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>Students say that Dias gave them an ultimatum: remove their names, or let him send the draft. Despite their worries, the students say they had no choice but to

>Students say that Dias gave them an ultimatum: remove their names, or let him send the draft. Despite their worries, the students say they had no choice but to acquiesce. “I just remember being very intimidated,” one student says. The student says they regret not speaking up more to Dias. “But it’s scary at the time. What if I do and he makes the rest of my life miserable?” Indeed it is scary, because as a student your PI can in fact ruin your life and ruin your career, without much recourse in most cases. This behind-the-scenes is a good insight into the bad incentives and lack of accountability for PIs in academic research. I suspect this kind of thing happens all the time in smaller fields, and never gets discovered because it's not a headline-grabbing topic like room-temp superconductivity. I had a bioengineering PhD friend who said she spotted obviously fraudulent papers all the time in her field--publications claiming they grew such-and-such bacteria in so-and-so medium, when she knew damn well that said bacteria cannot grow in said medium.

jcranmer 3y ago
Yep, when I was reading this article, as I kept hearing about what Dias was doing to his students, I was getting ready to throttle him. The students here didn't really do anything wrong, but Dias used his position of authority to essentially blackmail the students into becoming complicit in fraud, and attempted to justify it essentially with an "everybody does it" excuse. Kudos to them for taking the initiative to retract their paper over the head of their PI! That takes a lot of courage, given the immense powers an advisor holds over their students.
strangattractor 3y ago
> Soon after the CSH paper was published, Jorge Hirsch, a condensed-matter theorist at the University of California, San Diego, began pressing Dias to release the raw magnetic-susceptibility data, which were not included in the paper. More than a year later, Dias and Salamat finally made the raw data public. Explain to me why Nature would publish a paper without having access to/requiring the data. Could it be Nature wanted to be the first to publish such a ground breaking discovery? Dishonest people are simply a fact of life. The entire point - supposedly - of peer review is to insure that scientist do not make unsubstantiated claims. Job well done Nature. Job well done.
- tornato7 3y ago
  I would like it noted that I had Jorge Hirsch as a professor many years ago, and his grading was extremely harsh - you needed to be flawless at showing your work, not just getting the right answer. I remember getting a 14% on one of his tests, the worst score I ever got on any test in my life. It turned out to be a B+ after the curve was applied. Hence, it doesn't surprise me at all to see that he was the one to call out Dias. Some things never change!
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
  Peer review is not designed to detect fraud. It is meant to improve the quality of work, by giving a publication a fresh set of eyes who might identify gaps in the original research.
  - strangattractor 3y ago
    Not having data is quite a significant gap. BTW: I am not criticizing the actual reviewer of the paper. Data availability should be a policy of the journal and required for publication. How can you improve quality without access to the data? In this instance requiring data would have likely prevented the paper from even reaching peer review and wasting a busy individuals time.
    - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
      That was one particular dataset being requested. There are near infinite ways to characterize a material, and even the best lab is only going to have the time, resources, and expertise to collect and present some of them. I am not in the field, so I cannot comment on the specific relevance of the request, but in my area, there are absolutely some mandatory data inclusions which should block a paper from being published. Presumably this was not on that list.
araes 3y ago
Rather common question on Academia StackExchange for exactly the scary reasons mentioned. Almost every time, the rational is something close to "my professor will ruin my life if I don't do what they say." My own research is creepy and I want to leave (except my professor will ruin me): https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/67897/i-dont-want-to-kill-any-more-mice-but-my-advisor-insists-that-i-must-in-order https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/67897/i-dont-wa... My professor is using us to rig the IEEE elections (except afraid of losing scholarship and grad courses): https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/69486/what-should-i-do-if-my-advisor-is-forcing-me-to-vote-on-a-specific-candidate-in https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/69486/what-shou... My professor is rigging nanotechnology data and plagiarizing (except I don't stand a chance against him): https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/31265/my-professor-is-rigging-data-and-plagiarizing-what-can-i-do https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/31265/my-profes...
- paulddraper 3y ago
  That's unfortunate. There are bad professors in academia just like there are bad bosses in industry. Hopefully anyone with bad ones will find better ones.
  - halfdan 3y ago
    The big problem in academia very often is that you cannot simply take your research and finish your PhD elsewhere. With jobs you mostly can switch without losing much. Obviously depends on the situation.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - paulddraper 3y ago
      > With jobs you mostly can switch without losing much Seniority, bonuses, equity vesting, resume damage
      - 3y ago
stared 3y ago
People in the industry think that doctoral advisors are something like bosses in companies. They aren't. A Ph.D. is an all-or-nothing experience. When leaving on bad terms, you not only lose a few years of your life, but it is likely to ruin your career. With very competitive hires, an anti-recommendation might be a kiss of death. Sometimes, this power balance pushes people over the edge. There is a case of a PhD student who, after a struggle with his PI wanting him to publish fraudulent results, had a breakdown and took his own life. https://huixiangvoice.medium.com/the-hidden-story-behind-the-suicide-phd-candidate-huixiang-chen-236cd39f79d3 https://huixiangvoice.medium.com/the-hidden-story-behind-the...
- cma 3y ago
  For foreign PhD students their kids can be ripped out of school and they and their family deported if they can't get another advisor within 30-60 days depending on the visa.
  - BeetleB 3y ago
    Nope. A student's ability to stay in the US (along with his dependents) is by remaining a student at the university (i.e. registering for a full time load each semester). They're not dependent on whether they have funding/assistantship, or whether they have an advisor.
    - HarryHirsch 3y ago
      If you are a doctoral student you need a new advisor to remain in status. This is playing out at my institution right now, a female PhD student had had enough of the sexual advancements of her advisor, who is a favourite of the departmental chair, so she filed a Title IX complaint and needed a new advisor. There was exactly one faculty member who was in a position to take her on, an established figure close to retirement age. US immigration law is fucked up beyond reasonable.
      - BeetleB 3y ago
        What is going on is this: To remain in the US on a student visa, you need to be "in status". The government has rules on what that is, and mostly it is that you continue to register for a full load. I do not think the government has specified additional requirements. However, each university has an international programs office and they are required to specify for each international student whether the person is compliant with the university's guidelines. In your university's case, that office may have decided that "Hey, if you're a PhD student, you can't go too long without an advisor, because that would mean you're not making progress towards a PhD." I've seen them say similar things if it's taking too long to get a degree (e.g. over 6 years for undergrad or 8 years for PhD). Or if the GPA is too low and you're on probation Typically, these rules apply to all students, and not just international ones. It's essentially the university saying "You're about to be kicked out/expelled, so we can't tell the immigration folks that you are progressing towards your degree" Still, I really doubt your university has a rule specifying only 30-60 days to find a new PhD advisor. To give you an idea, in many sciences, it's common that you don't have a thesis advisor until after your first year (you focus in the first year on passing your qualifying exams, and only once you pass it are professors interested in taking you on). If indeed your university is enforcing a 30-60 day rule, it's a really crappy university. TLDR: The law doesn't require it, but each university has its own policies.
obviouslynotme 3y ago
It happens in all fields, at all levels. You cannot trust any papers without reproducing them. The intentional fraud is rampant. There is too much reward for publishing junk as quickly as possible and too little punishment for misbehavior.

jcranmer 3y ago

Yep, when I was reading this article, as I kept hearing about what Dias was doing to his students, I was getting ready to throttle him. The students here didn't really do anything wrong, but Dias used his position of authority to essentially blackmail the students into becoming complicit in fraud, and attempted to justify it essentially with an "everybody does it" excuse. Kudos to them for taking the initiative to retract their paper over the head of their PI! That takes a lot of courage, given the immense powers an advisor holds over their students.

strangattractor 3y ago

> Soon after the CSH paper was published, Jorge Hirsch, a condensed-matter theorist at the University of California, San Diego, began pressing Dias to release the raw magnetic-susceptibility data, which were not included in the paper. More than a year later, Dias and Salamat finally made the raw data public. Explain to me why Nature would publish a paper without having access to/requiring the data. Could it be Nature wanted to be the first to publish such a ground breaking discovery? Dishonest people are simply a fact of life. The entire point - supposedly - of peer review is to insure that scientist do not make unsubstantiated claims. Job well done Nature. Job well done.

tornato7 3y ago
I would like it noted that I had Jorge Hirsch as a professor many years ago, and his grading was extremely harsh - you needed to be flawless at showing your work, not just getting the right answer. I remember getting a 14% on one of his tests, the worst score I ever got on any test in my life. It turned out to be a B+ after the curve was applied. Hence, it doesn't surprise me at all to see that he was the one to call out Dias. Some things never change!
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
Peer review is not designed to detect fraud. It is meant to improve the quality of work, by giving a publication a fresh set of eyes who might identify gaps in the original research.
- strangattractor 3y ago
  Not having data is quite a significant gap. BTW: I am not criticizing the actual reviewer of the paper. Data availability should be a policy of the journal and required for publication. How can you improve quality without access to the data? In this instance requiring data would have likely prevented the paper from even reaching peer review and wasting a busy individuals time.
  - 0cf8612b2e1e 3y ago
    That was one particular dataset being requested. There are near infinite ways to characterize a material, and even the best lab is only going to have the time, resources, and expertise to collect and present some of them. I am not in the field, so I cannot comment on the specific relevance of the request, but in my area, there are absolutely some mandatory data inclusions which should block a paper from being published. Presumably this was not on that list.

araes 3y ago

Rather common question on Academia StackExchange for exactly the scary reasons mentioned. Almost every time, the rational is something close to "my professor will ruin my life if I don't do what they say." My own research is creepy and I want to leave (except my professor will ruin me): https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/67897/i-dont-want-to-kill-any-more-mice-but-my-advisor-insists-that-i-must-in-order https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/67897/i-dont-wa... My professor is using us to rig the IEEE elections (except afraid of losing scholarship and grad courses): https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/69486/what-should-i-do-if-my-advisor-is-forcing-me-to-vote-on-a-specific-candidate-in https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/69486/what-shou... My professor is rigging nanotechnology data and plagiarizing (except I don't stand a chance against him): https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/31265/my-professor-is-rigging-data-and-plagiarizing-what-can-i-do https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/31265/my-profes...

paulddraper 3y ago
That's unfortunate. There are bad professors in academia just like there are bad bosses in industry. Hopefully anyone with bad ones will find better ones.
- halfdan 3y ago
  The big problem in academia very often is that you cannot simply take your research and finish your PhD elsewhere. With jobs you mostly can switch without losing much. Obviously depends on the situation.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - paulddraper 3y ago
    > With jobs you mostly can switch without losing much Seniority, bonuses, equity vesting, resume damage
    - 3y ago

stared 3y ago

People in the industry think that doctoral advisors are something like bosses in companies. They aren't. A Ph.D. is an all-or-nothing experience. When leaving on bad terms, you not only lose a few years of your life, but it is likely to ruin your career. With very competitive hires, an anti-recommendation might be a kiss of death. Sometimes, this power balance pushes people over the edge. There is a case of a PhD student who, after a struggle with his PI wanting him to publish fraudulent results, had a breakdown and took his own life. https://huixiangvoice.medium.com/the-hidden-story-behind-the-suicide-phd-candidate-huixiang-chen-236cd39f79d3 https://huixiangvoice.medium.com/the-hidden-story-behind-the...

cma 3y ago
For foreign PhD students their kids can be ripped out of school and they and their family deported if they can't get another advisor within 30-60 days depending on the visa.
- BeetleB 3y ago
  Nope. A student's ability to stay in the US (along with his dependents) is by remaining a student at the university (i.e. registering for a full time load each semester). They're not dependent on whether they have funding/assistantship, or whether they have an advisor.
  - HarryHirsch 3y ago
    If you are a doctoral student you need a new advisor to remain in status. This is playing out at my institution right now, a female PhD student had had enough of the sexual advancements of her advisor, who is a favourite of the departmental chair, so she filed a Title IX complaint and needed a new advisor. There was exactly one faculty member who was in a position to take her on, an established figure close to retirement age. US immigration law is fucked up beyond reasonable.
    - BeetleB 3y ago
      What is going on is this: To remain in the US on a student visa, you need to be "in status". The government has rules on what that is, and mostly it is that you continue to register for a full load. I do not think the government has specified additional requirements. However, each university has an international programs office and they are required to specify for each international student whether the person is compliant with the university's guidelines. In your university's case, that office may have decided that "Hey, if you're a PhD student, you can't go too long without an advisor, because that would mean you're not making progress towards a PhD." I've seen them say similar things if it's taking too long to get a degree (e.g. over 6 years for undergrad or 8 years for PhD). Or if the GPA is too low and you're on probation Typically, these rules apply to all students, and not just international ones. It's essentially the university saying "You're about to be kicked out/expelled, so we can't tell the immigration folks that you are progressing towards your degree" Still, I really doubt your university has a rule specifying only 30-60 days to find a new PhD advisor. To give you an idea, in many sciences, it's common that you don't have a thesis advisor until after your first year (you focus in the first year on passing your qualifying exams, and only once you pass it are professors interested in taking you on). If indeed your university is enforcing a 30-60 day rule, it's a really crappy university. TLDR: The law doesn't require it, but each university has its own policies.

obviouslynotme 3y ago

It happens in all fields, at all levels. You cannot trust any papers without reproducing them. The intentional fraud is rampant. There is too much reward for publishing junk as quickly as possible and too little punishment for misbehavior.