6 ms·

Harvard Medical affiliate retracts, corrects research after sleuthing by blogger

45 points by DocFeind 3y ago

darth_avocado 3y ago
What happens to the Authors and if this involves grant money, can they be processed for fraud?
- phpisthebest 3y ago
  That depends, in order to answer that we need to know the Demographics and immutable characteristics of the author(s)
- tomcam 3y ago
  Yes, but they won’t be. Any such trial would make the institution look bad. If there’s anything you need to know about academia in the USA, it’s that they fear losing face more than Communist Chinese party members.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > they fear losing face Everyone fears losing face. What’s changing is academia is losing its perceived moral footing. That makes them fair (and popular) game for an enterprising prosecutor.
    - spamizbad 3y ago
      The same people who donate to elect chief prosecutors also donate to these schools. If you ran a campaign on prosecuting scientific fraudsters at Harvard the next election cycle you'd have 20 multi-millionaires trying to scalp you in hopes they can parlay that into their mediocre child's admission.
      - FredPret 3y ago
        ... used to donate to these schools
    - tomcam 3y ago
      Nope. There's way more money in academia than in prosecution
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > more money in academia than in prosecution Doesn’t matter. Different incentives. As another person said, prosecuting academia is right now a winning political position. With donors and the electorate.
    - Ferret7446 3y ago
      I guess it depends on how you perceive "face". Admitting to and taking responsibility for mistakes can be good, but both academia and the PRC are united in their delusion that pretending to never make any mistakes is somehow good, even when it's almost an open secret that those mistakes exist. Doubling down and tripling down, if you will.
calibas 3y ago
The title makes it sound like it was just some mistake. The actual details make it sound they they knowingly committed scientific fraud.
- desi_ninja 3y ago
  Just following glorious path set by University president
  - spamizbad 3y ago
    Gay committed plagiarism but didn't "steal" her ideas or fabricate quotes to support them. She absolutely should've resigned and is unfit to lead an academic institution but falsifying cancer research data is on a whole other level than lifting quotes.
    - readthenotes1 3y ago
      For another perspective: https://wset.com/news/nation-world/legal-scholar-livid-over-harvard-president-allegedly-plagiarizing-her-work-morally-bankrupt-claudine-gay-carol-swain-cambridge-massachusetts-university-antisemitism-testimony https://wset.com/news/nation-world/legal-scholar-livid-over-...
    - nvm0n2 3y ago
      She has a long history of defending and covering up on behalf of people who do forge data though: https://www.karlstack.com/p/the-curious-case-of-claudine-gay https://www.karlstack.com/p/the-curious-case-of-claudine-gay
  - sudosysgen 3y ago
    Many of the academic frauds in question predate Gay's deanship by over a decade.
  - calibas 3y ago
    Prepare for downvotes and rebuttals if you say anything that even remotely disparages Harvard University on HN. Personally, I think it's quite scandalous that Harvard gave the world's most famous sex-trafficker his own office. I mean, that's the last person on Earth you'd want to give access to a steady supply of young girls and boys, but that's exactly what Harvard did. And I've been told that we're not supposed to hold Harvard accountable because nobody knew what Epstein was doing... The heads of one of the world's most prestigious universities were all too naive to realize what was going on. Perhaps they thought the girls at his parties were just really friendly? Or perhaps they don't want to admit to anything they'd be legally liable for?
ta8645 3y ago
Another win for the internet and citizen journalism.
MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
How can one fall so low as to falsify cancer research.
- zelon88 3y ago
  "One white lie will get me that $10m grant, which I will spend curing cancer. Therefore my white lie is clearly worth it." Typical risk/reward ratio.
- InitialLastName 3y ago
  Not justifying it on scientific purity grounds, but if you genuinely believe that your treatment is effective (and you are heavily incentivized to come up with an effective treatment), but your study result is unconvincing for reasons you don't think are invalidating, it might be easy to convince yourself that "tweaking the presentation" in a way that moves the treatment forward could save lives.
lainga 3y ago
3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39145728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39145728
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nvm0n2 3y ago
The source of this stuff is PubPeer, a website where people can comment on papers and do post-publication peer review. A quick rummage through this site is the quickest way to destroy your confidence in academic science for good. There's no direct equivalent of Photoshopped Western Blots for computer science, but if you want a laugh search for papers generated by SciGen, a perl script that makes joke papers: https://pubpeer.com/search?q=scigen https://pubpeer.com/search?q=scigen Or for a more serious example of problems (medical AI): https://pubpeer.com/publications/ABB8F161E6691210C44545FF8990C1 https://pubpeer.com/publications/ABB8F161E6691210C44545FF899... The authors report an AUROC of 1.00. This is extremely high and implies perfect discrimination between cases and controls, which seems unlikely given the highly heterogeneous nature of ASD and suggests some sort of data leakage ... The highlighted point estimates are not in the middle of their confidence intervals, either by a modest amount (yellow) or by a large amount (pink). In some pink cases, the point estimate is not inside the CI at all. ... I have rather strong concerns regarding the apparent absence of a hold-out dataset.

45 points by DocFeind 3y ago

darth_avocado 3y ago

What happens to the Authors and if this involves grant money, can they be processed for fraud?

phpisthebest 3y ago
That depends, in order to answer that we need to know the Demographics and immutable characteristics of the author(s)
tomcam 3y ago
Yes, but they won’t be. Any such trial would make the institution look bad. If there’s anything you need to know about academia in the USA, it’s that they fear losing face more than Communist Chinese party members.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > they fear losing face Everyone fears losing face. What’s changing is academia is losing its perceived moral footing. That makes them fair (and popular) game for an enterprising prosecutor.
  - spamizbad 3y ago
    The same people who donate to elect chief prosecutors also donate to these schools. If you ran a campaign on prosecuting scientific fraudsters at Harvard the next election cycle you'd have 20 multi-millionaires trying to scalp you in hopes they can parlay that into their mediocre child's admission.
    - FredPret 3y ago
      ... used to donate to these schools
  - tomcam 3y ago
    Nope. There's way more money in academia than in prosecution
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > more money in academia than in prosecution Doesn’t matter. Different incentives. As another person said, prosecuting academia is right now a winning political position. With donors and the electorate.
  - Ferret7446 3y ago
    I guess it depends on how you perceive "face". Admitting to and taking responsibility for mistakes can be good, but both academia and the PRC are united in their delusion that pretending to never make any mistakes is somehow good, even when it's almost an open secret that those mistakes exist. Doubling down and tripling down, if you will.

calibas 3y ago

The title makes it sound like it was just some mistake. The actual details make it sound they they knowingly committed scientific fraud.

desi_ninja 3y ago
Just following glorious path set by University president
- spamizbad 3y ago
  Gay committed plagiarism but didn't "steal" her ideas or fabricate quotes to support them. She absolutely should've resigned and is unfit to lead an academic institution but falsifying cancer research data is on a whole other level than lifting quotes.
  - readthenotes1 3y ago
    For another perspective: https://wset.com/news/nation-world/legal-scholar-livid-over-harvard-president-allegedly-plagiarizing-her-work-morally-bankrupt-claudine-gay-carol-swain-cambridge-massachusetts-university-antisemitism-testimony https://wset.com/news/nation-world/legal-scholar-livid-over-...
  - nvm0n2 3y ago
    She has a long history of defending and covering up on behalf of people who do forge data though: https://www.karlstack.com/p/the-curious-case-of-claudine-gay https://www.karlstack.com/p/the-curious-case-of-claudine-gay
- sudosysgen 3y ago
  Many of the academic frauds in question predate Gay's deanship by over a decade.
- calibas 3y ago
  Prepare for downvotes and rebuttals if you say anything that even remotely disparages Harvard University on HN. Personally, I think it's quite scandalous that Harvard gave the world's most famous sex-trafficker his own office. I mean, that's the last person on Earth you'd want to give access to a steady supply of young girls and boys, but that's exactly what Harvard did. And I've been told that we're not supposed to hold Harvard accountable because nobody knew what Epstein was doing... The heads of one of the world's most prestigious universities were all too naive to realize what was going on. Perhaps they thought the girls at his parties were just really friendly? Or perhaps they don't want to admit to anything they'd be legally liable for?

ta8645 3y ago

Another win for the internet and citizen journalism.

MrBuddyCasino 3y ago

How can one fall so low as to falsify cancer research.

zelon88 3y ago
"One white lie will get me that $10m grant, which I will spend curing cancer. Therefore my white lie is clearly worth it." Typical risk/reward ratio.
InitialLastName 3y ago
Not justifying it on scientific purity grounds, but if you genuinely believe that your treatment is effective (and you are heavily incentivized to come up with an effective treatment), but your study result is unconvincing for reasons you don't think are invalidating, it might be easy to convince yourself that "tweaking the presentation" in a way that moves the treatment forward could save lives.

lainga 3y ago

3 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39145728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39145728

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nvm0n2 3y ago

The source of this stuff is PubPeer, a website where people can comment on papers and do post-publication peer review. A quick rummage through this site is the quickest way to destroy your confidence in academic science for good. There's no direct equivalent of Photoshopped Western Blots for computer science, but if you want a laugh search for papers generated by SciGen, a perl script that makes joke papers: https://pubpeer.com/search?q=scigen https://pubpeer.com/search?q=scigen Or for a more serious example of problems (medical AI): https://pubpeer.com/publications/ABB8F161E6691210C44545FF8990C1 https://pubpeer.com/publications/ABB8F161E6691210C44545FF899... The authors report an AUROC of 1.00. This is extremely high and implies perfect discrimination between cases and controls, which seems unlikely given the highly heterogeneous nature of ASD and suggests some sort of data leakage ... The highlighted point estimates are not in the middle of their confidence intervals, either by a modest amount (yellow) or by a large amount (pink). In some pink cases, the point estimate is not inside the CI at all. ... I have rather strong concerns regarding the apparent absence of a hold-out dataset.