6 ms·

> Along the way, everyone knew and when people tried to bring up concerns higher ups in the institution suppressed the knowledge. As you are doing here. I don'

> Along the way, everyone knew and when people tried to bring up concerns higher ups in the institution suppressed the knowledge. As you are doing here. I don't see a name or any specifics anywhere in your comment. Of course not including any names or specifics also means you could be making it up for a good story. We have no way of knowing.

lettergram 5y ago
Much of this was told to me in confidence (via their lab-mates, etc) I’m not going to betray their trust.
- slg 5y ago
  Your first comment was effectively "Everyone knows this person is a fraud and no one is willing to stand up and put a stop to it". Your second comment was effectively "Well I don't know they are a fraud and I'm not going to be the one who upsets people by trying to put a stop to it". I don't say this as a criticism of you. I say this a defense of the people you are criticizing. Stopping people like this takes a lot of work and often some personal risk. Most of us aren't willing to do it despite us pretending otherwise.
  - Infernal 5y ago
    >Stopping people like this takes a lot of work and often some personal risk. I don't recall where I first heard it, but the principle that it takes 10x the amount of energy to refute bullshit as it does to generate it certainly seems to apply in this case.
    - acidburnNSA 5y ago
      Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bullshit%20asymmetry%20principle https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bullshit%20a...
      - WaitWaitWha 5y ago
        It is easier to fool people then to convince them they have been fooled - Mark Twain
    - kristopolous 5y ago
      And often it doesn't actually matter. How many times have you seen people who use citations and references get harassed by some bloviating hoard? Reality is almost irrelevant in the face of ideology, dogma, and all the other forces that keep counterintuitive or uncomfortable reality out.
    - AllegedAlec 5y ago
      A post-doc of a collaborator of a professor of mine was once found to have doctored data. The professor and her collabs only found out when they looked at the images and found out that there were sections that seemed to have been copy/pasted. Getting the papers retracted was a gruelling process that (iirc) took over 3 years.
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    The people in charge were given evidence, face much less risk, and it's their job to put a stop to it. They deserve the criticism.
    - slg 5y ago
      >The people in charge were given evidence, face much less risk, and it's their job to put a stop to it. That is an awfully authoritative statement to make based off what OP shared. But either way, this has been proven time and time again whether we are talking about simple corruption like OP mentioned or more serious forms of injustice. People will judge themselves based off motivations and others based off actions. We can excuse ourselves because of the personal inconvenience that acting will cause us. But other people don't get that luxury. They get criticized purely based off that lack of action because if we were in their situation surely we would do the right thing. Being honest about this is important step to actually fixing the system because we need to identify the motivations which lead to the lack of action in order to remove them and encourage action. Simply vilifying people for not acting accomplishes nothing.
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        > That is an awfully authoritative statement to make based off what OP shared. Which part do you disagree with? Maybe the 'much' on much less risk? 'given evidence' is true unless OP made op the story. (And even if OP made up the story then we're judging fictional people and the judgements are still valid.) I think 'less risk' goes part and parcel with being administration rather than someone lower rank reporting a problem. And it seems clear to me that it's their job. So, criticism. Which is not a particularly harsh outcome. And doesn't necessarily mean they made the wrong decision, but them providing a justification would be a good start. Inaction is often excusable when it's not your job. It's always important to look at motivations, but vilification can also be appropriate when there's dereliction. Sometimes there are no significant motivations leading to lack of action, there's just apathy and people that shouldn't have been hired to the position.
        slg 5y ago
- newbie789 5y ago
  This website is pretty easy to post on anonymously. It takes five seconds to make a throwaway and another three to post a name. While I agree that there are frauds out there in academia and elsewhere, I have no reason to believe that you’re not yourself some sort of fraud. You’ve essentially posted “I have direct knowledge of [unspecified academic fraud in which somebody claimed to have direct knowledge of [unspecified academic fraudulent conclusion] but can’t back it up] but won’t back it up” Your overall point is… what? Fraud of perpetuated by cowardice? Self interest? An overall sense of apathy towards the truth? Your comment could be construed as any of those. There are people that love to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt without having to rely on being truthful. People that are intentionally misleading with the sole intent of leveraging people’s biases and emotions to confirm folks notions and whip people up into an artificially-created frenzy make statements yours. Serious questions: 1. Do you actually give a shit about this big fraud you’ve brought up but not revealed? And 2. Why did you post?
  - lettergram 5y ago
    > 1. Do you actually give a shit about this big fraud you’ve brought up but not revealed? To expose it directly here would likely have little effect generally, but would have an outsized effect personally (damaging trust). If it did have an impact it would likely expose those involved (many careers). I am not in the command chain, I have seen the evidence and it's overwhelming. But I'm not in a position to enact the requisite change. That said, I don't actually give a shit about this particular case. It's widespread, insanely wide spread. Most studies / work cannot be replicated. > 2. Why did you post? As an anecdote to highlight something that I've seen. I also linked to several other informational pieces with public accounts (so don't trust mine, fine -- trust theirs).
    - newbie789 5y ago
      > To expose it directly here would likely have little effect generally, but would have an outsized effect personally (damaging trust). If it did have an impact it would likely expose those involved (many careers). I am not in the command chain, I have seen the evidence and it's overwhelming. But I'm not in a position to enact the requisite change. Sorry, I don’t mean to pick at you but… what? If you were to anonymously post the name of an academic fraud, you personally would necessarily be found out, and it would ruin multiple careers? The powers that be know who you are, know of the fraud and its nature and those involved? You’ve been privy to this big juicy secret that’s shared by many, but if its content were to be revealed, you would certainly be the one pointed out? Are you the only person that could reasonably know about and publicly object to this fraud? If so, is it a necessary function of your social or professional life to cover up this fraud? If so, I’ll go back to “why did you post?” (“Sharing anecdotes” isn’t really an answer to “Why did you share this anecdote?”)
sillysaurusx 5y ago
Well yes. It’s not cool to out someone in front of millions of people. Feel free to dismiss the claim if you wish.
- ZephyrBlu 5y ago
  People on HN are so odd sometimes. Ah yes, I must be a liar if I don't want to spill all the details my friends told me in confidence and ruin our relationship. Sure, sometimes people lie on the internet but this is not an outlandish story.
  - lettergram 5y ago
    Imagine I did out someone? “Best case” scenario everyone loses their funding, including the colleagues who did report this stuff. The institution, the lab, etc would lose their funding. Those wanted to get PhDs in those labs will lose theirs. It’ll have a serious negative impact on everyone, even those who did the correct thing. This is why academia is as corrupt as it is. They all evaluate each other’s paper, give each other grants and anyone who exposes anything loses their entire careers.
mistrial9 5y ago
the two parent comments speak to me (uninvolved) as wholly throwing all people, institutions, grant selection and everything else, under the bus without distinction. The drivers for that are unknowable, but I guarantee that neither these statements, NOR their complete compliment, are Truth. Proof is that without sufficient distinction, nothing claimed is distinguishable enough to even weigh. Add that the selection pressure in many institutions is many orders of magnitude more than ideal, and the consequences of the outcomes, similar.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > wholly throwing all people, institutions, grant selection and everything else, under the bus without distinction That's an odd way of reading a post about "a professor" that contrasts them against the rest of their lab.
throwawayacc2 5y ago
Presumably OP does not have hard evidence and is only relating an anecdote. There isn’t much of an incentive to waste time and resources fighting for academic integrity or some other high minded concept like this. Baring those incentives we’ll be left with anecdotes on forums and a continued sense of a diminished trust in academia.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
  Op sounded very confident that the persons allegedly involved _are_, in no uncertain terms, not just definitely total frauds but also definitely engaged in a giant fraud conspiracy that definitely goes all the way to the top. If what they meant was "someone told me once that..." they could have said that instead, but they've chosen to word things very very differently. At best they've drastically overstepped reasonable limits of what claims one is able to rightly make, and that assessment feels extremely generous.
  - 3pt14159 5y ago
    Yes. Exactly. Thank you for sharing what I was going to share. Corruption exists where it is allowed by the people who act out of cowardice. As an aside, I've worked with plenty of academics and while I sometimes thought their research area was stupidly low stakes, the only researchers that I thought were truly wasting time were the ones that had to do research for a medical degree. Basically forced research. Now I went to a premier university and I'm friends with some smart cookies, but I don't buy for a second the overall theme of this comment chain. There is a reason the West is incredibly wealthy and it isn't because our best and brightest are faking it.
    - pomdapi 5y ago
      > There is a reason the West is incredibly wealthy and it isn't because our best and brightest are faking it. The reasons for that can be myriad. Actual or false scientific success of the last 30 years is not necessarily it. Also, don't you feel the ship has kind of been slowly going down during the last 10 years, wealth-wise ?
Dylan16807 5y ago
They brought it up. That's not how suppression works.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
  What exactly did they bring up? Against whom?
  - Dylan16807 5y ago
    > What exactly did they bring up? Academic misconduct. > Against whom? I don't know, which puts me exactly where I was ten minutes ago. They have no control over the situation, and if they hadn't posted I would know even less, so it's not suppression.
    - BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
      > They have no control over the situation They have complete control over how complicit they are in preserving the coverup of acts they allege to know are definitely true. > and if they hadn't posted I would know even less The reality is that right now you know exactly as much as before they posted because what they posted was unsubstantiated. They may as well have said that their name is Princess Peach and that they're pregnant with the mustached child of a certain Italian plumber for all the good it does you. One of three things must be true: 1) They have real firsthand knowledge that the claims are true and they're actively deciding to protect the identity(ies) of a conspiracy of rampant fraudsters whose actions are so egregious that they tarnish the very essence of the scientific academy itself. 2) They don't have any real knowledge that the claims are true, and the story is rumormongering. 3) I swear I had a third one, but now that I've written those two I can't think of what it was. I'll leave this placeholder here in case it comes to me.
      - Crye 5y ago
        The third is right out malice towards the institute they criticize and are using this platform to spread misinformation.
kitd 5y ago
Tbf, putting any names in that comment would almost certainly land HN with a lawsuit.
- rossmohax 5y ago
  When content is not provided by HN itself, HN is not liable: https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230

lettergram 5y ago

Much of this was told to me in confidence (via their lab-mates, etc) I’m not going to betray their trust.

slg 5y ago
Your first comment was effectively "Everyone knows this person is a fraud and no one is willing to stand up and put a stop to it". Your second comment was effectively "Well I don't know they are a fraud and I'm not going to be the one who upsets people by trying to put a stop to it". I don't say this as a criticism of you. I say this a defense of the people you are criticizing. Stopping people like this takes a lot of work and often some personal risk. Most of us aren't willing to do it despite us pretending otherwise.
- Infernal 5y ago
  >Stopping people like this takes a lot of work and often some personal risk. I don't recall where I first heard it, but the principle that it takes 10x the amount of energy to refute bullshit as it does to generate it certainly seems to apply in this case.
  - acidburnNSA 5y ago
    Bullshit Asymmetry Principle. https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bullshit%20asymmetry%20principle https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bullshit%20a...
    - WaitWaitWha 5y ago
      It is easier to fool people then to convince them they have been fooled - Mark Twain
  - kristopolous 5y ago
    And often it doesn't actually matter. How many times have you seen people who use citations and references get harassed by some bloviating hoard? Reality is almost irrelevant in the face of ideology, dogma, and all the other forces that keep counterintuitive or uncomfortable reality out.
  - AllegedAlec 5y ago
    A post-doc of a collaborator of a professor of mine was once found to have doctored data. The professor and her collabs only found out when they looked at the images and found out that there were sections that seemed to have been copy/pasted. Getting the papers retracted was a gruelling process that (iirc) took over 3 years.
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  The people in charge were given evidence, face much less risk, and it's their job to put a stop to it. They deserve the criticism.
  - slg 5y ago
    >The people in charge were given evidence, face much less risk, and it's their job to put a stop to it. That is an awfully authoritative statement to make based off what OP shared. But either way, this has been proven time and time again whether we are talking about simple corruption like OP mentioned or more serious forms of injustice. People will judge themselves based off motivations and others based off actions. We can excuse ourselves because of the personal inconvenience that acting will cause us. But other people don't get that luxury. They get criticized purely based off that lack of action because if we were in their situation surely we would do the right thing. Being honest about this is important step to actually fixing the system because we need to identify the motivations which lead to the lack of action in order to remove them and encourage action. Simply vilifying people for not acting accomplishes nothing.
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      > That is an awfully authoritative statement to make based off what OP shared. Which part do you disagree with? Maybe the 'much' on much less risk? 'given evidence' is true unless OP made op the story. (And even if OP made up the story then we're judging fictional people and the judgements are still valid.) I think 'less risk' goes part and parcel with being administration rather than someone lower rank reporting a problem. And it seems clear to me that it's their job. So, criticism. Which is not a particularly harsh outcome. And doesn't necessarily mean they made the wrong decision, but them providing a justification would be a good start. Inaction is often excusable when it's not your job. It's always important to look at motivations, but vilification can also be appropriate when there's dereliction. Sometimes there are no significant motivations leading to lack of action, there's just apathy and people that shouldn't have been hired to the position.
      - slg 5y ago
newbie789 5y ago
This website is pretty easy to post on anonymously. It takes five seconds to make a throwaway and another three to post a name. While I agree that there are frauds out there in academia and elsewhere, I have no reason to believe that you’re not yourself some sort of fraud. You’ve essentially posted “I have direct knowledge of [unspecified academic fraud in which somebody claimed to have direct knowledge of [unspecified academic fraudulent conclusion] but can’t back it up] but won’t back it up” Your overall point is… what? Fraud of perpetuated by cowardice? Self interest? An overall sense of apathy towards the truth? Your comment could be construed as any of those. There are people that love to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt without having to rely on being truthful. People that are intentionally misleading with the sole intent of leveraging people’s biases and emotions to confirm folks notions and whip people up into an artificially-created frenzy make statements yours. Serious questions: 1. Do you actually give a shit about this big fraud you’ve brought up but not revealed? And 2. Why did you post?
- lettergram 5y ago
  > 1. Do you actually give a shit about this big fraud you’ve brought up but not revealed? To expose it directly here would likely have little effect generally, but would have an outsized effect personally (damaging trust). If it did have an impact it would likely expose those involved (many careers). I am not in the command chain, I have seen the evidence and it's overwhelming. But I'm not in a position to enact the requisite change. That said, I don't actually give a shit about this particular case. It's widespread, insanely wide spread. Most studies / work cannot be replicated. > 2. Why did you post? As an anecdote to highlight something that I've seen. I also linked to several other informational pieces with public accounts (so don't trust mine, fine -- trust theirs).
  - newbie789 5y ago
    > To expose it directly here would likely have little effect generally, but would have an outsized effect personally (damaging trust). If it did have an impact it would likely expose those involved (many careers). I am not in the command chain, I have seen the evidence and it's overwhelming. But I'm not in a position to enact the requisite change. Sorry, I don’t mean to pick at you but… what? If you were to anonymously post the name of an academic fraud, you personally would necessarily be found out, and it would ruin multiple careers? The powers that be know who you are, know of the fraud and its nature and those involved? You’ve been privy to this big juicy secret that’s shared by many, but if its content were to be revealed, you would certainly be the one pointed out? Are you the only person that could reasonably know about and publicly object to this fraud? If so, is it a necessary function of your social or professional life to cover up this fraud? If so, I’ll go back to “why did you post?” (“Sharing anecdotes” isn’t really an answer to “Why did you share this anecdote?”)

sillysaurusx 5y ago

Well yes. It’s not cool to out someone in front of millions of people. Feel free to dismiss the claim if you wish.

ZephyrBlu 5y ago
People on HN are so odd sometimes. Ah yes, I must be a liar if I don't want to spill all the details my friends told me in confidence and ruin our relationship. Sure, sometimes people lie on the internet but this is not an outlandish story.
- lettergram 5y ago
  Imagine I did out someone? “Best case” scenario everyone loses their funding, including the colleagues who did report this stuff. The institution, the lab, etc would lose their funding. Those wanted to get PhDs in those labs will lose theirs. It’ll have a serious negative impact on everyone, even those who did the correct thing. This is why academia is as corrupt as it is. They all evaluate each other’s paper, give each other grants and anyone who exposes anything loses their entire careers.

mistrial9 5y ago

the two parent comments speak to me (uninvolved) as wholly throwing all people, institutions, grant selection and everything else, under the bus without distinction. The drivers for that are unknowable, but I guarantee that neither these statements, NOR their complete compliment, are Truth. Proof is that without sufficient distinction, nothing claimed is distinguishable enough to even weigh. Add that the selection pressure in many institutions is many orders of magnitude more than ideal, and the consequences of the outcomes, similar.

Dylan16807 5y ago
> wholly throwing all people, institutions, grant selection and everything else, under the bus without distinction That's an odd way of reading a post about "a professor" that contrasts them against the rest of their lab.

throwawayacc2 5y ago

Presumably OP does not have hard evidence and is only relating an anecdote. There isn’t much of an incentive to waste time and resources fighting for academic integrity or some other high minded concept like this. Baring those incentives we’ll be left with anecdotes on forums and a continued sense of a diminished trust in academia.

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
Op sounded very confident that the persons allegedly involved _are_, in no uncertain terms, not just definitely total frauds but also definitely engaged in a giant fraud conspiracy that definitely goes all the way to the top. If what they meant was "someone told me once that..." they could have said that instead, but they've chosen to word things very very differently. At best they've drastically overstepped reasonable limits of what claims one is able to rightly make, and that assessment feels extremely generous.
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  Yes. Exactly. Thank you for sharing what I was going to share. Corruption exists where it is allowed by the people who act out of cowardice. As an aside, I've worked with plenty of academics and while I sometimes thought their research area was stupidly low stakes, the only researchers that I thought were truly wasting time were the ones that had to do research for a medical degree. Basically forced research. Now I went to a premier university and I'm friends with some smart cookies, but I don't buy for a second the overall theme of this comment chain. There is a reason the West is incredibly wealthy and it isn't because our best and brightest are faking it.
  - pomdapi 5y ago
    > There is a reason the West is incredibly wealthy and it isn't because our best and brightest are faking it. The reasons for that can be myriad. Actual or false scientific success of the last 30 years is not necessarily it. Also, don't you feel the ship has kind of been slowly going down during the last 10 years, wealth-wise ?

Dylan16807 5y ago

They brought it up. That's not how suppression works.

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
What exactly did they bring up? Against whom?
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  > What exactly did they bring up? Academic misconduct. > Against whom? I don't know, which puts me exactly where I was ten minutes ago. They have no control over the situation, and if they hadn't posted I would know even less, so it's not suppression.
  - BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
    > They have no control over the situation They have complete control over how complicit they are in preserving the coverup of acts they allege to know are definitely true. > and if they hadn't posted I would know even less The reality is that right now you know exactly as much as before they posted because what they posted was unsubstantiated. They may as well have said that their name is Princess Peach and that they're pregnant with the mustached child of a certain Italian plumber for all the good it does you. One of three things must be true: 1) They have real firsthand knowledge that the claims are true and they're actively deciding to protect the identity(ies) of a conspiracy of rampant fraudsters whose actions are so egregious that they tarnish the very essence of the scientific academy itself. 2) They don't have any real knowledge that the claims are true, and the story is rumormongering. 3) I swear I had a third one, but now that I've written those two I can't think of what it was. I'll leave this placeholder here in case it comes to me.
    - Crye 5y ago
      The third is right out malice towards the institute they criticize and are using this platform to spread misinformation.

kitd 5y ago

Tbf, putting any names in that comment would almost certainly land HN with a lawsuit.

rossmohax 5y ago
When content is not provided by HN itself, HN is not liable: https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230 https://www.eff.org/issues/cda230