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> In other words, the choice is never "Forge these results, or have no career." Yes it is, because in order to have a career, it is not enough to just publish.

> In other words, the choice is never "Forge these results, or have no career." Yes it is, because in order to have a career, it is not enough to just publish. You have to publish in prestigious journals and you have to publish original, groundbreaking, important, and meaningful research. A tiny percentage of academics actually end up keeping their job until retirement. If you don't plan on perishing, you publish in prestigious journals by whatever means necessary. Whatever. Means. Necessary. "Accidentally" using bad statistics is the kind of "accident" that gets you tenure. It's significantly easier to forge groundbreaking, important, prestigious research than it is to actually do this research. Scientific fraud is epidemic precisely because of the economics of universities.

kd1220 15y ago
I experienced this mindset in my graduate studies. Many graduate advisors spend so much time writing grant proposals and hobnobbing with government project managers that they didn't care what result their experiments got, as long as it was positive. I lost interest in being a researcher primarily because it's no different than working at a company - except you get paid less. I never saw any researchers or students falsify or make up data, but often I saw experiments performed without defining a hypothesis first. The hypothesis was created a posteriori to match any interesting correlations that could be combed from the data. I felt like I was a marketer trying to find a reason to promote a product. This particular approach might be standard when dealing with in-vivo experiments (on human subjects). It's a time-intensive process and you can't just rerun the experiment like you can on an artificial system. However, I didn't feel like it was the correct way to do research. There's been renewed interest in recent years of creating a journal of failed experiments for various research areas, but it never seems to catch on. It would be invaluable, but there are too many egotistical people in academia who don't want to be associated with failure in any way.
- PakG1 15y ago
  http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1431 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1431
scott_s 15y ago
I know many, many researchers, and very, very few who have published anything "groundbreaking." Meaningful, original, often even important, but rarely groundbreaking. There are different tiers of venues to publish in, just as there are different tiers of institutions to do research in. I think the economics often are perverse, but I think you're doing a disservice to the overall discussion by simplifying it too much.
- forensic 15y ago
  You're splitting hairs. Groundbreaking has a pretty low bar these days. Just remember that 50 year old profs came of age in a different era.
  - scott_s 15y ago
    Huh? As a field matures, the bar for groundbreaking increases. Most research is iterative, including everything I've done, and almost everything my peers have done.
    - forensic 15y ago
      Why are you stating the obvious? I am trying to make a point that in the world of vicious competition for grant money, every shitty incremental experiment is lauded as groundbreaking. For very understandable reasons. I'm being facetious about the way that the key quality of a scientist has shifted from doing and teaching science to being a great marketer who can win grants. The "best" scientists these days are generally the ones who are really great at hype.
      - scott_s 15y ago
        It was not clear that you were using "groundbreaking" facetiously. Hence my confusion. I agree there are problems with how science works right now, and I agree on what the problems are. I disagree on the weights of the incentives, though. You describe "rampant" fraud. I have observed none. Then my conclusion is that the claim that fraud is rampant is incorrect.

kd1220 15y ago

I experienced this mindset in my graduate studies. Many graduate advisors spend so much time writing grant proposals and hobnobbing with government project managers that they didn't care what result their experiments got, as long as it was positive. I lost interest in being a researcher primarily because it's no different than working at a company - except you get paid less. I never saw any researchers or students falsify or make up data, but often I saw experiments performed without defining a hypothesis first. The hypothesis was created a posteriori to match any interesting correlations that could be combed from the data. I felt like I was a marketer trying to find a reason to promote a product. This particular approach might be standard when dealing with in-vivo experiments (on human subjects). It's a time-intensive process and you can't just rerun the experiment like you can on an artificial system. However, I didn't feel like it was the correct way to do research. There's been renewed interest in recent years of creating a journal of failed experiments for various research areas, but it never seems to catch on. It would be invaluable, but there are too many egotistical people in academia who don't want to be associated with failure in any way.

PakG1 15y ago
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1431 http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1431

scott_s 15y ago

I know many, many researchers, and very, very few who have published anything "groundbreaking." Meaningful, original, often even important, but rarely groundbreaking. There are different tiers of venues to publish in, just as there are different tiers of institutions to do research in. I think the economics often are perverse, but I think you're doing a disservice to the overall discussion by simplifying it too much.

forensic 15y ago
You're splitting hairs. Groundbreaking has a pretty low bar these days. Just remember that 50 year old profs came of age in a different era.
- scott_s 15y ago
  Huh? As a field matures, the bar for groundbreaking increases. Most research is iterative, including everything I've done, and almost everything my peers have done.
  - forensic 15y ago
    Why are you stating the obvious? I am trying to make a point that in the world of vicious competition for grant money, every shitty incremental experiment is lauded as groundbreaking. For very understandable reasons. I'm being facetious about the way that the key quality of a scientist has shifted from doing and teaching science to being a great marketer who can win grants. The "best" scientists these days are generally the ones who are really great at hype.
    - scott_s 15y ago
      It was not clear that you were using "groundbreaking" facetiously. Hence my confusion. I agree there are problems with how science works right now, and I agree on what the problems are. I disagree on the weights of the incentives, though. You describe "rampant" fraud. I have observed none. Then my conclusion is that the claim that fraud is rampant is incorrect.