3 ms·
You're right, both stories do seem plausible, and we're getting both sides presented through a third party who might or might not have an editorial slant as wel
by deong 10y ago
You're right, both stories do seem plausible, and we're getting both sides presented through a third party who might or might not have an editorial slant as well. Still, here's the part I noticed more than anything:
"In the fall of 2015, he took a refresher course in the conduct of science, which covered topics such as ethics and misconduct. The course reminded him that, around June 2015, a member of Rubin’s lab had told him about the alleged data fabrication in the Cell Stem Cell paper."
It "reminded him"? As in, someone told him his supervisor was falsifying data, and that didn't warrant even taking notice until something had to jog your memory? While the general circumstances -- student makes false allegations vs supervisor maliciously treats student -- are both plausible, this one line, if accurate in truth and accurately worded, makes me pretty skeptical.
- dhimes 10y agoAgree- it's hard to know. But the misconduct was probably not black and white (catching somebody gluing extra tails on a rat). It may be more fuzzy, especially to a student, who may have undergone training in ethics and had some issues identified as "bad" that maybe aren't obvious. In this (contorted and invented) scenario, I can see it. Like there are "gray areas" in sexual harassment that department training clarifies and says "this is (or is not) sexual harassment." What stood out to me was the fact that he was accused his own advisor BEFORE GETTING HIS PH.D. There is just something wrong here- especially if it's gray area. It's almost like it's not your place at that time (not to mention realizing you are throwing everything away- it's not like somebody is going to pick you up). So, yeah. Weird story.
- Bartweiss 10y agoI had the same doubt, but on reflection I'm not sure how implausible it is. The article does say "fabricated", but I'm not sure that means the data was generated by sitting at Excel going "0.6 sounds nice!" When data falsification comes out, these numerically small "four of six" cases don't usually seem to represent total invention. (Some larger cases, like one of the social psych studies that tanked a few years ago, do appear to involve making up hundreds of data points from scratch.) Rather, someone drops data, or reruns an experiment a few times, or 'adjusts' a number "based on their judgement". Normally you wouldn't call it fabrication, but sometimes people do that aggressively enough to get completely-baseless results off real experiments. In that case, I can honestly see someone (perhaps short on judgement overall) suddenly realizing that something was fraud. There's a note that German talked to some people and concluded that what happened was "grave misconduct". Infamously, Millikan 'tweaked' a lot of the data for his oil drop experiment, but got results so stunningly accurate that it's hard to criticize his chosen methods. If you think you're seeing that, I guess it could be a moment of realization that you're actually seeing fraud. Obviously there's not enough information to distinguish here, and no one comes out looking pretty. But that's the best justification I could come up with for 'realizing' an ethical issue had occurred.
- manarth 10y ago>> "In the fall of 2015, he took a refresher course in the conduct >> of science, which covered topics such as ethics and misconduct." > It "reminded him"? I wonder what prompted him to take a refresher course in a subject covering ethics and misconduct? It suggests that he had misgivings, and took a refresher course to determine whether his fears were justified, or whether this was a normal part of academic life. Or perhaps he took the course to give himself a rationale for raising the issue.
- npiazza83 10y agoStrawmen are stuffed full of perhaps. It makes the best kindling.