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It may be a person's instinct to immediately blame the researcher, and of course, I definitely think data fabrication is never justified. However, what is the

It may be a person's instinct to immediately blame the researcher, and of course, I definitely think data fabrication is never justified. However, what is the societal problem here? It's the problem that in academia, there are such pressures to publish and be first nowadays that many people will do anything to get ahead. It doesn't help that social media and news sites have introduced a sort of gamification into it. People have their natures, and the current state of academia encourages cheating, plain and simple. Just like the current state of finance encourages market manipulation. If we want to fix it, simply outing these fakes will not be enough. While I don't have much sympathy for the cheaters, I also don't have much sympathy for the scientific community that has created this environment.

radicaldreamer 3y ago
The president of Stanford was caught pressuring his team to fabricate data for years, so this is likely pervasive everywhere in academia nevermind much higher pressure environments with lots of competition like elite institutions in India and China.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  Especially because many of them have even less of a stigma against academic dishonesty than in many Western systems. Edit: not to suggest that is anything inherent about people from those cultures.
  - harishneit 3y ago
    I think it's more to do with people in those environments not having good alternatives that creates incentive to do anything to get ahead. If we do some self reflection, similar things can be said about Uber & Airbnb et al. Painting this as cultural phenomenon is not productive IMHO.
constantcrying 3y ago
>It's the problem that in academia, there are such pressures to publish and be first nowadays that many people will do anything to get ahead. If you can not do honest work in academia you should leave and go work somewhere else. Fraud is not the correct reaction to the problems of academia, as it actively hurts it even more. Nobody is forced to do academic research for a living, especially if you have a degree in physics.
- DarkNova6 3y ago
  > Fraud is not the correct reaction to the problems of academia, as it actively hurts it even more. Not in the short term. And only for yourself personally if you are found out. Of course there are perverse incentives which goes against the scientific spirit. It doesn’t even require malicious intent. Neglect and bias can be similarly powerful negative forces.
- catgary 3y ago
  I think we’re getting to competitive sports territory, where people justify it to themselves because they’re convinced everyone else is doing it.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  I never said fraud is the correct reaction. Like I said, I believe it is wrong unequivocally. I did say that fraud is something that is essentially encouraged in academia. Nobody is forced to do it of course, but then again, any system will have its flaws that encourages bad behaviour, and it is also advantageous to restructure the system to minimize that.
- SkyBelow 3y ago
  If you asked your CISO about securing your system against hackers and their response was "If they can't do honest pen testing, they should leave IT and go work somewhere else." what would your feelings be? OP wasn't trying to justify bad actors, but explain how the system is selecting for them, and we have to accept that our system is running in a world where there will always be back actors present. Systems must be built to be resistant to them.
- 3y ago
inglor_cz 3y ago
"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." The publish-or-perish mentality combined with the grant system introduces a lot of bad incentives into the scientific ecosystem.
j_maffe 3y ago
I can see how that can be the case if it's for survival, but no one pressured this person to try to claim to find one of the most sought-after technologies out there. It also doesn't apply cause he voluntarily chose to go to a prestigious university where this kind of pressure exists. Competition can be healthy thing as long as it doesn't threaten the researcher's career, which clearly wasn't the case here. This guy had the balls to do it twice in two years after getting caught, clearly he's set in his ways.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  Of course. I am not trying to remove the blame from him. On the other hand, we can also learn from these problems because they often point out nearby flaws in the general system that should be ameliorated. That was my main point.
  - j_maffe 3y ago
    I agree! I'm just saying that this case in particular does not really show the problem with pressure in Academia. If anything, it shows how lenient the peer-review process is.
    - vouaobrasil 3y ago
      Yeah that's true, that's something to think about. The peer-review process is indeed lame and weak.
troupe 3y ago
> However, what is the societal problem here? I would say yes. I think we need to place a lot more value in publishing research that isn't surprising. Research that simply replicates (or fails to replicate) other research should be just as valuable to one's career as finding something unexpected. I scientist that has replicated a bunch of studies and identified several that they couldn't replicate is doing something very very valuable for the human race and we (universities, grants, etc.) need to recognize that.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Ericson2314 3y ago
  A fundamental problem with research academia is that we scaled it up massively without introducing more division of labor.
  - troupe 3y ago
    Interesting. I'm not sure I fully understand what you are saying though. Can you expand on that?
    - Ericson2314 3y ago
      It's all throwing PhDs at novel research. Boring reproducing known things is just one type of support work that is neglected. There is a vast "supply chain" of work that allows novel research to be done, and we've neglected it.
brigadier132 3y ago
Academia is zero sum. All zero sum endeavors result in this kind of behavior.
- barefeg 3y ago
  Can you elaborate what you mean with zero sum?
  - brigadier132 3y ago
    There is a finite number of grant dollars and faculty positions. Your colleague's success hurts your chances of success.
matthewdgreen 3y ago
> I also don't have much sympathy for the scientific community that has created this environment. Scientists didn't create this environment: you did. We, as a society, demanded that some sector produce new scientific research at a rate and level that is capable of supporting our economy, and then we allocated a very restricted set of resources for them to do it. And they've done miracles, too! We would literally not be alive today if the scientific community hadn't developed the improvements that allow us to feed, house, and provide energy to 8 billion people. And that's before we get to strictly optional stuff like the computers and networks that power this website. It's a serious business and obviously that kind of pressure leads to bad results sometimes. But the correct response is to be grateful that we have an engine in our society that produces this basic research (since industry has dramatically lowered spending on basic R&D over the past decades) and try to improve it, not to be pointlessly angry at scientists for living in the system that society's incentives have built for us.
rdtsc 3y ago
> It may be a person's instinct to immediately blame the researcher, and of course However as they teach the little kids, trust your gut instinct. This person didn't just plagiarize this work, but also his PhD thesis: https://www.science.org/content/article/plagiarism-allegations-pursue-physicist-behind-stunning-superconductivity-claims https://www.science.org/content/article/plagiarism-allegatio... > If we want to fix it, simply outing these fakes will not be enough. Yes, but without outing these fakes and harshly and punishing them as the first step, we're immediately communicating that this is "ok". "Just fake the data and throw it over the wall, if you get caught, just blame it on pressure and the general academic culture".
hcta 3y ago
This post seems almost completely vacuous to me. I guess you could read it to mean that if a person cheats, there must be some "societal problem" causing it. That would seem to imply you believe society could in principle be 'fixed' s.t. no one is ever incentivized to cheat. Is that what you mean? Or simply, s.t. fewer people are incentivized to cheat. In that case, duh. But fewer to what extent? And are there any actual constructive suggestions forthcoming?

radicaldreamer 3y ago

The president of Stanford was caught pressuring his team to fabricate data for years, so this is likely pervasive everywhere in academia nevermind much higher pressure environments with lots of competition like elite institutions in India and China.

dotnet00 3y ago
Especially because many of them have even less of a stigma against academic dishonesty than in many Western systems. Edit: not to suggest that is anything inherent about people from those cultures.
- harishneit 3y ago
  I think it's more to do with people in those environments not having good alternatives that creates incentive to do anything to get ahead. If we do some self reflection, similar things can be said about Uber & Airbnb et al. Painting this as cultural phenomenon is not productive IMHO.

constantcrying 3y ago

>It's the problem that in academia, there are such pressures to publish and be first nowadays that many people will do anything to get ahead. If you can not do honest work in academia you should leave and go work somewhere else. Fraud is not the correct reaction to the problems of academia, as it actively hurts it even more. Nobody is forced to do academic research for a living, especially if you have a degree in physics.

DarkNova6 3y ago
> Fraud is not the correct reaction to the problems of academia, as it actively hurts it even more. Not in the short term. And only for yourself personally if you are found out. Of course there are perverse incentives which goes against the scientific spirit. It doesn’t even require malicious intent. Neglect and bias can be similarly powerful negative forces.
catgary 3y ago
I think we’re getting to competitive sports territory, where people justify it to themselves because they’re convinced everyone else is doing it.
vouaobrasil 3y ago
I never said fraud is the correct reaction. Like I said, I believe it is wrong unequivocally. I did say that fraud is something that is essentially encouraged in academia. Nobody is forced to do it of course, but then again, any system will have its flaws that encourages bad behaviour, and it is also advantageous to restructure the system to minimize that.
SkyBelow 3y ago
If you asked your CISO about securing your system against hackers and their response was "If they can't do honest pen testing, they should leave IT and go work somewhere else." what would your feelings be? OP wasn't trying to justify bad actors, but explain how the system is selecting for them, and we have to accept that our system is running in a world where there will always be back actors present. Systems must be built to be resistant to them.
3y ago

inglor_cz 3y ago

"When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." The publish-or-perish mentality combined with the grant system introduces a lot of bad incentives into the scientific ecosystem.

j_maffe 3y ago

I can see how that can be the case if it's for survival, but no one pressured this person to try to claim to find one of the most sought-after technologies out there. It also doesn't apply cause he voluntarily chose to go to a prestigious university where this kind of pressure exists. Competition can be healthy thing as long as it doesn't threaten the researcher's career, which clearly wasn't the case here. This guy had the balls to do it twice in two years after getting caught, clearly he's set in his ways.

vouaobrasil 3y ago
Of course. I am not trying to remove the blame from him. On the other hand, we can also learn from these problems because they often point out nearby flaws in the general system that should be ameliorated. That was my main point.
- j_maffe 3y ago
  I agree! I'm just saying that this case in particular does not really show the problem with pressure in Academia. If anything, it shows how lenient the peer-review process is.
  - vouaobrasil 3y ago
    Yeah that's true, that's something to think about. The peer-review process is indeed lame and weak.

troupe 3y ago

> However, what is the societal problem here? I would say yes. I think we need to place a lot more value in publishing research that isn't surprising. Research that simply replicates (or fails to replicate) other research should be just as valuable to one's career as finding something unexpected. I scientist that has replicated a bunch of studies and identified several that they couldn't replicate is doing something very very valuable for the human race and we (universities, grants, etc.) need to recognize that.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Ericson2314 3y ago
A fundamental problem with research academia is that we scaled it up massively without introducing more division of labor.
- troupe 3y ago
  Interesting. I'm not sure I fully understand what you are saying though. Can you expand on that?
  - Ericson2314 3y ago
    It's all throwing PhDs at novel research. Boring reproducing known things is just one type of support work that is neglected. There is a vast "supply chain" of work that allows novel research to be done, and we've neglected it.

brigadier132 3y ago

Academia is zero sum. All zero sum endeavors result in this kind of behavior.

barefeg 3y ago
Can you elaborate what you mean with zero sum?
- brigadier132 3y ago
  There is a finite number of grant dollars and faculty positions. Your colleague's success hurts your chances of success.

matthewdgreen 3y ago

> I also don't have much sympathy for the scientific community that has created this environment. Scientists didn't create this environment: you did. We, as a society, demanded that some sector produce new scientific research at a rate and level that is capable of supporting our economy, and then we allocated a very restricted set of resources for them to do it. And they've done miracles, too! We would literally not be alive today if the scientific community hadn't developed the improvements that allow us to feed, house, and provide energy to 8 billion people. And that's before we get to strictly optional stuff like the computers and networks that power this website. It's a serious business and obviously that kind of pressure leads to bad results sometimes. But the correct response is to be grateful that we have an engine in our society that produces this basic research (since industry has dramatically lowered spending on basic R&D over the past decades) and try to improve it, not to be pointlessly angry at scientists for living in the system that society's incentives have built for us.

rdtsc 3y ago

> It may be a person's instinct to immediately blame the researcher, and of course However as they teach the little kids, trust your gut instinct. This person didn't just plagiarize this work, but also his PhD thesis: https://www.science.org/content/article/plagiarism-allegations-pursue-physicist-behind-stunning-superconductivity-claims https://www.science.org/content/article/plagiarism-allegatio... > If we want to fix it, simply outing these fakes will not be enough. Yes, but without outing these fakes and harshly and punishing them as the first step, we're immediately communicating that this is "ok". "Just fake the data and throw it over the wall, if you get caught, just blame it on pressure and the general academic culture".

hcta 3y ago

This post seems almost completely vacuous to me. I guess you could read it to mean that if a person cheats, there must be some "societal problem" causing it. That would seem to imply you believe society could in principle be 'fixed' s.t. no one is ever incentivized to cheat. Is that what you mean? Or simply, s.t. fewer people are incentivized to cheat. In that case, duh. But fewer to what extent? And are there any actual constructive suggestions forthcoming?