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Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president
- the-dude 3y agoGreat timing.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- andrewflnr 3y agoA case of science progressing just slightly faster than by-the-funeral.
- nonrepeating 3y agoAs a young man, I would have given nearly anything to attend Stanford or MIT, but I knew I wasn’t quite up to their standards. Now I find their presidents are not up to mine.
- echelon 3y agoI worked at a fintech that employed both MIT graduates and people that didn't go to college at all. With our hiring and interview process serving as a great filter, it was impossible to tell who fell into which population until they told you.
- maest 3y agoWhat was the interview pass rate for MIT grads and people without a college education?
- echelon 3y agoIs that really the point worth focusing on here?
- maest 3y agoI think those ratios are more telling than the observation that people are indistinguishable _after_ your interviewing filter. Especially in the context of this topic.
- laidoffamazon 3y agoGiven that MIT grads are objectively superior to the rest of us that didn't get into any elite schools in basically every dimension I'd wager it's fairly high. With that said, the Square interview process isn't as algorithmic as most tech or finance companies and is instead more collaborative, so the raw IQ most MIT grads would use for their Jane Street interviews probably doesn't apply here.
- paulcole 3y ago> Given that MIT grads are objectively superior to the rest of us that didn't get into any elite schools in basically every dimension I'd wager it's fairly high. Genuflect when you say that fella.
- laidoffamazon 3y agoYou jest, but is it not accurate?
- paulcole 3y agoYour belief that somebody who got into MIT is “objectively superior” in “basically every dimension” compared to someone who didn’t is one of the cringiest thoughts I’ve seen expressed on HN and that is saying something. I honestly thought (and still hope) that I missed the sarcasm.
- laidoffamazon 3y agoI'm not being sarcastic and I don't just mean MIT obviously, any elite school. I didn't get into any and I've met people that have. They're just superior - physically, mentally, in habits, by net worth and income.
- defrost 3y agoRich parents does a lot of lifting there. Stephen Smale scored a Wolf Prize, a Fields Medal, a Sloane Fellowship and a slew of other accolades off the back of mediocre grades at the University of Michigan (a fairly decent public research uni I've heard but not as far as I know an "elite" school). Looking around there's many a high achiever that missed out on a US Ivy League placing.
- ekianjo 3y agoNot surprising. Papers have no bearing on ones capabilities especially in an era where knowledge is virtually everywhere
- wolverine876 3y agoHere's my anecdote: In extensive exposure to a top-25 global university, and to a top-10 elite one, there was a big difference in the student body and the education. The latter was a different world; the education was innovative, brilliant, demanding at a very high level that I didn't anticipate. The students operated at a different level, world-class talent with shocking intelligence and, for their age, experience, being prepared - in a good way - to be world leaders. Maybe a very simple comparison is between young tennis players that work with a local pro and go to tennis camp, and the super-talented ones working with elite professional coaches, the kind that train world champions. It was clear that there is no way you could teach yourself at anywhere near the level of top-10, nor find that education at most schools. And remember that your peers are part of your education - you won't find that population of peers either. I know some institutions hire only from the elite, top-10 schools. I used to think it was 83% prejudice, but after those experiences I understand why. It's still lazy and unfair, but I also see significant reasons for it, maybe 33% prejudice. (Possibly other top-10 schools aren't as good as the one I have experience with, of course.)
- laidoffamazon 3y agoI'd love for you to tell me, step by step, what someone that didn't get into a top institution of any kind should take away from this comment. Because all I can take away is that people like me are just objectively inferior compared to you, destined to not be a future leader or professional. Is that not what you are attempting to communicate? I just want to be crystal clear. We all know people like you are superhuman. I'm just wondering what it should mean for the rest of us, the 99.99%.
- networkchad 3y ago[dead]
- theGnuMe 3y agoSo turns out that someone studied this way back in 1999. I'll let you draw your own conclusions. https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-10/27/049r-102799-idx.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-10/27/049r-...
- ken47 3y agoIf the kind of work these people do at your company doesn’t pressure test the skills they exhibited to get into MIT, then that stands to reason.
- ShamelessC 3y agoTrue that. I used to feel bad not being able to get into these schools due to mental health issues. Felt insecure. Now I’ve looked around at the community of the Ivy League, the various so called success stories like Zuckerberg, and of course incidents like this. All I see is the rich fucking over everyone else for power and inflating public perception of their intelligence to try and keep actually intelligent people down.
- dpflan 3y agoI recall Paul Krugman discussing the composition of Ivy League college student bodies, and how legacy admissions allow subpar students to matriculate while the schools have the resources to attract the most intelligent / capable students — so the student body let’s say is half legacy, half brilliant outliers (one maybe consider rich legacies as societal outliers too for different aspects). The brilliant students give the schools clout for being intellectual; while, the legacy students support the elite way of life and make that associated with the school — elite lifestyle as an enticing prospect for many brilliant students. A symbiotic relationship is formed, one that may then essentially slowly corrupt the minds of people to aggressively pursue elite-perpetuating actions (so then elite are preserving their position in society, a position that can be challenged by the more intelligent).
- mgiampapa 3y agoPeople have to have the innovative ideas and skill to make them happen, and others need to know them to fund the venture.
- beenBoutIT 3y agoThis is why the objective admission system used by the University of California is so important. Nobody can game their way into a UC and IIRC, being a legacy only DQs you from some financial assistance they offer to 'first in family' to attend.
- smugma 3y agoWhy are you grouping MIT into the same group as Stanford?
- whalesalad 3y agoThey’re all wrought with dishonesty and self preservation.
- nahsra 3y agoJennifer Doudna [1], who helped characterize* CRISPR, worked at Yale: > Doudna joined Yale's Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry as an assistant professor in 1994. ... and now works at UC Berkeley. David Liu [2], who pioneered base editing, a generational improvement on classic CRISPR, works at Broad Institute (which is a collab between Harvard and MIT): > He is the Richard Merkin Professor, Director of the Merkin Institute of Transformative Technologies in Healthcare, and Vice-Chair of the Faculty at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT I absolutely loathe the current social meta where people are allowed (even celebrated) for thoughtlessly punching upwards, regardless how broad the brush (boxing glove?) seems to be. Are there shitheads in these institutions? Undoubtedly. Are there also a ton of really brilliant people who have good intentions, have integrity, and deserve your utmost respect? Undoubtedly. Are the shitheads more likely to be located in administration? My bet is yes, because the scope of administration is a lot more political, but again -- we have to be careful. Is it anywhere near accurate to say "They’re all wrought with dishonesty and self preservation"? I don't see how this statement could be supported with anything other than personal emotion. Anti-intellectualism is just another form of dangerous prejudice and should be treated as such. You can sign me up for metaphorically stringing up this particular asshole. I also say all this as someone who didn't go to a prestigious school. Happy New Years! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Doudna [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_R._Liu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_R._Liu
- wolverine876 3y ago> Are there shitheads in these institutions? Undoubtedly. Are there also a ton of really brilliant people who have good intentions, have integrity, and deserve your utmost respect? Undoubtedly. Right, that is the nature of every human institution, and every human.
- ralph84 3y agoThey are operated by and for the elite. Sociopaths are overrepresented in the elite.
- mnky9800n 3y agoSeems like every day the rules apply to thee but not too me. Except I never seem to be the me in this situation. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
- wand3r 3y ago> Retractions remain exceedingly rare for scientific papers: Just eight out of every 10,000 are retracted, according to a Retraction Watch database. This to me is a crucial statistic. Is this number much less than it should be? Or are many more papers dubious in their methodology?
- LordShredda 3y agoWhat's the rejection rate? Maybe it's low because peer review tends to block them from being published
- VHRanger 3y agoThe replication crisis and data colada showed there's tons of dubious science. About half of papers results don't hold up to replication.
- wolverine876 3y agoAbout 1/2 (1/3?) of papers in a specific field, when replicated, produced similar results but less strong statistical measures of them. It's fun to hear people complain about accuracy in this way.
- korginator 3y agoAdd this point from the article for context: "This retraction is Tessier-Lavigne’s fourth in as many months, a stunning turn of events for a researcher of his stature." That begs the question, how did at least four such cutting-edge research works with fabricated data and results go through the review process unscathed?
- ekianjo 3y agoYou just discovered that the peer review process is a big farce. Well done.
- wolverine876 3y agoThere's no evidence of fabricated data, afaik. (That's your own fabrication, apparently.)
- roddylindsay 3y agoFun fact: Theo Baker, the student journalist for the Stanford Daily who broke (and continues to break) major portions of this Marc Tessier-Lavigne scandal, is the son of Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for the NY Times.
- WillPostForFood 3y agoAnd his mom is Susan Glasser, who was assistant managing editor at The Washington Post, the editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine, the founding editor of Politico Magazine, and a global affairs analyst for CNN.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoWonder if this is a case of journalism in the blood, or having media connections others don’t have (probably both).
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- i8comments 3y agoStill a good place to study, though.
- laidoffamazon 3y agoI think it would be beneficial if every Stanford admit just went to their state schools. The purpose of these institutions isn't to educate, it's to confer status (in a tax efficient and positive-eugenic way)
- wolverine876 3y agoHave you attended any of those institutions? That's not my experience at all. The education was off-the-charts good. In more detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38829116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38829116
- laidoffamazon 3y agoOf course not, I wouldn't get in. But I never said the education is bad. I just said their purpose is not to educate. Morill Act institutions were developed to educate, and by accepting the vast majority of people that apply University of Oklahoma will always exist to educate. The same cannot be said for Brown or Stanford.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoI got master's in CS from Brown. Fwiw, I was really pleased with the instruction.
- laidoffamazon 3y agoAgain, never said the education was bad! Just that their purpose isn’t to educate as evidenced by the fact that they don’t let in 95% of those that apply. Maybe Brown MSCS is 94%, I don’t know.
- 3y ago
- pedalpete 3y agoFor those not familiar, this is the paper which first proposed the amyliod plaque theory (the original link mentions protiens, but not beta-amyloid or Tau specifically). https://www.drugdiscoverynews.com/what-now-for-the-amyloid-hypothesis-15611 https://www.drugdiscoverynews.com/what-now-for-the-amyloid-h...
- whoiscroberts 3y agoWow, even as a lay person I hear other lay people talk about amyloid plaque. It’s scary to know how far into common knowledge misinformation can burrow.
- timbit42 3y agoHave you been following politics?
- whoiscroberts 3y agoIndeed, same phenomenon plagues that arena as well. The desire of high profile people to be seen as brilliant is strong.
- kristianp 3y agoHow many years have these false papers set back Alzheimer's research? The amyloid plaque hypothesis has been dominant for a decade-plus while people continue to die from Alzheimer's. Will there be suings or criminal cases as a result of this?
- wolverine876 3y ago> Retractions remain exceedingly rare for scientific papers: Just eight out of every 10,000 are retracted, according to a Retraction Watch database. Reading HN, one might get the impression that it's much higher.
- ekianjo 3y agoIts not because most of stuff is not retracted that its valid. Most studies are never replicated...
- wolverine876 3y agoWhat data do you have to support that?
- ekianjo 3y agofirst, I have a functioning brain that makes it possible for me to imagine that incentives to cheat and the complete lack of replication process makes it easy to push the balance towards publishing fake results. Then, I am well aware that the peer process is not about replication at all and is mostly useless in its current shape. Then people actually tried it which confirmed everything I mentioned: > This certainly does not only happen in cancer research. In a study from Nature, out of 1,576 researchers, more than 70% have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and over half failed to reproduce their own. And even though 52% agree there is a reproducibility crisis, only 31% think that failing to reproduce published results means that the result is wrong. Even if replication is not necessary for results to be valid and true, any further work based on these results requires confirmation of valid results beyond the initial study. source: https://vce.usc.edu/weekly-news-profile/the-replication-crisis-issues-in-scientific-research/ https://vce.usc.edu/weekly-news-profile/the-replication-cris... Current Science is mostly cargo cult.
- bsder 3y ago> Current Science is mostly cargo cult. Such statements are mostly cargo cult. Experiments with known results are finicky. See: "Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass" https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html Experiments with unknown results are ridiculously finicky. You would be stunned at the number of experiments that got lucky and hinge on things like "how strongly stoppered the bottle is" (this normally manifests as "give it to grad student so-and-so as he somehow always makes it work even though the rest of you suck"). Unless you actively attempt to replicate an experiment you simply will not trip over this. This isn't to say that there isn't real fraud--there is. However, even when everybody is fully aboveboard and cooperating, replication is ridiculously hard. This isn't limited to science. Any company that tries to replicate a manufacturing line trips over this, too. Suddenly, a whole bunch of variables that you didn't even conceive of affect your results. Go to an injection molding conference and prepare to laugh until you cry over how uncontrolled everything is.
- DanAtC 3y ago[flagged]
- ekianjo 3y ago> This retraction is Tessier-Lavigne’s fourth in as many months, a stunning turn of events for a researcher of his stature. That says a lot about how worthless the whole science journal and peer review process is. At this rate your assumption is that 50% of what is published is complete junk.
- wolverine876 3y agoThat would be a far less scientific, and true, conclusion than what was in the papers. From the article: > Retractions remain exceedingly rare for scientific papers: Just eight out of every 10,000 are retracted, according to a Retraction Watch database.
- teh_infallible 3y agoIf retractions are exceedingly rare, it could imply that, once published, fraudulent papers have a tendency to persist.
- wolverine876 3y agoYes, it could imply lots of things. To focus on only that possible implication shows a bias; to focus on any possible implication without data shows a disinterest in actual science.
- bsder 3y agoIt's also a recent thing that both wide dissemination and the "reproducibility crisis" have gained momentum. It has become a LOT easier for non-experts to hunt down fraud as electronic dissemination has widened.
- jyxent 3y agoYou misunderstand. The issue is that many more papers should be retracted. A paper this major that couldn't be replicated still took another decade to be retracted. There are many more papers that are less cited that will never get looked at in enough detail to discover fraud.