13 ms·
Always the same warning signs
- ackbar03 3y agoAnybody have the actual Stat article?
- BSEdlMMldESB 3y agoStat does, and sharing is caring: https://archive.ph/1vHlW https://archive.ph/1vHlW (still paywalled) but they don't care, they don't share....
- radicaldreamer 3y agonot great formatting but available in the comments on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/biotech/comments/147o153/does_anyone_have_this_complete_article_the_inside/ https://www.reddit.com/r/biotech/comments/147o153/does_anyon...
- Mullet6 3y ago[dead]
- thyrsus 3y agoThus the apothegm: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
- zaptheimpaler 3y agoThe big takeaway here for me is to make liberal use of the phrase "Shoo, little people! Out of my way!" when they don't approve my code reviews.
- brianmcc 3y agoAlso, go right ahead and reject the feedback you Simply Do Not Want To Hear! (I just loved that use of capital letters!)
- throwaway202351 3y agoSounds like they're not Team Players if they give you feedback you Simply Do Not Want To Hear!
- bluGill 3y agoArrgh, why didn't I.think of that? I just left for vacation with an open code review that should have been easy because some new junior found some issues that I couldn't resolve before packing my suitcase. Thanks junior, the issues you found were real, even if small, and things will be better when I return and fix them.
- Ialdaboth 3y agoAlready been doing it for years, implicitely, by making my code as unreadable as possible. But now I can justify it by saying I'm doing Science.
- toast0 3y agoI prefer the less disparaging, "Well, I'm going to check it in anyway" and as a bonus, it doesn't directly acknowledge the existance of other people.
- cratermoon 3y agoI had a co-worker who would reject feedback and then complain that it was the reviewers' fault that his PRs weren't merged.
- dmbche 3y agoMan how insane is it that these guys and gals raised 400 millions on tech without any raw data, nothing to show for it? It was never reproduced? They just said they got it?
- asylteltine 3y agoWhatever VCs invested in it deserve to lose their money. Theranos was a learning opportunity
- gostsamo 3y agoNot sure why you were flagged, but many people handling millions say that they can do it because they know how to do it. There is a case to be made that some of them actually don't.
- masswerk 3y agoAlso, a certain corrective factor is required to make the "because" in this argument work.
- malfist 3y agoI don't agree. A conman's mark may be foolish, but it is not their fault they were conned and they don't deserve to be punished. The conman does.
- 11101010001100 3y agoYou ask to see the data and agree to sign an NDA. If the company does not agree to this, then you walk. IF the company agrees, but then shows fraudulent data, then you are fucked.
- dmbche 3y agoActually I think you can sue for damages since the defrauded you, so they probably wouldn't agree to the NDA
- ProjectArcturis 3y agoDerek Lowe is a treasure.
- athom 3y agoIndeed. First I read of him were some of his articles on stuff he wouldn't work with. There's a passage in his article on dioxygen diflouride (AKA FOOF) that would sound delightfully wicked read in the voice John deLancie. Brilliant writer!
- xnx 3y agoAgree. I didn't know who he was until I heard him in a piece of On the Media from WNYC and was immediately struck by how reasonable he was.
- rossdavidh 3y agoTruth. The best thing about the pandemic is that it somehow brought his column to my attention.
- sebstefan 3y agoThis really shouldn't keep happening in 2023 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%B6n_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-suk#Official_probe_and_confirmation_of_fraud https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-suk#Official_probe_a...
- archgoon 3y ago[dead]
- photochemsyn 3y agoTransparent audit protocols are the only solution - e.g. raw data should be immediately available upon publication, and even more rigorous protocols should be employed for grant application review (show us the daily log etc.), but those who oppose this approach say it'll expose intellectual property to outsiders causing the loss of competitive edge. Open-source research is thus the only kind of research that should be allowable with public funds, and closed-source proprietary research shouldn't be publishable in any research journal. If people want to invest in the latter they'll be the ones responsible for due diligence, I suppose.
- bix6 3y agoEveryone always decries these as failures of venture capital. There is fraud in every industry. You cannot conceivably check everything and there is a level of trust required. Even if someone sends you raw data you are taking their word that it’s the true data. There can be deception at every level and smart people will be deceived by criminals. Where there is money there will always be crime so I am grateful to see our justice system working even if it takes many years.
- jgeada 3y agoThat's facile and ignores that VC is supposed to be a vetting gatekeeper: the reason they keep a fraction of all the money going through their accounts is because they're supposedly vetting the investment opportunities and have money and access to knowledge as necessary to validate claims, etc. If they're not doing this, what is the value add the VC company is providing, other than being a skimmer on the money flows? The reality is that as long as there is no liability for passing the buck (ie the scammer's and middemen's beloved caveat emptor), the system continues to encourage bad players.
- bix6 3y agoMy point is that no matter how much due diligence you perform, there is still a chance to be deceived. No amount of money could get you to 100% diligence and cover every edge case. There is liability for knowingly passing the buck. VCs have been sued before.
- AlbertCory 3y agoWrong. "Due diligence" is a term that's there for a reason.
- bix6 3y agoDue diligence and 100% complete due diligence that accounts for every single thing are drastically different.
- 3y ago
- thimkerbell 3y ago"Only one person can get this great stuff to work;... Legitimate questions are met with stonewalling;... Important data are missing or kept secret"
- protonfish 3y agoPrecisely - these aren't "Warning signs" that are only clear in hindsight. They are proof of fraud beyond a reasonable doubt. If a person or organization has these traits and you continue to trust them, it is not an honest mistake.
- hinkley 3y agoOne of my managers had a rule of 2 (different from my rule of 2). You haven't proven you know how to do something until you've done it twice. That was expanded by later managers to a more general sense of reproducibility, where 'we' don't know how to do it until two other people have done it. There are certain aspects of my life that are informed by a general dread that some day I will leave my house and never be seen again. For instance I try to tell tell people I love them when we part, even if I'm mad at them, in case those are our last words for a long while, or forever. If I really thought I was doing something at work that would forever change a corner of the world, I'd be super paranoid that the secret could die with me. That's the perfect recipe for me overworking. If I can't trust anyone with the information (eg, intellectual theft), then I positively vibrate. If I told people and they don't care, I have to finish it enough that I can demonstrate why they should care.
- toss1 3y agoYup. Like the saying I heard from a friend about how to treat engineering tests: "The first test result is an error. The second is a coincidence. If the third lines up, then you might be getting a hint of a result." As in: if you can't reproduce it reliably, you have nothing.
- fsckboy 3y agoin science, if you make a prediction from a hypothesis, conduct a test, and what you predicted is borne out, that's not nothing; for example, if you look at historical records and hypothesize a reappearance of, I dunno, let's call it Halley's comet, and decades later Halley's comet reappears, why... they might name the comet after you!
- zoogeny 3y agoI think that it is easier to spot warning signs in hindsight. Simply based on this article, it seems possible and even likely that the lab head was deceitful. And the article suggests that the company management was either naive to the point of negligence or possibly they were actively defrauding investors. No matter what is the case, legitimate mistakes made by egotistical scientists compounded by negligent management or outright deceit and fraud, it is amazing that hundreds of millions of dollars were invested before it was discovered. Sometimes I lament the fact that I feel nervous asking for a raise even though I have demonstrably provided value and delivered massive projects. One the other side of the spectrum is the gall to ask for 100 million with nothing to show. It sometimes feels like there is a missing middle.
- anonymousiam 3y agoI wish we had more details, but something stinks. There's always a conflict with "science" when somebody tries to monetize it. A possible explanation here is a desire to keep some elements of the process proprietary, but I don't see how that could apply to sharing within the same organization.
- mrandish 3y ago> There's always a conflict with "science" when somebody tries to monetize it. Sadly, the replication crisis in science shows that the causes are equally present in purely academic settings as well. Status, power, job security or ego can be as powerful as money and the effects can corrupt someone subtlety and even entirely unconsciously. It's good to remember that no human is immune from confirmation bias or self-deception.
- getoffmycase 3y agoIn that case I think the “monetization” is in the form of misaligned incentives with scientific endeavors. The incentives are having a job, getting grants funded, and obtaining prestige.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
- deeg 3y agoIt would be interesting to know how many companies with these warning signs were legit. Is it possible that investors look at these as lottery tickets and hope that just a few hit?
- readthenotes1 3y ago"people will find all sorts of ways to believe what they want to believe, to avoid hearing things that they don’t want to hear, and to avoid thinking about things that are too worrisome to contemplate" Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
- CatWChainsaw 3y agoGoodkind certainly didn't want to hear that he was a subpar example of a human being. And he wrote fantasy, regardless of how much he whinged that he absolutely didn't.
- AlbertCory 3y agoThese VC's: they suffer from Reverse Imposter Syndrome (tm), commonly found in "elite" institutions, as I outlined in here: https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/when-talent-is-not-enough https://albertcory50.substack.com/p/when-talent-is-not-enoug... That's when you think you're smart enough to be there, but you're really not.
- uoaei 3y agoThat's just called Dunning-Kruger and is a well-studied phenomenon. You see it all over HN too, for instance, people coming up with a "new" idea, writing a blog post about it, and self-promoting as if they've contributed something novel.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- corwinstephen 3y agoZing
- Conscat 3y agoI suppose that the Dunning Kruger effect is "well studied" in that there have been many attempts to study it, which so far cannot find reproducible results, and suggest that it isn't a real psychological phenomenon.
- uoaei 3y agoThose studies, which do consistently show significant effects despite your citation-unladen claim, explore averages across a general population and seek to explain society-wide phenomena through the lens of "average" humans. This implies an assumption of homogeneity within the general population. Such tests will of course be underpowered compared to case studies in specific circumstances, particularly those involving self-selection and a cohort-level cultural bias toward "I'm smart and need to pick things up quickly for my day job which means that skill is equally accurate and transferrable to everything I read about".
- csours 3y agoRelated recommendation: Bobby Broccoli's documentaries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ett_8wLJ87U&list=PLAB-wWbHL7VtGvu8KEun0lpnPrMkqW6t3&pp=iAQB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ett_8wLJ87U&list=PLAB-wWbHL7... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfDoml-Db64&list=PLAB-wWbHL7Vsfl4PoQpNsGp61xaDDiZmh&pp=iAQB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfDoml-Db64&list=PLAB-wWbHL7...
- searine 3y agoLove Bobby B videos. Second that recommendation.
- pneumonic 3y agoLa Round, er, Laronde, seems to have a singular focus.
- fasteo 3y ago>>> Laronde, a Boston/Cambridge area biotech firm that seems to have had some major problems reproducing the data that helped raise them hundreds of millions of dollars last year VCs: How the hell you put 100MM+ in a company without having a 3rd party verify that the "thing" works ?
- bee_rider 3y agoIs it possible that computer tech was just weirdly susceptible to startup funding, and it is a really poor fit for biotech? Computers mostly are * well understood at every step (well, at least it was all designed by humans and the bits and bobs do what they say on the tin). * mostly involve producing some kind of output for everyday normal people to use, in the end. So they are easy to understand and evaluate. Even some investors can manage it. Biotech stuff seems to mostly involve making tools for other technicians and scientists. And the process by which is works is some ridiculous, quirk-laden byzantine madness that evolution happened to throw together. At least from an outsider point of view it seems like an absolute nightmare.
- eapressoandcats 3y agoLots of Biotech stuff does fine, and plenty of tech startups are basically frauds (WeWork for example). I don’t think you can extrapolate that startup funding doesn’t work for Biotech.
- rfgmendoza 3y ago[flagged]
- AlexandrB 3y agoI'm not sure what makes WeWork a tech startup. Renting short term office space is not a high-tech endeavor. But it's true that there are plenty of tech startup frauds, like Nicola.
- kneebonian 3y agoBecause we work isn't a short term office rental it is a company that aims to "revolutionize global consciousness" which is clearly a growth industry.
- bee_rider 3y agoRevolutionizing global consciousness sounds more like a religion or something, but whether it was a, uh, niche religion or a real estate company, surely neither of those things is tech.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pico303 3y agoIs this what happens when research moves from universities to the private sector? Not sharing data and results seems par for the course for things like proprietary algorithms. Why would biotech be any different?
- janeway 3y agoIn fairness, one good thing about commercialisation is that if they don’t produce the goods in the end, it fails. In pure research it can go unnoticed much longer.
- currymj 3y agoThe level of fraud going on in life sciences seems absolutely astounding. I used to think that fraudulent research was mainly “paper mill” stuff. But in the last couple years there are so many cases of outright data falsification from famous scientists’ labs and in Science/Nature/Cell publications. It seems even worse than the social science replication crisis, and with worse consequences.
- rossdavidh 3y agoI think what's unique about the social sciences, is that they went public with their problems earlier. It's probably about as bad in every field that has the same (or similar) set of incentives to publish and disincentives or lack of incentives to check the work of others.
- z3t4 3y agoIt's like doping in sports, the cheaters get all the money and glory - until they get tested. The solution is more tests. If the study can't be replicated then there is a problem. There should be more tests in science, without tests it's not science.
- 8note 3y agoWhat is the test though? Can you make it big before the tests matter? Would you be punished if the tests eventually fail? If you do really well with life sciences, you'll convince people that you've got a miracle cure, while convincing regulators that you aren't selling a miracle cure. Like an ivermectin
- phs318u 3y agoYes. Always the same warning signs, because humans always ignore their senses when they are overwhelmed by the same greed. Always.