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Japanese Researchers Faked Data in ISS Simulation
- alenrozac 4y agoI cannot imagine this going down well in Japan.. The shame.
- key_stroker 4y agoFake data seems to be common there in recent years, from car industry to steel and now this
- mc32 4y agoIt’s only shameful and remorseful if it comes to light. Otherwise in most cases things leading to the above would be avoided from the outset. On the other hand, once found out, they typically own up, take responsibility and step down from the role.
- throwawaybutwhy 4y ago...which is a step back from the usual Japanese practice of choosing a kaishakunin to render some assistance
- jamal-kumar 4y agoI remember when that RIKEN researcher with bold yet falsifiable stem cell claims ended up ending their own life
- resoluteteeth 4y agoHaruko Obokata was the researcher in question and she did not end her own life. It was her supervisor who committed suicide.
- jamal-kumar 4y agoextremely sorry for the equivocation thank you for clearing that up
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fomine3 4y agoNowadays Japanese medical papers are notorious about fake.
- tokai 4y agoThere need to be some criminal liability for faking science. But it still needs to be in a ways so you don't get in trouble for doing bad and/or wrong studies. I remember something about geologists in Italy getting charged for not calling a deadly earthquake before it happened. Which is obviously ridiculous. But stuff like this where data is made up and it can be proven (I would guess the people that should have been interviewed can attested to not being interviewed), there should be more consequences than just shame and a slight carrier setback. Most other professions would get in real trouble if they faked and cheated with their product.
- piva00 4y agoThe problem is even worse given that for another researcher to challenge fake data they are also putting their reputation and career in jeopardy. I've seen this happen with a friend of mine during his PhD, working in a climate science department doing simulations of cloud formations at the molecular level. Some 2-3 years into his research he kept bumping his head against a model that wasn't producing the data the research team expected, he spent almost a year trying to contact the author of the paper where said model was introduced, wanting to get all the dataset and initial conditions the author used so he could replicate it. The author is a quite prominent professor in the field, working at a major British university and simply wouldn't provide it to the research team, datasets had missing pieces, he deflected multiple asks for the initial parameters of the model, etc. In the end my friend uncovered that it was most likely faked data and to prove that was another year of a battle between heads of departments which led him to a complete burnout and to lose trust in science. It was such a hardship to endure, I saw him mentally and physically suffering, and questioning said professor reputation was way above my friend's paygrade and research efforts, it was a political nightmare and after he finished the PhD (as fast as possible without exploring all of his research's goals) he just dropped the case completely. Academic research seems to be in such a mess, perverse incentives all around and very few are willing or even able to question bad science.
- tokai 4y agoThats my point. Peer correction doesn't work with someone cheating, as it can do with in normal mode scientific process. If there was a solid legal framework to deal with this your friend could have passed what he found on to the police. Institutions 'investigating' their own researchers is a recipe for disaster, but the surrounding society has levers to control the process. Literal fake scientific work shouldn't be dealt with like it is bad science. It shouldn't be an issue of politics but responsibility and punishment.