11 ms·

Even in hard sciences, there are papers that everyone in the niche knows is false, but fear to speak out about or publish a paper refuting it for fear of their

Even in hard sciences, there are papers that everyone in the niche knows is false, but fear to speak out about or publish a paper refuting it for fear of their career being damaged. My wife is a biochemist, and during her PhD they were working on an area of research with a handful of labs publishing about it. One lab in particular was known for a decent amount of questionable publications, but the PI was a big deal and no one would officially question anything. So they would whisper amongst each other and just ignore that paper (and all the additional papers built on top of it) because they all knew it was bullshit.

akvadrako 8y ago
Not all "hard" sciences. I'm pretty sure there are no papers in physics that are well known to be wrong but people fear speaking out, though I'm open to being proven wrong.
- qudat 8y ago
  Richard Feynman was laughed at when presenting new ideas in physics when he was an up-and-comer. The human ego tends to intervene when careers are on the line.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    Laughing at true new ideas is actually the opposite behavior flaw of whispering about false ideas that are known to be false but are associated with too much social power.
    - nothrabannosir 8y ago
      It’s the same family: public judgement of a claim influenced by the person making it, rather than its contents. Point being: Feynman’s ideas should have been judged on their merit, rather than Richard’s career. Same for the papers published by the institute mentioned above.
      - whatshisface 8y ago
        They eventually were judged on merit, which is a testament to the system at the expense of the characters that were involved at the time.
  - bsder 8y ago
    To be fair, Feynman wasn't above proof by intimidation, either. I adore Feynman's work, but he was human and had human failings, too.
- ctchocula 8y ago
  There is an interesting anecdote about how Millikan's oil drop experiment that measured the elementary electric charge was way off when he measured. Feynman talks about it in his book: "We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher. Why didn't they discover the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of—this history—because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong—and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that."
- albutr 8y ago
  There are definitely papers in physics that are well-known to be wrong. I know of results published in high-profile journals where the authors have stated (in person, but not officially in a published update) that even they cannot reproduce their own results.
zorga 8y ago
Wow, that's a clear sign science has become too political. Proving other scientists wrong used to be how careers were made, not something to fear.
- seibelj 8y ago
  All the labs working on this spoke to each other, collaborated occasionally, and saw each other at conferences. So making a big stink about this wouldn’t have made life easier. Plus peer reviewers for submitted papers are “hidden” but because the field is so niche they are likely people you know, and they know who you are when you publish (reviews aren’t double-blind), so it could hurt your career if the PI became angry at you and started bad-mouthing you to to the other labs.
  - zorga 8y ago
    I understand, but science isn't supposed to make life easier, it's supposed to progress mankind's knowledge and that necessarily entails eliminating bad information from the body of knowledge. Avoiding challenging bad papers because someone you know wrote it and you're worried they might not like you for it; well, yuk.
    - gmueckl 8y ago
      No, something like this can spiral: they can write bad reviews about your work, tanking your publication rate, which makes it harder to find funding etc...
    - sverige 8y ago
      You've missed the point: getting along with your peers is the most important thing. What is truth?
      - zorga 8y ago
        No I haven't... > getting along with your peers is the most important thing No it isn't, hence the yuk. Anyone who thinks getting along with your peers is more important than getting the science right, isn't someone I trust doing science. The most important thing is getting the science right, full stop, end of story.
YorkshireSeason 8y ago
I'd be interested to learn about results in the "hard sciences" that I work in (mathematics, logic, program verification, typing systems), what papers "everyone in the niche knows is false", but "fears to speak out about". Sure, mistakes happen, my own PhD contained a major blunder (discovered several years after submission -- at least somebody read it ...), but I'm extremely open about it.
- dahart 8y ago
  FWIW, your examples aren’t hard sciences per se. The term hard science is referring to natural world subjects like physics, chemistry, biology and astronomy. It’s not a difficulty or value judgement, it’s just a term with a specific categorical meaning.
  - jammygit 8y ago
    I wonder sometimes whether math isn't a natural science by accident. If 2+2=4 wasn't applicable to the real world, I don't believe we would have defined math the same way
    - dahart 8y ago
      That’s an open (and interesting) question, I think, whether there are absolute physical truths in math, and whether our basic math rules can be defined any other way. But certainly there are huge swaths of math that don’t correspond to the physical world, and there are parts of math that are decided rather than natural consequences. Ultimately though, the math that is natural science is just called “physics”, right? ;) The reason math can’t be a hard science is because we can’t prove abstract math by physical experiment. That’s all “hard science” means - things you can show by physical experiment. We can prove math theorems by showing they’re consistent under all the other math theorems, but generally not by conducting physical tests.
      - YorkshireSeason 8y ago
        Not all mathematics formalises physics. Nowadays, much math formalises other maths, e.g. set theory, category theory etc.
softwaredoug 8y ago
A version of this happens in software too. See machine learning. There’s definitely valid field with real benefits. But also lots of BS. Nobody wants to call out their peers because everyone benefits from the hype.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- buboard 8y ago
  > Nobody wants to call out their peers because everyone benefits from the hype. As a counterpoint, it seems that minsky and papert's work was partly driven from their desire to stop the funding of larger perceptrons , in which they did not believe. The winter that followed their work may or may not have delayed progress in AI by years or decades. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ues-NayAs&t=642s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ues-NayAs&t=642s
  - leereeves 8y ago
    The theory of deep learning was developed about 50 years ago, but useful applications weren't possible until recently because the hardware was too slow.
cryoshon 8y ago
i agree that this is a problem in the biosciences as well. the dead ringer for these groups is a PI who has a reputation for taking on extremely ambitious projects with all sorts of funding sources. typically, the PI is vindictive and controlling in my experience. but yeah. you can see them from a mile away. they tend to run sweatshop-style labs where everyone is very hard pressed for results. so "results" are produced, whether or not they are real.
nonbel 8y ago
Your story sounds like what I have seen, but biology is not a "hard science".
- seibelj 8y ago
  Biochemistry and creating pharmaceuticals is absolutely a hard science
  - nonbel 8y ago
    Not at all. In the hard sciences you can run reproducible experiments and have mathematical models used to make precise predictions and come up with "natural laws". Biologists were moving in that direction up to 1940 or so but that is not what is going on now. Here is the biggest funder of biomedical research in the world admitting that $27 billion out of $30 billion per year is wasted on unreproducible research: https://nihrecord.nih.gov/newsletters/2016/07_01_2016/story3.htm https://nihrecord.nih.gov/newsletters/2016/07_01_2016/story3... And I would say that is optimistic because it does not consider misinterpreted results (interpreting your data correctly is even harder than figuring out how to perform and report reproducible experiments)...
    - seibelj 8y ago
      If biochemistry is not a hard science then the only hard sciences are math and physics
      - nonbel 8y ago
        I'd say both organic and inorganic chemistry are hard sciences since they make precise predictions about what will happen. But not biochemistry, and definitely not cell biology or molecular biology. I also wouldn't consider math a science since it doesn't require comparing your results to data.
        OskarS 8y ago
        Biology is absolutely a hard science. The soft sciences are things like economics, sociology and psychology. Look up "hard science" on wikipedia. Look it up in a dictionary. Look it up in any reference work you like. It may very well be that you have your own peculiar definition of "hard science", or that you personally disagree that biology or biochemistry should be classified that way. That's fine, you're allowed to have your own opinions. But you having your own crackpot opinions doesn't make it fact in the real world.
buboard 8y ago
That sounds grave. I believe in most cases the science is not questionable per se, but it passes just above the significance threshold to be considered technically valid. The problem is the extrapolations made from that, and the false media attention. what your wife is describing is what is commonly called "progress one death at a time"
the8472 8y ago
Isn't that fear something which the "Journal of Controversial Ideas" aims to solve?
jackcosgrove 8y ago
Sometimes I wonder if researchers are too conflict-averse temperamentally to effectively police themselves. I remember grad school being suffused with below-the-surface grudges, innuendo, and shunning. Those aren't healthy ways to resolve conflicts, but they seemed like the path of least resistance for people who fear the raising of voices.
- wpietri 8y ago
  Is that really temperament? I always thought of that as learned behavior necessary to survive in an academic context, where one's fate is for years in the hands of various authorities who can cause you a great deal of harm.
nemild 8y ago
Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Or more succinctly, science advances one funeral at a time.
- crimsonalucard 8y ago
  Except this isnt just "one funeral at a time." This is genocide.
  - mmaunder 8y ago
    True and funny. Looks like you got downvoted into oblivion. Someone being a bit too sensitive about a genocide metaphor I suspect.
jononor 8y ago
Why don't they publish a paper anonymously? Hopefully that would at least work for cases where "everyone" knows it is bullshit.
temp_account00 8y ago
I know of one major team in my field. I tried to passively discuss it, was graduating and I was so naive. Not a good idea! At the time I had a few papers in review. All my work got rejected (everything was being accepted before, and the rejected batch was a full level higher quality). So yes, it did set back my career for two and a half years if I have to approximate. I am probably never submitting to certain publications ever again to avoid having them as reviewers. I am gradually moving away from their field entirely. I was so short on publication then that I couldnt even move away to nearby fields, having accomplished vengeful rejections in my field. These days I wish I had done a second PhD in a different field, just to get away from them! I'd have had a much easier career path. This is by no means an exaggeration, I am actually downplaying what happened.

akvadrako 8y ago

Not all "hard" sciences. I'm pretty sure there are no papers in physics that are well known to be wrong but people fear speaking out, though I'm open to being proven wrong.

qudat 8y ago
Richard Feynman was laughed at when presenting new ideas in physics when he was an up-and-comer. The human ego tends to intervene when careers are on the line.
- whatshisface 8y ago
  Laughing at true new ideas is actually the opposite behavior flaw of whispering about false ideas that are known to be false but are associated with too much social power.
  - nothrabannosir 8y ago
    It’s the same family: public judgement of a claim influenced by the person making it, rather than its contents. Point being: Feynman’s ideas should have been judged on their merit, rather than Richard’s career. Same for the papers published by the institute mentioned above.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      They eventually were judged on merit, which is a testament to the system at the expense of the characters that were involved at the time.
- bsder 8y ago
  To be fair, Feynman wasn't above proof by intimidation, either. I adore Feynman's work, but he was human and had human failings, too.
ctchocula 8y ago
There is an interesting anecdote about how Millikan's oil drop experiment that measured the elementary electric charge was way off when he measured. Feynman talks about it in his book: "We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher. Why didn't they discover the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of—this history—because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong—and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that."
albutr 8y ago
There are definitely papers in physics that are well-known to be wrong. I know of results published in high-profile journals where the authors have stated (in person, but not officially in a published update) that even they cannot reproduce their own results.

zorga 8y ago

Wow, that's a clear sign science has become too political. Proving other scientists wrong used to be how careers were made, not something to fear.

seibelj 8y ago
All the labs working on this spoke to each other, collaborated occasionally, and saw each other at conferences. So making a big stink about this wouldn’t have made life easier. Plus peer reviewers for submitted papers are “hidden” but because the field is so niche they are likely people you know, and they know who you are when you publish (reviews aren’t double-blind), so it could hurt your career if the PI became angry at you and started bad-mouthing you to to the other labs.
- zorga 8y ago
  I understand, but science isn't supposed to make life easier, it's supposed to progress mankind's knowledge and that necessarily entails eliminating bad information from the body of knowledge. Avoiding challenging bad papers because someone you know wrote it and you're worried they might not like you for it; well, yuk.
  - gmueckl 8y ago
    No, something like this can spiral: they can write bad reviews about your work, tanking your publication rate, which makes it harder to find funding etc...
  - sverige 8y ago
    You've missed the point: getting along with your peers is the most important thing. What is truth?
    - zorga 8y ago
      No I haven't... > getting along with your peers is the most important thing No it isn't, hence the yuk. Anyone who thinks getting along with your peers is more important than getting the science right, isn't someone I trust doing science. The most important thing is getting the science right, full stop, end of story.

YorkshireSeason 8y ago

I'd be interested to learn about results in the "hard sciences" that I work in (mathematics, logic, program verification, typing systems), what papers "everyone in the niche knows is false", but "fears to speak out about". Sure, mistakes happen, my own PhD contained a major blunder (discovered several years after submission -- at least somebody read it ...), but I'm extremely open about it.

dahart 8y ago
FWIW, your examples aren’t hard sciences per se. The term hard science is referring to natural world subjects like physics, chemistry, biology and astronomy. It’s not a difficulty or value judgement, it’s just a term with a specific categorical meaning.
- jammygit 8y ago
  I wonder sometimes whether math isn't a natural science by accident. If 2+2=4 wasn't applicable to the real world, I don't believe we would have defined math the same way
  - dahart 8y ago
    That’s an open (and interesting) question, I think, whether there are absolute physical truths in math, and whether our basic math rules can be defined any other way. But certainly there are huge swaths of math that don’t correspond to the physical world, and there are parts of math that are decided rather than natural consequences. Ultimately though, the math that is natural science is just called “physics”, right? ;) The reason math can’t be a hard science is because we can’t prove abstract math by physical experiment. That’s all “hard science” means - things you can show by physical experiment. We can prove math theorems by showing they’re consistent under all the other math theorems, but generally not by conducting physical tests.
    - YorkshireSeason 8y ago
      Not all mathematics formalises physics. Nowadays, much math formalises other maths, e.g. set theory, category theory etc.

softwaredoug 8y ago

A version of this happens in software too. See machine learning. There’s definitely valid field with real benefits. But also lots of BS. Nobody wants to call out their peers because everyone benefits from the hype.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
buboard 8y ago
> Nobody wants to call out their peers because everyone benefits from the hype. As a counterpoint, it seems that minsky and papert's work was partly driven from their desire to stop the funding of larger perceptrons , in which they did not believe. The winter that followed their work may or may not have delayed progress in AI by years or decades. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ues-NayAs&t=642s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ues-NayAs&t=642s
- leereeves 8y ago
  The theory of deep learning was developed about 50 years ago, but useful applications weren't possible until recently because the hardware was too slow.

cryoshon 8y ago

i agree that this is a problem in the biosciences as well. the dead ringer for these groups is a PI who has a reputation for taking on extremely ambitious projects with all sorts of funding sources. typically, the PI is vindictive and controlling in my experience. but yeah. you can see them from a mile away. they tend to run sweatshop-style labs where everyone is very hard pressed for results. so "results" are produced, whether or not they are real.

nonbel 8y ago

Your story sounds like what I have seen, but biology is not a "hard science".

seibelj 8y ago
Biochemistry and creating pharmaceuticals is absolutely a hard science
- nonbel 8y ago
  Not at all. In the hard sciences you can run reproducible experiments and have mathematical models used to make precise predictions and come up with "natural laws". Biologists were moving in that direction up to 1940 or so but that is not what is going on now. Here is the biggest funder of biomedical research in the world admitting that $27 billion out of $30 billion per year is wasted on unreproducible research: https://nihrecord.nih.gov/newsletters/2016/07_01_2016/story3.htm https://nihrecord.nih.gov/newsletters/2016/07_01_2016/story3... And I would say that is optimistic because it does not consider misinterpreted results (interpreting your data correctly is even harder than figuring out how to perform and report reproducible experiments)...
  - seibelj 8y ago
    If biochemistry is not a hard science then the only hard sciences are math and physics
    - nonbel 8y ago
      I'd say both organic and inorganic chemistry are hard sciences since they make precise predictions about what will happen. But not biochemistry, and definitely not cell biology or molecular biology. I also wouldn't consider math a science since it doesn't require comparing your results to data.
      - OskarS 8y ago
        Biology is absolutely a hard science. The soft sciences are things like economics, sociology and psychology. Look up "hard science" on wikipedia. Look it up in a dictionary. Look it up in any reference work you like. It may very well be that you have your own peculiar definition of "hard science", or that you personally disagree that biology or biochemistry should be classified that way. That's fine, you're allowed to have your own opinions. But you having your own crackpot opinions doesn't make it fact in the real world.

buboard 8y ago

That sounds grave. I believe in most cases the science is not questionable per se, but it passes just above the significance threshold to be considered technically valid. The problem is the extrapolations made from that, and the false media attention. what your wife is describing is what is commonly called "progress one death at a time"

the8472 8y ago

Isn't that fear something which the "Journal of Controversial Ideas" aims to solve?

jackcosgrove 8y ago

Sometimes I wonder if researchers are too conflict-averse temperamentally to effectively police themselves. I remember grad school being suffused with below-the-surface grudges, innuendo, and shunning. Those aren't healthy ways to resolve conflicts, but they seemed like the path of least resistance for people who fear the raising of voices.

wpietri 8y ago
Is that really temperament? I always thought of that as learned behavior necessary to survive in an academic context, where one's fate is for years in the hands of various authorities who can cause you a great deal of harm.

nemild 8y ago

Max Planck: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” Or more succinctly, science advances one funeral at a time.

crimsonalucard 8y ago
Except this isnt just "one funeral at a time." This is genocide.
- mmaunder 8y ago
  True and funny. Looks like you got downvoted into oblivion. Someone being a bit too sensitive about a genocide metaphor I suspect.

jononor 8y ago

Why don't they publish a paper anonymously? Hopefully that would at least work for cases where "everyone" knows it is bullshit.

temp_account00 8y ago

I know of one major team in my field. I tried to passively discuss it, was graduating and I was so naive. Not a good idea! At the time I had a few papers in review. All my work got rejected (everything was being accepted before, and the rejected batch was a full level higher quality). So yes, it did set back my career for two and a half years if I have to approximate. I am probably never submitting to certain publications ever again to avoid having them as reviewers. I am gradually moving away from their field entirely. I was so short on publication then that I couldnt even move away to nearby fields, having accomplished vengeful rejections in my field. These days I wish I had done a second PhD in a different field, just to get away from them! I'd have had a much easier career path. This is by no means an exaggeration, I am actually downplaying what happened.