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> John’s fraud left me feeling personally violated, as if a thief had come to my home and rifled through my drawers and closets. Scientific fraud is, indeed, a
by RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
> John’s fraud left me feeling personally violated, as if a thief had come to my home and rifled through my drawers and closets. Scientific fraud is, indeed, a kind of theft. Apart from the wasted time and ill-spent money, it is a blow to one’s reputation, and it damages a lab’s credibility.
I love how the author perpetrated scientific fraud and is playing the victim.
Part of the responsibility of a PI is supervision. The author put their name to the paper and the presentation. It is his responsibility to verify this.
Also what kind of lab culture did they create. Was there a super focus on discovery at all costs? Was the author just exploiting the post docs instead of actually properly supervising and mentoring them?
It kind of reminds me of the Wells-Fargo CEO who created a culture of high demands and no supervision then acted all surprised and innocent when fraud occurred. I think the people at the top of the hierarchy need to receive more blame, rather than push blame to the overworked, underpaid lowest person on the hierarchy.
- maegul 3y agoIn the abstract this is an excessive take. The point is that trust is a major component of scientific work and how it functions collectively. A effect being that when that is violated a lot breaks down with a god amount of collateral damage. With increasing complexity in research and pressure to produce and publish more, it’s a growing weakness. Bottom line is that team work and trust are now indelible parts of research in a culture predicated on individual success and contributions. Honestly not sure how science adjusts.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoI see it as a symptom of our culture where benefits flow uphill and blame flows downhill. When writing papers and presenting at conferences, the PI was all about how he was an integral part of the research and if you asked why he was presenting instead of the post-doc he would have talked about his responsibilities to supervise and guide. Once the fraud came out, he is just a poor victim who can’t be expected to know the post-doc wasn’t even using the equipment and was making up data completely.
- light_hue_1 3y agoThis is how every enterprise works. The CEO gives the talk about the awesome product because they set the roadmap. Benefits flow uphill, blame flows downhill is literally how any hierarchical organization works. Now, you might want to say that science shouldn't be hierarchical, but we don't have any flat organizations like this that involve the kinds of mentoring and training required to build new scientists.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoNot in every hierarchical organization. For example, a ship’s captain takes ultimate responsibility for any collision or sinking, whether or not they were actually steering the ship. There was a tradition of the captain being the last one to leave a sinking ship. Many cultures had a tradition of executing commanders that suffered defeat. I think our culture is an anomaly where blame does not flow uphill as well.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- donatj 3y agoI don't see how it's not clear with the reproducibility crisis that trust is misplaced and what we are doing isn't working.
- kukkeliskuu 3y agoScience is based on trust. All incentices are against research that verifies results: you don’t get funding, you don’t get published, you are not doing original research etc. If we cannot trust the results, everything is a house of cards, because not only are the papers wrong, also all papers depending on that paper may be affected. The scientific system should not be based on blind trust but have processes in place that makes it more resilient.
- cozzyd 3y agoIt's possible that there was perhaps insufficient supervision by the PI, or not enough senior people in the lab hierarchy, but I suspect most labs are not equpped to handle someone who is outright deceitful and sufficiently good at lying.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoMaking up data wholesale without even using the lab equipment is something that should be caught with even minimum standards of supervision. This isn’t subtle fudging of numbers or something that can be harder to detect.
- renonce 3y agoThe problem in this case is not that it’s not detected at all. I think the more interesting part is how the academic culture made everyone reluctant to conduct the investigation and admit that a misconduct occured.