3 ms·

Professors are basically CEOs for deep-tech start-ups (at least in science and engineering). Yes, they know the theory, technology, tools, etc, (from their own

Professors are basically CEOs for deep-tech start-ups (at least in science and engineering). Yes, they know the theory, technology, tools, etc, (from their own time as PhDs and Postdocs), but they need to delegate much of the work to their team. Like a CEO, the PI's main jobs are to strategize (choose research direction), form partnerships (collaborations), and fund raise (find grant money). This money is used to pay said team (students) to work on the products (research projects). In this analogy, each student is basically a project manager working on their own product, sometimes with a MASc or UG student to help with the labor intensive parts (experiments). When the product is ready for release (publication), the PI helps market it (at conferences) and puts their name on it (as coauthor). This is not stealing credit, this is amplifying the team's success so everyone wins. It builds visibility and credibility for the team members involved, and keeps the ball rolling by allowing the PI to get more funding based on the win. Note that the PI is instrumental in choosing and guiding the work, leveraging their experience to brainstorm solutions when stuck, etc, but nobody thinks they are actually in the lab doing it all. So, I guess my point is, a good CEO would eventually figure out if work is bogus, but they'll probably be the last to know. BTW, noticing the data problems when working on the draft publication is literally the first opportunity a PI would have to really see all the final data in one place. Conferences are 'low stakes' and it's not unusual to present some preliminary and/or partial data. I know this opens a HUGE can of worms if you really think about all the repercussions (e.g. who really deserves Nobel prizes and awards?), but that's a story for another day.

ooterness 3y ago
So in this analogy, the "startup" is Theranos and the professor is Elizabeth Holmes? That is not very reassuring. Whoever's at the top has culpability for this type of fraud. Either they knew or they should have known.
- radres 3y ago
  not really. in your analogy Elizabeth Holmes already the culprit. Professor would be responsible of fraud if they learn about it and ignore it.
- ehhthing 3y ago
  Nobody wants to assume fraud in science, unless you have unassailable evidence that someone has committed fraud you really cannot risk your own reputation by dishing out allegations. The solution to this is trust but verify, but verifying data would require twice the amount of work, which not every lab has the funding to do, even if it was breakthrough research. The sad truth about a lot of science is that science is built on trust. The psychology replication crisis is proof of that, there are so many ways to manipulate data to make it look like you have a result and also so much pressure to get a result that people resort to the former to get the latter. There are plenty of historical scandals about how scientific fraud has taken way too long to investigate, people like Victor Ninov and Hwang Woo-Suk are two examples of just how far fraud can go before it's found. The article here is comparatively tame compared to how far Huang and Ninov got.
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    Academia is funded to the tune of billions of dollars a year. If they don't have the funds to check their own work then it is a damning indictment of the funding process, one that suggests governments are utterly unqualified to be funding research at all. But in this case funding doesn't seem to be the problem. The author says why she didn't check: she wanted to be famous.
    - ehhthing 3y ago
      Don't you think its funny that we pay academics a fraction of how much we pay tech workers and yet we expect so much more from them?
      - nvm0n2 3y ago
        No because "we" don't pay academics, universities do. It's their decision to hire more professors instead of paying the existing ones more, it's their decision to create siloed departments etc. The system has plenty of money, but universities and grant agencies allocate it very badly despite being mostly staffed by academics and ex academics.

ooterness 3y ago

So in this analogy, the "startup" is Theranos and the professor is Elizabeth Holmes? That is not very reassuring. Whoever's at the top has culpability for this type of fraud. Either they knew or they should have known.

radres 3y ago
not really. in your analogy Elizabeth Holmes already the culprit. Professor would be responsible of fraud if they learn about it and ignore it.
ehhthing 3y ago
Nobody wants to assume fraud in science, unless you have unassailable evidence that someone has committed fraud you really cannot risk your own reputation by dishing out allegations. The solution to this is trust but verify, but verifying data would require twice the amount of work, which not every lab has the funding to do, even if it was breakthrough research. The sad truth about a lot of science is that science is built on trust. The psychology replication crisis is proof of that, there are so many ways to manipulate data to make it look like you have a result and also so much pressure to get a result that people resort to the former to get the latter. There are plenty of historical scandals about how scientific fraud has taken way too long to investigate, people like Victor Ninov and Hwang Woo-Suk are two examples of just how far fraud can go before it's found. The article here is comparatively tame compared to how far Huang and Ninov got.
- nvm0n2 3y ago
  Academia is funded to the tune of billions of dollars a year. If they don't have the funds to check their own work then it is a damning indictment of the funding process, one that suggests governments are utterly unqualified to be funding research at all. But in this case funding doesn't seem to be the problem. The author says why she didn't check: she wanted to be famous.
  - ehhthing 3y ago
    Don't you think its funny that we pay academics a fraction of how much we pay tech workers and yet we expect so much more from them?
    - nvm0n2 3y ago
      No because "we" don't pay academics, universities do. It's their decision to hire more professors instead of paying the existing ones more, it's their decision to create siloed departments etc. The system has plenty of money, but universities and grant agencies allocate it very badly despite being mostly staffed by academics and ex academics.