5 ms·

For context: “Remember that Vitamin C cures sepsis paper that could never be replicated in 9 RCTs? Turns out there is a good reason why: it’s very likely frau

• ALittleLight 5y ago
  What a horrible way to waste medical research resources.
  • rmbyrro 5y ago
    I see it from another angle: it was resources spent to save the public from a lie. It's good investment. Desiring a world where no scientist lies or falsifies data is wishful thinking, in my opinion.
• hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  I thought this was very well explained, but the tests that K Sheldrick did were not actually particularly complicated. I remember learning about the Fisher Exact Test in an introductory college stats class. I have to wonder why any of the nine other groups that tried to replicate the results didn't ask for a statistician to look at the original results first. This is flat out fraud, and if the research used any public funds the guilty party/parties deserves criminal prosecution.
  • dane-pgp 5y ago
    > if the research used any public funds the guilty party/parties deserves criminal prosecution. That sort of prompts the question though: Should it be a crime for any scientist to deliberately publish falsified data? Obviously there would need to be a very high bar for proving that it was deliberate and not an honest mistake (or even complete incompetence), and we wouldn't want juries to have the power to stop new scientific theories emerging, but other professions are subject to criminal penalties if they fail at their job.
    • lapsis_beeftech 5y ago
      Scientific fraud is deeply immoral because it has the potential to subvert our sapience, harming our ability to act rationally and morally. Such behaviour is criminal from basic principles of justice and human laws should reflect that.
      • smabie 5y ago
        I guess just lying in general should be illegal then?
        • pigeonhole123 5y ago
          Lying for financial gain can sometimes be fraud which is already illegal.
        • ArnoVW 5y ago
          It is? Fraud, libel, perjury. I guess academic fraud is fraud in the legal sense. The problem is that the 'fraud' statute requires 'damages' and 'intent' to have standing, and they're difficult to prove in academic fraud.
          • Maursault 5y ago
            Nearly always, lies are protected speech. The Supreme Court has decided, rightly I think, that the government is not capable of determining what is opinion and what is fact.
            • ArnoVW 5y ago
              The government, no. It can only make laws and execute them. But it can not interpret. That role is reserved for the tribunals. Judges are supposed to determine what is protected speech, and what is not.
    • estaseuropano 5y ago
      First you would have to prove this was intentional and done by the authors themselves (not e.g. an assistant).
• nextos 5y ago
  Big effect sizes tend to be fabricated. It's really disturbing. I do lots of biostatistics in academia and professors openly acknowledge many trials cherrypick data. The outcome is that if you are honest it's hard to get funded because your results look bad. Then, if we talk about honest results only, crappy statistics also leads to crazy optimistic effect estimates. Regularizing priors and pooling should be the norm. Andrew Gelman posts a lot about this: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/ https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/