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Similar - when I was younger, I would never have suspected that a scientist was committing fraud. As I've gotten older, I understand that Charlie Munger's obse
by testfoobar 2y ago
Similar - when I was younger, I would never have suspected that a scientist was committing fraud.
As I've gotten older, I understand that Charlie Munger's observation "“Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome.” is applicable everywhere - including science.
Academic scientists' careers are driven by publishing, citations and impact. Arguably some have figured how to game the system to advance their careers. Science be damned.
- nextos 2y agoLots of people doing research find this depressing to the point of quitting. Many of my peers left research as they couldn't stomach all this nonsense. In experimental fields, the current academic system rewards dishonesty so much that ugly things have become really common. In my relatively short career, I have been asked to manipulate results several times. I refused, but this took an immense toll, especially on two occasions. Some people working with me wanted to support me fighting dishonesty. But guess what, they all had families and careers and were ultimately not willing to do anything as this could jeopardize their position. I've also witnessed first-hand how people that manage to publish well adopt monopolistic strategies, sabotaging interesting grant proposals from other groups or stalling their article submissions while they copy them. This is a problem that seldomly gets discussed. The current review system favors mono-cultures and winner-takes-it-all scenarios. For these reasons, I think industrial labs will be doing much better. Incentives there are not that perverse.
- mmooss 2y agoSo do you believe the author of the OP could honestly omit from their article the things you (and many others here) talk about? Could they be naive?
- nextos 2y agoNah, I think the article has good intentions. And rampant fraud is important to address. But as others said, addressing smaller shenanigans is also crucial to steer things in the right direction.
- svara 2y ago> I've also witnessed first-hand how people that manage to publish well adopt monopolistic strategies, sabotaging interesting grant proposals from other groups or stalling their article submissions while they copy them. This is a problem that seldomly gets discussed. Agree. Everyone has heard about the extreme fraud cases, but the casual toxicity that the pressure cooker environment elicits is rarely discussed and probably a far larger problem. I say that as someone who has spent too much time in this environment and never witnessed outright fraud - that I know of.
- consf 2y ago[dead]
- infamouscow 2y agoThe Manhattan project was a government project that was run like a startup. If such a project happened today, academic scientists would be trying to figure out ways to bend their existing research to match the grants. Then it would take another 30 years before people started to ask why nothing has been delivered yet.
- ricksunny 2y agoSounds like Eric Weinstein'a take (which I appreciate) on theoretical physics research.
- infamouscow 2y agoI also like Eric Weinstein, but the non-physics aspects of his perspective are essentially the philosophy of Curtis Yarvin distilled and presented in a way that's more digestible to classic liberals.
- schmidtleonard 2y agoNuclear physics had just "cracked open" and there were lots of highly promising prospects to pursue. You can't recreate that historical situation by switching from agile to scrum, or from scrum to agile.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- griffzhowl 2y agoRun like a startup in what respect? It was a massive government-directed military project in wartime that was able to recruit all the top theoretical physicists at the time around a common aim in an urgent technological arms race to build the bomb. It included a vast effort of army engineers to build the facilities to process the fuel and so on. I'm not seeing the parallels with startups.
- soganess 2y ago
- sitkack 2y agoIf humanity is to mature, we should be an open book when it comes to incentives and build a world purposefully with all incentives aligned to the outcomes we collectively agree upon. https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/ https://fs.blog/great-talks/psychology-human-misjudgment/ Charlie Munger's Misjudgment #1: Incentive-caused Bias https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-2yIO8cnvw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-2yIO8cnvw https://fs.blog/bias-incentives-reinforcement/ https://fs.blog/bias-incentives-reinforcement/
- dennis_jeeves2 2y ago>outcomes we collectively agree upon. lol, what are the chances? The average Joe is interested in Dem vs Rep or what the latest show on Netflix. The average researcher is worried about his livelihood, tenure etc.
- mensetmanusman 2y agoAverage Joe does not care about politics…
- bboygravity 2y agoIf one only cares about democrats vs dems (or left vs "far right" in Europe) one also doesn't REALLY care about politics. Caring = caring to understand how the system works and how the incentives work for participants in it. If I'm super generous I would guess maybe 0,1 percent of the population cares by that definition.
- jfengel 2y agoI think you're a little too harsh in that judgement. I'd say it's at least 1%. Possibly even 5%. It still means that they are massively, massively outweighed by loud tribalism.
- tim333 2y agoThere's a problem that if you care, as an average person, it's hard to do much with it. Every few years you can vote left or right, which unless you happen to live in a marginal constituency or swing state, has no effect.
- antisthenes 2y ago> Similar - when I was younger, I would never have suspected that a scientist was committing fraud. Unfortunately many less bright people seem to interpret this as "never trust science", when in reality science is still the best way to push humanity forward and alleviate human suffering, _despite_ all the fraud and misaligned incentives that may influence it.
- momoschili 2y agoAgree. The fact that we are seeing this kind of discourse within the scientific community is in my opinion a great argument for the scientific method.
- throwawaymaths 2y agoHow's this for scientific method. The response to "not trust science" is the inductive step of a model that is validated by the fucking evidence.
- momoschili 2y agonot sure what you're getting at
- mike_hearn 2y agoWhy? Some guy writing an op-ed saying how frustrating it is that science is full of fraud is a great argument for the scientific method? There have been people writing articles like this for over 20 years if not much longer about all kinds of fields. Nothing ever happens, nothing ever improves, it never goes beyond people saying "tut tut how terrible". This sort of thing is entirely predictable and will keep happening, over and over again. On the current course, there will be articles just like this one being discussed in another twenty years from now.
- momoschili 2y agoI don't think Derek Lowe is frustrated that "science is full of fraud", this is likely editorialization on your part. It seems that it stems specifically from Masliah, who is common across all papers in the dossier. Granted, Masliah appears to be prolific, so this is admittedly a large issue in the peer review and verification structure in this field. To put this into context though: Let's begin by supposing that fraud exists in all ventures where people stand to gain, which I don't think is controversial at all, especially not in this comment section. In light of this assumption the fact that this all came out in the first place is proof that being a luminary does not make you immune from investigation. That this happens 'over and over again' simply means that eventually we catching this fraud. The fact that the scientific community is constantly trying to reproduce and verify is why these become public in the first place. So on the contrary, it's not that nothing ever happens or nothing ever improves. There will be articles like this one in twenty years because there will still be fraudsters in twenty years, and there will still be scientists working to verify their work.
- huijzer 2y ago> Academic scientists' careers are driven by publishing, citations and impact. Arguably some have figured how to game the system to advance their careers. Science be damned. I’ve talked to multiple professors about this and I think it’s not because they don’t care about science. They just care more about their career. And I don’t blame them. It’s a slippery slope and once you notice other people who start beating you, then it’s very hard to stay on the righteous pad[note]. Heck I even myself in the PhD have written things I don’t agree with. But at some point you have to pick your battles. You cannot fight every point. In the end I also don’t think they care that much about science. Political parties often push certain ideas more or less depending on their beliefs. And scientist know this since they will often write their own ideas such that it sounds like it solves a problem for the government. If you think about it, it’s kind of a miracle that sometimes something good is produced from all this mess. There is some beauty to that. [note] I’m not talking about blatant fraud here but about the smaller things like accepting comments from a reviewer which you know are incorrect, or using a methodology that is the status quo but you know is highly problematic.
- sally_glance 2y agoCitizen science may be a direct response to these circumstances. When you think about it, it's basically just people who love science but _don't_ depend on it for income.
- jonas21 2y ago> They just care more about their career. It's not even that. In most fields, you need lab space and equipment and grad students to get stuff done. And to pay for that, you need funding. And to get funding, you need to publish and apply for grants. You have to pay attention to the "career" side of things -- otherwise, you won't get to do the science at all.
- BostonFern 2y agoThat’s exactly the rationale the corrupt senator uses to justify his actions in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.
- _heimdall 2y agoThe fact that it can still be considered science when intentional fraud is involved is a huge problem itself.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- lazide 2y agoThe scientific method itself is a respond to fraud and deception (intentional, delusional, accidental).
- consf 2y agoScience, at its core, is supposed to be a method of systematically seeking truth through rigorous experimentation, observation, and reasoning. When intentional dishonesty enters the equation, it undermines the entire purpose of the scientific endeavor
- klenwell 2y agoI think my favorite Simpsons gag is the episode where Lisa enlists a scientist (voiced by Stephen Jay Gould) to run tests to debunk some angel bones that were found at a construction site. In the middle of the episode, the scientist bicycles up to report, dramatically, that the tests "were inconclusive". In the end, it's revealed that the bones were a fraud concocted by some mall developers to promote their new mall. After this is revealed, Lisa asks the scientist about the tests. He shrugs: "I'm not going to lie to you, Lisa. I never ran the tests." It's funny on a few levels but what I find most amusing is that his incentive is left a mystery.
- fluoridation 2y agoWell, the incentive is that he didn't want to run the tests out of laziness (i.e. he lacked an incentive to run them). He ran to Lisa to give his anticlimactic report not to be deceptive, but rather he just happened to be cycling through that part of town and just needed to use the bathroom really badly.
- tedk-42 2y agoThe writers of these episodes were really on another level considering it was a cartoon. Lisa's first word is still a personal favourite of mine, especially now as a father.
- kenjackson 2y agoWhat's her first word?
- g4zj 2y agoApparently it was "Bart". I had to look it up because I was curious as well.
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 2y agoI guess GP is referring to the episode, rather than the actual word . . .
- SkyMarshal 2y ago> Academic scientists' careers are driven by publishing, citations and impact. Publishing and citations can and are gamed, but is impact also gamed on a wide scale? That one seems harder to fake. Either a result is true and useful, or it's not.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago[flagged]
- DigitalPaladin 2y agoOh, yes. Repackaging and reframing of data - as mentioned in the OP article too - is a common practice for farming impact and article numbers too. Why do novel research when you can just partner up with your friends, bring your data and combine with theirs for the umpteenth paper on the same thing, then wade into spamming down the submissions in every academic journal with impact in your field! If it published once in this journal, surely the 3rd recombination will too (and more often than not... it does.)
- mike_hearn 2y agoActual real world impact? Hard to game. But, nobody measures that. Everything that's tracked is a circularly defined success metric (you're successful if other academics consider you successful).
- matthewdgreen 2y agoThe article mentions that there are two drugs that resulted from this research. One of them failed a trial recently. Nobody knows if this fraud means that the drug never could have worked, or if this was just bad luck. So yes: people do measure real-world impact. It's just that it takes a very long time and there are plenty of confounding factors, since even non-fraudulent drug research can fail.
- mike_hearn 2y agoThat's true for the rare case that something turns into a professionally run and controlled trial (incidentally there's evidence for many published clinical trials also being fake). But very little research output is ever tested that way. Most doesn't even claim it could have real world impact in principle.
- almostgotcaught 2y ago> Arguably some have figured how to game the system to advance their careers lol arguably? i would bet my generous, non-academia, industry salary for the next 10 years, that there's not a single academic with a citation count over say ... 50k (ostensibly the most successful academic) that isn't gaming the system. - signed someone who got their phd at "prestigous" uni under a guy with >100k citations
- jonhohle 2y agoUsername checks out.
- Upvoter33 2y agoThere clearly are single examples here and you would lose this bet.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jltsiren 2y agoCitation counts are not very useful. They vary too much between fields and topics. I've seen people finish PhDs with ~20k citations, because they got involved in highly visible projects. And even if they stopped publishing new papers, they would have reached 50k citations in another 5-10 years purely on inertia.
- bbconn 2y agoTerence Tao has well over 50K citations. Maybe one can argue that he’s gaming the system because he alone can decide what problems are deemed to be interesting by the broader community, but he can’t help that.
- BlueTemplar 2y agoIn this case, it might matter that mathematics aren't strictly speaking, a science.
- 2y ago
- neycoda 2y agoThat attitude coincides with current delusion in our society that science is perpetuating a fraud at the level of religions whose leaders are trying to control their flock for financial and sexual gain. A broken system that incentivizes fraud over knowledge is a real problem. An assertion that scientists chase the money by nature is a dangerous one that will set us back to the stone age when instead we should be traversing the space as a whole.
- Dalewyn 2y ago>Charlie Munger's observation The more I've read about finances the more I've realized it can also be applied to many other things in the world due to its sheer objectivity. On the other hand, I've also noticed most if not all of it is based on contexts and data from the mid 20th century. Interesting how that turns out.
- tester756 2y agoI'd say in general - concepts from one domain sometimes can be applied/novel in other domain
- lazyeye 2y agoHow much do these same incentives apply to climate science, where huge amounts of money are now in play?
- cto_of_antifa 2y ago[dead]
- consf 2y ago[dead]