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I think there's two problems impeding our ability to focus better on this: 1) for many people, the idea that science has widespread fraud is just hard to accep

I think there's two problems impeding our ability to focus better on this: 1) for many people, the idea that science has widespread fraud is just hard to accept; in this respect it is similar to the difficulties that many religious communities have in accepting that their clergy could have a corruption problem 2) the solutions require thinking about problems like p-hacking, incentives, selection effects, and other non-trivial concepts that are tough for the average person to wrap their heads around.

SubiculumCode 5y ago
Also: I have not seen evidence of widespread fraud. Evidence of fraud,yes. Evidence of widespread fraud no.
- mistermann 5y ago
  Don't forget though: events proceed evidence, and evidence doesn't always follow events. Also: perception is ~effectively reality.
- derbOac 5y ago
  That's a fair point, although fraud per se is only a small part of all the problems. There's other forms of corruption than fraud, and a lot of it falls into this zone of plausible deniability rather than outright fraud. Also, I think the problems tend to find most weight with higher concentration of power, so what matters isn't as much "how widespread is corruption?" but rather "how is corruption distributed among power structures in academics and what is rewarded?"
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  Agreed it's an important point that fraud is only a fraction of the problem.
- bhk 5y ago
  I have. According to [1], "1 in 4 cancer research papers contains faked data". As the article argues, the standards are perhaps unreasonably strict, but even by more favorable criteria, 1/8 of the papers contained faked data. Interestingly, [2] using the same approach, found fraud in 12.4% of papers in the International Journal of Oncology. More broadly, [2] found fraud in about 4% of the papers studied (782 of 20,621). I'd say that's pretty widespread, but you further have to consider that these papers focused narrowly on a very specific type of fraud that is easy to detect (image duplication), so we would expect the true number of fraudulent papers to be much higher. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/06/study-claims-1-in-4-cancer-research-papers-contains-faked-data/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/06/study-claims-1-in-4-... [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/04/20/049452.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/04/20/049...
derbOac 5y ago
I've often thought religious corruption is a good analogy, in that many of the societal dynamics are very similar. As I'm writing this the parallels are interesting to think about relative to US politics.
- throwawayboise 5y ago
  It it is a good analogy. For most lay people, science is a religion. They lack the expertise to understand the theory, but they unquestioningly accept the explanations and interpretations of the so-called experts. Most people don't understand astronomy and physics well enough to prove to themselves that the earth orbits the sun and not vice-versa. Yet they believe it does, with certainty, because they have been taught that it is true.

SubiculumCode 5y ago

Also: I have not seen evidence of widespread fraud. Evidence of fraud,yes. Evidence of widespread fraud no.

mistermann 5y ago
Don't forget though: events proceed evidence, and evidence doesn't always follow events. Also: perception is ~effectively reality.
derbOac 5y ago
That's a fair point, although fraud per se is only a small part of all the problems. There's other forms of corruption than fraud, and a lot of it falls into this zone of plausible deniability rather than outright fraud. Also, I think the problems tend to find most weight with higher concentration of power, so what matters isn't as much "how widespread is corruption?" but rather "how is corruption distributed among power structures in academics and what is rewarded?"
rossdavidh 5y ago
Agreed it's an important point that fraud is only a fraction of the problem.
bhk 5y ago
I have. According to [1], "1 in 4 cancer research papers contains faked data". As the article argues, the standards are perhaps unreasonably strict, but even by more favorable criteria, 1/8 of the papers contained faked data. Interestingly, [2] using the same approach, found fraud in 12.4% of papers in the International Journal of Oncology. More broadly, [2] found fraud in about 4% of the papers studied (782 of 20,621). I'd say that's pretty widespread, but you further have to consider that these papers focused narrowly on a very specific type of fraud that is easy to detect (image duplication), so we would expect the true number of fraudulent papers to be much higher. [1] https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/06/study-claims-1-in-4-cancer-research-papers-contains-faked-data/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/06/study-claims-1-in-4-... [2] https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/04/20/049452.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2016/04/20/049...

derbOac 5y ago

I've often thought religious corruption is a good analogy, in that many of the societal dynamics are very similar. As I'm writing this the parallels are interesting to think about relative to US politics.

throwawayboise 5y ago
It it is a good analogy. For most lay people, science is a religion. They lack the expertise to understand the theory, but they unquestioningly accept the explanations and interpretations of the so-called experts. Most people don't understand astronomy and physics well enough to prove to themselves that the earth orbits the sun and not vice-versa. Yet they believe it does, with certainty, because they have been taught that it is true.