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Not only effort: millions and millions of public and private dollars wasted on followup research on a false premise, all so that an author could get citations.
by nxobject 2y ago
Not only effort: millions and millions of public and private dollars wasted on followup research on a false premise, all so that an author could get citations. What a cost.
- xnickb 2y agoPlaying devil's advocate: perhaps the authors strongly believed in the method but have failed to produce strong enough evidence. Then the goal was to renew financing in hopes of getting somewhere with the research, not to just get citations. This of course is pure speculation
- akoboldfrying 2y agoI think the point you're making is that there need not have been any malicious intent, and I accept that, but I don't really consider this a devil's advocate position, since strongly believing something will work is still not grounds enough to lie about outcomes.
- gorlilla 2y agoFraud is still fraud no matter what color you paint it.
- bigbacaloa 2y ago[dead]
- nxobject 2y agoI'm sympathetic to that: the pressure to have produced results must have been very, very heavy.
- misnome 2y agoI don't think "Fraud" counts as a devil's advocate position?
- nkrisc 2y agoWhat’s the difference?
- chrisBob 2y agoNot so bad because they were just trying to secure funding that might have gone to research not based on fraud?
- rybosworld 2y agoIt's really not an excuse. This has directly led to decades of wasted time/money/effort searching for a cure of a very prevalent disease. It does lend to an interesting thought experiment, though. Imagine the researchers were right after all. They just needed more time, and so they faked some results. We might have ended up with an underdog/feel-good movie about how the researchers bravely persevered in spite of the drying up of their funding.