bans and cancellations, etc.

The stakeholders of the existing system you are trying to replace won't go quietly into the night.

They're not exactly going to go quietly into the night with an attempt to "blow it up" either.

One good reason why the amyloid hypothesis persists in attracting support is that it is currently the only way to account for how the mutations in APP and presenilin cooperate to cause early onset familial Alzheimer's disease.

In particular, out of the 695 amino acids that constitute the APP protein, all the mutations that cause disease are located within the 42 amino acids that comprise the amyloid peptide, or just next to it.

NDA and academia? I guess that's considered normal but it would be good if there were checks and balances on the NDAs.

The only NDAs I'm familiar with are with vendors... maybe different in other fields.

... the MIT standard form NDA includes a clause which, in effect, says "You will not talk about the existence of this NDA." I'm not sure you'd know.

I’ve never had to sign an NDA and my whole career is in academia, and a lot of it with funding and partners from industry. The only colleagues I know (some of them working on nuclear materials, so quite sensitive) who are in this kind of situation is because of security clearance, and universities have nothing to do with it.

It’s definitely not normal, and should actually raise some red flags. I would like to know which institution does this sort of things.

MIT uses NDAs and non-disparage agreements to cover up research fraud. It's not uncommon.

I am not really convinced that it is “not uncommon”. Maybe MIT does but again, I have never had a colleague sign any. And I personally would not work for an institution that does.

How would you know? You might be working for an institution that does this right now.

I was intimidated into signed an NDA which says I can't talk about the NDA. The threats were serious, and I don't talk about that NDA.

Unless you're at senior levels of your university, you wouldn't know about sketchy stuff like this going on.

The way to solve this would be to extend restrictions on federal grant funding and financial aid to only encompass institutions which don't use tools like this.

I've signed a couple, but they've all been due to working with private industry.

But but "the science" is infallible!

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