4 ms·

I must admit I was surprised to see the specific study and falsified research wasn’t discussed. I can appreciate this may have been more of a reflection than r

I must admit I was surprised to see the specific study and falsified research wasn’t discussed. I can appreciate this may have been more of a reflection than reprisal (with remediations no doubt made at the time) but if that was the case, would have been good to read it ‘unredacted’. Had the falsified data not made it out of the lab I would understand this article’s approach - the author clearly uninterested in a fruitless smear campaign - but given “lies” are out there, would have been interesting to see exactly what it was and to what extent the findings proliferated. Maybe the author didn’t want to give any more weight to incorrect information. I can only make assumptions. A challenging and nuanced situation all round no doubt.

c0pium 3y ago
The explanation is pretty simple; she’s a coward and seeking closure by unburdening herself without doing the hard thing and being fully transparent about what happened. If you helped build someone’s reputation by not bothering to verify their work and just taking credit for your involvement with them, you have an uncomfortable but undeniable responsibility to be just as strident in getting out the truth.
- jmcgough 3y ago
  Easy to say that behind a computer screen, but we're in this mess because from a game theory perspective there is no gain to be had and a huge risk to your career and/or finances by publicly naming someone. This also happened several years ago, when there was even less honesty and discussion around this topic.
  - globalnode 3y ago
    sounds to me like the author was naive and idealistic, nothing wrong with that, it hurts everyone when people do the wrong thing by others. maybe what they are doing by publishing the story is trying to warn others not to just take people at face value and be aware of your own biases. its a good lesson. no further naming or shaming required.
    - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
      > sounds to me like the author was naive and idealistic, nothing wrong with that Naive and idealistic like the Wells Fago CEO who had no idea that his employees were actually committing fraud trying to meet his impossible demands. The author was running a paper mill with underpaid postdocs students and presenting their work as her own with very minimal supervision.
      - sgt101 3y ago
        > The author was running a paper mill with underpaid postdocs students and presenting their work as her own with very minimal supervision. The postdocs aren't students. How do you know that they were underpaid? How do you know that she was presenting there work as hers - science is collaborative in the extreme now. It is very rare for a paper to be produced by one author. At one time I wrote a few such papers and I was told that it was actually a black mark against me for a post because I was someone who couldn't collaborate!
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    we have a word for that: cowardice.
    - BeFlatXIII 3y ago
      Cowardice is the smart move. Accepting whatever consequences the world wishes to assign is for chumps.
      - voakbasda 3y ago
        You’d think this crowd would have gotten the lesson from Wargames: sometimes, the winning move is not to play. In many real world scenarios, this is by far the optimal solution for the average individual.
      - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        ^ this is also cowardice. there are always rationalizations for your behavior, but it may still be cowardice.
        BeFlatXIII 3y ago
        Perhaps the mistake is characterizing cowardice as a bad thing.
        PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        I don't know about "bad", but more as the opposite of cowardice as exemplary. When the easy thing is cowardice (aka "strategy") why wouldn't you call out not doing the easy thing as exemplary?
- Someone 3y ago
  > she’s a coward and seeking closure by unburdening herself without doing the hard thing and being fully transparent about what happened. I don’t see how one can draw that conclusion from reading one text she wrote. She can easily have written other articles about the case. This article isn’t about the fraud or about its correction, but about her soul-searching years later. I also think the article indicates she has worked on being transparent. She reported the case to the university integrity officer and hired a scientist to check the data. She also writes “I had barely escaped the shame of having to retract a published article”, which I interpret (that “escaped” makes it a bit ambiguous to me; if that “barely” hadn’t been there I would interpret it as there not being a retraction) as that an article got retracted.
  - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
    cowardice is behavior, her behavior is that of a coward. Just as greed got her there, cowardice keeps her there.
    - Someone 3y ago
      > cowardice is behavior, her behavior is that of a coward. Again: I don’t see how one can draw that conclusion from this one article. Also, IMO, there’s a huge difference between “behaving like a Foo” and “being a Foo”. The former leaves open that they change, the latter doesn’t. Compare “(s)he killed somebody” with “(s)he’s a killer”. Who do you think can deserve parole?
      - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        when "foo" has a negative connotation, no one is going to "be a Foo" they will instead "behave like a Foo". It doesn't fucking matter, people will make the judgement _for_ them.
  - achileas 3y ago
    The article hadn’t been published (it says so in the article), she escaped retraction because it came up before it was published. In fact it reads as if it hadn’t even been submitted yet and was still being written.
nvm0n2 3y ago
The biggest problem: there's no signs anywhere in the article that she tried to stop John moving on and doing it all over again. She didn't even tell her colleagues about the fraud let alone his new employers. This sorry tale is why legions of us longer trust "experts". She cares so little about science that she did her best to ignore the possibility of fraud and then did nothing to stop it happening again. Academic culture is truly challenged when it comes to being scientific.
- whatyesaid 3y ago
  The paper is redacted and John would've been first author. Pretty obvious, especially within his field. Her department would have known the full story, it's just she didn't deliver a post-mortem presentation with learnings Also, academia works on references, sure you can get older referees but the referees would be suspicious as well as the person receiving. The reference culture can be career killing if you just worked with someone toxic as you're blind to the references, they assume the worst if your most recent supervisor isn't providing one etc. then even if you're good you have to apply to a lot of jobs and waste a lot of people's time submitting to portals and writing references. The problem is when dishonest and no-skill researchers aren't fired or don't leave like Iddo Drori

c0pium 3y ago

The explanation is pretty simple; she’s a coward and seeking closure by unburdening herself without doing the hard thing and being fully transparent about what happened. If you helped build someone’s reputation by not bothering to verify their work and just taking credit for your involvement with them, you have an uncomfortable but undeniable responsibility to be just as strident in getting out the truth.

jmcgough 3y ago
Easy to say that behind a computer screen, but we're in this mess because from a game theory perspective there is no gain to be had and a huge risk to your career and/or finances by publicly naming someone. This also happened several years ago, when there was even less honesty and discussion around this topic.
- globalnode 3y ago
  sounds to me like the author was naive and idealistic, nothing wrong with that, it hurts everyone when people do the wrong thing by others. maybe what they are doing by publishing the story is trying to warn others not to just take people at face value and be aware of your own biases. its a good lesson. no further naming or shaming required.
  - RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y ago
    > sounds to me like the author was naive and idealistic, nothing wrong with that Naive and idealistic like the Wells Fago CEO who had no idea that his employees were actually committing fraud trying to meet his impossible demands. The author was running a paper mill with underpaid postdocs students and presenting their work as her own with very minimal supervision.
    - sgt101 3y ago
      > The author was running a paper mill with underpaid postdocs students and presenting their work as her own with very minimal supervision. The postdocs aren't students. How do you know that they were underpaid? How do you know that she was presenting there work as hers - science is collaborative in the extreme now. It is very rare for a paper to be produced by one author. At one time I wrote a few such papers and I was told that it was actually a black mark against me for a post because I was someone who couldn't collaborate!
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  we have a word for that: cowardice.
  - BeFlatXIII 3y ago
    Cowardice is the smart move. Accepting whatever consequences the world wishes to assign is for chumps.
    - voakbasda 3y ago
      You’d think this crowd would have gotten the lesson from Wargames: sometimes, the winning move is not to play. In many real world scenarios, this is by far the optimal solution for the average individual.
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      ^ this is also cowardice. there are always rationalizations for your behavior, but it may still be cowardice.
      - BeFlatXIII 3y ago
        Perhaps the mistake is characterizing cowardice as a bad thing.
        PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
        I don't know about "bad", but more as the opposite of cowardice as exemplary. When the easy thing is cowardice (aka "strategy") why wouldn't you call out not doing the easy thing as exemplary?
Someone 3y ago
> she’s a coward and seeking closure by unburdening herself without doing the hard thing and being fully transparent about what happened. I don’t see how one can draw that conclusion from reading one text she wrote. She can easily have written other articles about the case. This article isn’t about the fraud or about its correction, but about her soul-searching years later. I also think the article indicates she has worked on being transparent. She reported the case to the university integrity officer and hired a scientist to check the data. She also writes “I had barely escaped the shame of having to retract a published article”, which I interpret (that “escaped” makes it a bit ambiguous to me; if that “barely” hadn’t been there I would interpret it as there not being a retraction) as that an article got retracted.
- PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
  cowardice is behavior, her behavior is that of a coward. Just as greed got her there, cowardice keeps her there.
  - Someone 3y ago
    > cowardice is behavior, her behavior is that of a coward. Again: I don’t see how one can draw that conclusion from this one article. Also, IMO, there’s a huge difference between “behaving like a Foo” and “being a Foo”. The former leaves open that they change, the latter doesn’t. Compare “(s)he killed somebody” with “(s)he’s a killer”. Who do you think can deserve parole?
    - PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
      when "foo" has a negative connotation, no one is going to "be a Foo" they will instead "behave like a Foo". It doesn't fucking matter, people will make the judgement _for_ them.
- achileas 3y ago
  The article hadn’t been published (it says so in the article), she escaped retraction because it came up before it was published. In fact it reads as if it hadn’t even been submitted yet and was still being written.

nvm0n2 3y ago

The biggest problem: there's no signs anywhere in the article that she tried to stop John moving on and doing it all over again. She didn't even tell her colleagues about the fraud let alone his new employers. This sorry tale is why legions of us longer trust "experts". She cares so little about science that she did her best to ignore the possibility of fraud and then did nothing to stop it happening again. Academic culture is truly challenged when it comes to being scientific.

whatyesaid 3y ago
The paper is redacted and John would've been first author. Pretty obvious, especially within his field. Her department would have known the full story, it's just she didn't deliver a post-mortem presentation with learnings Also, academia works on references, sure you can get older referees but the referees would be suspicious as well as the person receiving. The reference culture can be career killing if you just worked with someone toxic as you're blind to the references, they assume the worst if your most recent supervisor isn't providing one etc. then even if you're good you have to apply to a lot of jobs and waste a lot of people's time submitting to portals and writing references. The problem is when dishonest and no-skill researchers aren't fired or don't leave like Iddo Drori