3 ms·

Could you give more details on other causes of research fraud you've seen?

Gatsky 6y ago
One was a post-doctoral scientist, called X. The lab I was in was asked to take X on by the institute because they had a falling out with another lab, the details of which were not disclosed. A year later, after very poor productivity and various petty issues with other people in the lab, someone checked X's data collection where the original data was available on the instrtument, and found that it was all made up. Subsequently the previous lab investigated, and a paper X published as first author was retracted. Turns out in the previous lab there were also concerns about data fabrication and many other problematic interactions before the fraud was discovered. Also turns out X left another lab before this under similar circumstances. Another was a well established Professor 'P' with a very large number of published papers, who continued to publish multiple papers at a high rate. There had been doubts for years due to data that seemed too cute and the fact that P always took the data and made the final figures in the paper themselves. P was finally caught out when a paper included data which could not possibly have been collected, and was outright fabricated. It is worthing nothing that both P and X left the institute without disciplinary action beyond employment termination and signing an NDA. One of them is in another city, getting government grants and doing just fine. Everyone in the know doesn't trust any of their papers of course, but I guess that doesn't include whoever reviews their grants. None of these are 'good people gone bad'. They are are flawed individuals with no integrity and sociopathic personality traits, and they waste a lot of decent people's time dealing with their actions.
- gwerbret 6y ago
  I agree completely that some people fit that bill; I'd argue however that even for them, the skewed incentives of research success certainly help support that particular approach to fraud. My premise was that most of the people committing research fraud are probably not sociopaths.
  - woofie11 6y ago
    The bigger problem is that research fraud leads to research impact which leads to academic hiring. I think most graduate students come in with pretty good integrity. By the time people are promoted for tenure, you've had multiple filters for sociopathic behavior.
- BurningFrog 6y ago
  Sounds a lot like the Catholic Church sending pedophiles to new areas after their child raping gets discovered. Neither system seems sustainable.
- woofie11 6y ago
  That's the damnable thing. The result in each case is an NDA. These things never go public. It's in no one's interest. MIT is choked full with people who've signed these sorts of NDAs. You shall not talk about wide-spread research fabrication. You shall not talk about the professors who partied on Epstein's island (except for the few honest ones who came forward; they're ostracized). You shall not talk about corrupt conflicts-of-interest. And so on. I've heard similar things about Stanford and a few other elite schools, but I have no first-hand knowledge there. Why is this even allowed?

One was a post-doctoral scientist, called X. The lab I was in was asked to take X on by the institute because they had a falling out with another lab, the details of which were not disclosed. A year later, after very poor productivity and various petty issues with other people in the lab, someone checked X's data collection where the original data was available on the instrtument, and found that it was all made up. Subsequently the previous lab investigated, and a paper X published as first author was retracted. Turns out in the previous lab there were also concerns about data fabrication and many other problematic interactions before the fraud was discovered. Also turns out X left another lab before this under similar circumstances. Another was a well established Professor 'P' with a very large number of published papers, who continued to publish multiple papers at a high rate. There had been doubts for years due to data that seemed too cute and the fact that P always took the data and made the final figures in the paper themselves. P was finally caught out when a paper included data which could not possibly have been collected, and was outright fabricated. It is worthing nothing that both P and X left the institute without disciplinary action beyond employment termination and signing an NDA. One of them is in another city, getting government grants and doing just fine. Everyone in the know doesn't trust any of their papers of course, but I guess that doesn't include whoever reviews their grants. None of these are 'good people gone bad'. They are are flawed individuals with no integrity and sociopathic personality traits, and they waste a lot of decent people's time dealing with their actions.

gwerbret 6y ago
I agree completely that some people fit that bill; I'd argue however that even for them, the skewed incentives of research success certainly help support that particular approach to fraud. My premise was that most of the people committing research fraud are probably not sociopaths.
- woofie11 6y ago
  The bigger problem is that research fraud leads to research impact which leads to academic hiring. I think most graduate students come in with pretty good integrity. By the time people are promoted for tenure, you've had multiple filters for sociopathic behavior.
BurningFrog 6y ago
Sounds a lot like the Catholic Church sending pedophiles to new areas after their child raping gets discovered. Neither system seems sustainable.
woofie11 6y ago
That's the damnable thing. The result in each case is an NDA. These things never go public. It's in no one's interest. MIT is choked full with people who've signed these sorts of NDAs. You shall not talk about wide-spread research fabrication. You shall not talk about the professors who partied on Epstein's island (except for the few honest ones who came forward; they're ostracized). You shall not talk about corrupt conflicts-of-interest. And so on. I've heard similar things about Stanford and a few other elite schools, but I have no first-hand knowledge there. Why is this even allowed?