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Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

> This speaks volumes about his character.

I suppose it reveals that he resigned under pressure that forced him to after allegedly writing numerous falsified papers that led to his current credentials.

Not sure that’s an ethics gold star or anything. I guess it’s better than “they’ll take me out of my office in a casket” and digging in, but still shows massive ethical failures and since ethics are usually not compartmentalized means that there’s probably other bad news that’s not revealed yet.

I think the right way would have not to falsified research. Or to come clean on your own and resign before it’s a stink.

As it is now, it’s bad for Stanford. And means the hiring committee didn’t do sufficient due diligence to even ask people on his field if his work was valid.

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From the article:

> 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).”

> There was no evidence that Tessier-Lavigne himself manipulated data in the papers reviewed, the report concluded, nor that he knew about manipulation at the time, but he “has not been able to provide an adequate explanation” for why he did not correct the scientific record when presented the opportunity on multiple occasions. In his statement, Tessier-Lavigne wrote that he was “gratified that the Panel concluded I did not engage in any fraud or falsification of scientific data.”

In other words, he created a culture in which fraud could be expected, and he didn't address it properly when it was brought to his attention. I'm not giving him any gold stars for ethics. But as far as I know, he didn't personally falsify research.

How is creating a culture that incentivized and rewards fraud any better?

I guess you can technically claim plausible deniability but I don’t think he gets a pass here at all.

> How is creating a culture that incentivized and rewards fraud any better?

You're asking why accidentally creating ripe conditions for fraud isn't as bad as willfully committing fraud?

The word "accidentally" is doing a lot of work here.

Precisely, that of the benefit of doubt.

So, the doubt "speaks volumes about his character"? (quoting the original comment)

I don't think it speaks of anything at all, in the best case.

I don't think it is any better. But let's describe what (we know) he did correctly.

It shows ability to scale as a leader and be a force multiplier.

Obviously, we wait for the investigation to complete. But I don’t know of any valid reason someone would “not be able to provide an adequate explanation” for something so basic.

Occam’s razor would make me think that if no one has ever seen the data and it made him famous, it’s probably fraud.

The investigation has already found there was fraud. And from his failure to issue retractions for years after he was told, one can conclude he was at best indifferent to it.

What it hasn't found is evidence he got his own hands dirty or that he explicitly ordered fraud, and I'm not sure it will. raincom's comment [1] was dead on.

I'm unsure if this distinction holds any significance for him personally. One reason I call it out is that it's worth considering how to deter this kind of "leadership" when drafting scientific ethical standards or even laws.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36792536

That’s the same culture c-level executives inculcate: (a) don’t put anything in writing (b) don’t explicitly ask to do unethical things (c) use layers of lawyers or of other executives to evade culpability (d) since voice calls can be recorded, hire yes-men from one’s own network to use code-language or para-linguistic cues to execute illegal and/or illegal stuff

I generally agree, but:

> And means the hiring committee didn’t do sufficient due diligence to even ask people on his field if his work was valid.

Detecting fraudulent results isn't always easy. If there was already a public controversy about his papers and they didn't pick up on that, that was a failing. In the worst case, faked results can only be detected by running a study over again and getting a different result -- and even then, it's hard to rule out some difference that wasn't properly controlled for, an honest mistake somewhere, or just bad luck.

The standard of truth in science isn't peer review, it's having results that are consistently reproducible.

It’s certainly not easy, that’s why I said they failed at due diligence. I assume they tried.

This is the president of a $28B endowment and $720M annual revenue. They have the resources to validate candidates like any other massive organization.

This doesn’t seem like an honest mistake or bad luck.

I think it's more valuable to praise good ethical decisions than it is to deride bad ones, and we have more than enough bad ones bombarding us constantly.

>Or to come clean on your own and resign before it’s a stink.

I feel like this is what is happening, so we must be thinking on different timelines.

As it is now, it’s bad for Stanford. And means the hiring committee didn’t do sufficient due diligence to even ask people on his field if his work was valid.

To be clear, there's no net-positive here, it's still net-negative and I agree that everyone is worse overall. The thing I'm pointing to though is that this was the best outcome from an already bad situation and is done in a way that is transparent and is actually addressing harms and preventing further harm by changing the power structures.

> I think it's more valuable to praise good ethical decisions than it is to deride bad ones,

I agree. But I don’t think this is a good ethical decision. It’s not a decision at all. He was fired and Stanford PR made a statement for him. I don’t think that’s praiseworthy.

Or I suppose we could praise him for not murdering people. And lots of other things that are extremely common and I don’t think noteworthy.

I think it’s also worth reflecting on terrible decisions and people who make them and use mistakes of others to learn.

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