Comment by lnwlebjel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lnwlebjel | Hacker News Reader

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Richard Feynman on the subject:

"researchers must avoid fooling themselves, be willing to question and doubt their own theories and their own results, and investigate possible flaws in a theory or an experiment. He recommended that researchers adopt an unusually high level of honesty which is rarely encountered in everyday life, and gave examples from advertising, politics, and psychology to illustrate the everyday dishonesty which should be unacceptable in science. Feynman cautioned,[3]

'We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.'"

from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science

The frauds and bad scientists will be found out, eventually.

> The frauds and bad scientists will be found out, eventually.

The Stanford president mentioned is 63 years old and had a full academic career before being found out. It might even be that he remains financially well-off (I'm assuming his current role paid well for the last few years).

For every big case such as this one, how many more commit fraud without being noticed?

These quotes address what a scientist should do to do science, not what is practical to have a career in academia. The latter is more relevant in practice, because rigor and integrity don't get you tenure on their own.

Exactly. He stiffled the career of many honest scientists by siphoning money and prestige that should rightfully have been directed elsewhere. The damage is done.

This documentary series comes to mind [1], where in the end they go over the fallout and all the collective research years wasted and budding careers stunted (including people outright leaving research) because as students/postdocs trying to replicate the work of a scientist who was considered to be a potential nobel laureate, they couldn't possibly question the work they were trying to replicate.

I feel this aspect of research fraud is even worse than the other established scientists who had their research impacted. In the mentioned case, the established scientists were essentially unharmed with a large body of other work to lean on and many having some form of job security, while the PhDs and postdocs suddenly found themselves unable to list most of their experience on their CV, despite the established scientists being the most qualified to verify the fraudster's work. Especially for someone in a leadership position at a university, I wonder how that doesn't eat them up inside.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfDoml-Db64

> It might even be that he remains financially well-off (I'm assuming his current role paid well for the last few years).

I would say so. From one of the article:

> Tessier-Lavigne’s salary at Regeneron in 2014 was $1,764,032, according to a previously-unreported class action lawsuit alleging excessive compensation for members of the Compensation Committee, which included Tessier-Lavigne. It was later settled. He earned $1,555,296 from Stanford in 2021 with an additional $700,000 annually as a board director for Regeneron.

> Tessier-Lavigne’s salary at Regeneron

Wait, the company that re-sells "medical waste"? e.g. foreskins, cord blood, placentas? Body parts that should reside with their rightly owner, but doctors butcher and steal for self-enrichment?

The "The frauds and bad scientists will be found out, eventually" is still relevant. The point is that the priniciples of collaborative peer review should keep the field on track, not that it will rain vengeance down on some miscreant. The papers being retracted is far more important, in the long run, than this person being punshed or not.

But it should also be a reminder to those not in academic fields to take preprints and even published research with a huge grain of salt. Between political pressure, incentives to cheat to get funding and status, and the “infallibility” of people in authority, peer reviewed research is not looking very good to the average Joe. Hopefully it will eventually get straightened out, but it’s looking more like an entrenched ministry of truth.

I've been fascinated by this recently. Could you wind up better off, even getting exposed with a fraud scandal.

We always assume it's a tragic tale, and we're seeing someone crushed into a rock bottom state. It seems in many cases they still end up ahead of where they would be.

I even wondered if that would happen with Theranos. It's possible she's even ahead now of where she would be without fraud. I tend to think a lengthy prison sentence is never worth it, but if she had got off easier that would be a different story.

> The frauds and bad scientists will be found out, eventually.

That's nice, but some frauds could potentially be very, very costly for society. There needs to be some deterrent as well.

There needs to be heavy deterrent, but there also needs to be room for genuine failure. A lot of research, in both academic, public, and private domains, is worthless. When you spend months, or years on dead end research it can be a disaster for your career. The temptation to misrepresent or fabricate results is strong in those situations.

That’s the problem. Spending years to fail in research shouldn’t nuke your career. Finding out it’s not worth doing is as, if not more, important as finding the way to do it

Biomedical science is not self-correcting on any reasonable time scale. Ten to twenty year errors and distractions are common, and can have a huge direct and indirect cost. Alzheimer’s disease research and the APP mania is a case in point.

APP Mania?

Amyloid precursor protein

The original study on that from like 2006 turns out to be faked

https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-fabricatio...

As well we are discovering from 40 years of neoclassical economics being a dominant force in policy.

Only if we can question experts. That seems to get you in trouble.

Eventually you will be found out. Unfortunately that could be at 63 (like the Stanford president) after you have had an entire career and tens of millions in compensation. Other times it may be after your death.

Sadly, this is a hard scam to catch and most top researchers may never get enough scrutiny to get caught.

> Eventually you will be found out.

this just isn't true. you're assuming because you only see this every once in a while that it must be rare and policed effectively. it's actually the complete opposite - very common and not policed at all. the much more likely thing is that your paper with fabricated data will never be read. that's as good in the sense that no harm no foul but it still has the effect of padding out people's CVs that don't deserve it. but hey - don't hate the player hate the game is my motto.

Fair enough. I was just quoting the guy above me.

"eventually" might be a while. these fairly obvious (once pointed out) photoshops were just sitting in the open in the top scientific journals in the world for 20 years...

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