3 ms·

In a field as messy as biology, it's easy to make stuff up If 2/3 of the retracted papers are fraudulent, how many of the unretracted papers are?

• HarryHirsch 14y ago
  That's beside the point. The people in any field know their colleagues, and know whose results are suspect. One should ask rather, how much taxpayer's money was spent on science fiction, and why it tends to take several years until the professor in charge is busted. After all, there are usually several grad students in on the joke, it's not that that sort of fraud was perpetrated in secret.
  • Detrus 14y ago
    If we assume the grad students are in on it, it's because they'd want to move their careers forward. They're probably working in well established fields where returns for effort spent are diminishing. See the chart at http://cognitivesocialweb.com/home/2012/8/10/the-singularity-is-not-coming.html http://cognitivesocialweb.com/home/2012/8/10/the-singularity... So a combination of making no progress after years of effort, careerism or trying to stay in their field may motivate fraud. But I wouldn't be so sure about grad students who may handle smaller pieces of the whole project always being in on it. And either way, without fraud in these stupid difficult fields a lot more smartypants would be on Wall St., also committing fraud.
• deleted 14y ago
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