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Consider how many studies are being produced each day. That there is a story every day like this suggests that academia is making an effort to identify bad acto
by cbsmith 3y ago
Consider how many studies are being produced each day. That there is a story every day like this suggests that academia is making an effort to identify bad actors, but the frequency of discovery is actually quite low.
- tnecniv 3y agoWell we don’t know how many people falsify data because, if it goes undiscovered, we don’t know it happened. It could easily be that the rate at which data is falsified is quite low and we are good at catching it, or it is high and we are bad at catching it. I would think instances of fabrication are quite low — it’s high-risk, medium reward. Even if it goes undiscovered, academia is a marketing game, and you can’t control what other people feel is impactful or not. It’s very easy to do bad science without falsifying data, which is probably the deadliest sin in academia.
- cbsmith 3y ago> Well we don’t know how many people falsify data because, if it goes undiscovered, we don’t know it happened. It could easily be that the rate at which data is falsified is quite low and we are good at catching it, or it is high and we are bad at catching it. Yes, which is why I said the frequency of discovery is low. Seeing a story in the paper about fraud every day doesn't really tell us anything about the rate of fraudulence, which I was hoping would become transparent with my point.