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More evidence: My brother has a PhD in biochemistry and quit one job at a lab when he pointed out to the head scientist, a woman who had made her reputation ou

by the_af 4y ago

More evidence: My brother has a PhD in biochemistry and quit one job at a lab when he pointed out to the head scientist, a woman who had made her reputation out of a series of related papers and work, of a serious flaw in the experiments that could invalidate the result. Not only did she ignore him repeatedly without acknowledging the flaws as important (note: if my brother was right, the core result was invalidated!) but continued to churn out papers on the same topic. This comment is not anti-science, mind you. It's just to show that when egos and reputations are involved, all bets are off. Nobody wants to be told they built a house of cards. I'm confident the conclusions from these papers are either irrelevant in the grand scheme of things (so it doesn't matter if they are wrong), or would get eventually rejected when other scientists take a look at them.

viridian 4y ago
> This comment is not anti-science, mind you. I find it funny that you feel the need to say this, but I also 100% get it. In my experience, there's no one more skeptical of scientific publications than people actively doing research, but it's such a delicate balance to do so without upsetting the generically pro-science laymen. It's like a modern day shibboleth, come to think of it.
btrettel 4y ago
This behavior makes me extremely suspicious of anything produced by someone who displays it. Back when I was in academia, I had a similar experience. Someone gave a talk and I immediately had doubts about the method used. It was known in a related area that methods like the one presented tended to appear more accurate than they actually are. So I spoke with the researcher privately after the talk. I didn't expect this researcher to know about the problem, and I think I said that it's possible everything is okay but some extra checks need to be done. They seemed interested then, so I sent them an email with some papers on the problem. I never got a response, and their paper was published without even mentioning what I said. The paper now has over 100 citations and that research group has built on the method I had a problem with.

by the_af 4y ago

viridian 4y ago

> This comment is not anti-science, mind you. I find it funny that you feel the need to say this, but I also 100% get it. In my experience, there's no one more skeptical of scientific publications than people actively doing research, but it's such a delicate balance to do so without upsetting the generically pro-science laymen. It's like a modern day shibboleth, come to think of it.

btrettel 4y ago

This behavior makes me extremely suspicious of anything produced by someone who displays it. Back when I was in academia, I had a similar experience. Someone gave a talk and I immediately had doubts about the method used. It was known in a related area that methods like the one presented tended to appear more accurate than they actually are. So I spoke with the researcher privately after the talk. I didn't expect this researcher to know about the problem, and I think I said that it's possible everything is okay but some extra checks need to be done. They seemed interested then, so I sent them an email with some papers on the problem. I never got a response, and their paper was published without even mentioning what I said. The paper now has over 100 citations and that research group has built on the method I had a problem with.