6 ms·

Doubts about Johns Hopkins research have gone unanswered, scientist says

101 points by jalanco 14y ago

taeric 14y ago
I can't help but think some of this relates to this: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.html http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about... The pressures that we put researchers under to deliver nothing but positive results is terrible. There is an overhead to research. There is an overhead to progress. Why do we try to eliminate it with such prejudice, when the consequences seem so obviously dire?
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  I strongly agree. I was struck by the mention that in the 60s 2/3rds of research projects were funded, whereas nowadays only 1/5th are. This is not just due to stinginess; there are more research labs chasing funding and grant applications have become professionalized, if not commercialized. Maybe this is also a function of more people pursuing academic success as a career path, because the rise of IT has resulted in a significant devaluation of labor-intensive work and thus the earning power of people engaged in it.
  - marcelsalathe 14y ago
    1/5? That would be nice... NIH funding levels are at 1/10 nowadays.
    - plg 14y ago
      Paylines at many institutes are even lower, around 8% It's only going to get worse with the sequester
- frozenport 14y ago
  I have a theory that the change is due to the communication revolution. It is significantly easier to submit a proposal, and many proposals are now unsolicited, before you needed an 'in' and now you only need to submit the document through a website.
  - HarryHirsch 14y ago
    NIH proposals are, as always, solicited three times a year, and the paperwork is also the mostly the same as always, except that some extra forms were added a few years back. What has changed is the fact that research is getting more expensive, and that the financing model of state universities changed in the last decade - state funds have declined, and there is a greater pressure on professors to bring in external funding. The NIH budget, on the contrary, has not grown. This is getting off-topic, but universities are in for an interesting time. A greater financial burden is placed on students, who then cannot find jobs thanks to the recession, the scramble for grant funding is increasing, there will be greater emphasis on teaching faculty, which at some point you cannot pay peanuts any longer. Altogether a perfect storm for deans.
olefoo 14y ago
I would trace this to the same root as the reason the largest banks are allowed to walk away from open corruption and money-laundering. We have inculcated into our society a servile deference to power. Nobody of any importance is held accountable for their actions, even if they would be universally recognized as wrong. While it may be shocking that a laboratory director is more concerned with the reputation of his institution than that it does good science in an ethical and responsible; I doubt anyone is terribly surprised. We know this, but to face it requires us to acknowledge our own complicity in the lie that things are alright, that we live in a stable society that is not on the verge of collapse. Our institutions are visibly failing, and we don't know what we would replace them with.
- tome 14y ago
  I don't agree with you, but I'll add evidence in your favour: Jimmy Savile.
  - DanBC 14y ago
    Most of the problem was lack of trust of women making allegations, not undue deference for Savile. Other problems include lack of communication between local police forces, so a number of allegations from women in different areas don't pile up in one report. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21756150 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21756150) It's easy to say that these are because of deference to Savile, but let's not forget that many young women told police that they were being raped and forced to work as prostitutes and those women were also dismissed and ignored, and their attackers were not famous.
- rayiner 14y ago
  Oh yes, because a bunch of academics or paper-pushers at NIH have any power... The reality of why nobody addresses these concerns is: 1) It's bad publicity. Everyone is on board with making these things look good, from the universities that support this research to the federal government that spends billions funding this research. It doesn't serve anybody's interest to blow the lid on something like this. 2) It's boring. It's too esoteric to explain to the average person what actually constitutes scientific misconduct. 3) It's hard to pin down. Scientists aren't self-policing. Academics don't have a culture of ripping into each others' work, and indeed academia has a culture of letting everyone puff up their little egos. A given academic doesn't really rip into other academics so they don't rip into him.
wuest 14y ago
The crux of this sort of issue was laid bare relatively early in this article: results and papers are more important than good science, which leads to an increased incidence of fraud and related misconduct. If good science were actually valued, one scientist wouldn't have been driven to suicide by the fact that his research (assuming it was not fabricated to begin with) was being questioned and the colleague who raised valid questions wouldn't have lost his job. I can't imagine that this is all that uncommon a scenario.
kpierre 14y ago
Curiously, the data is publicly available: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE29662 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE29662
- frozenport 14y ago
  It better be, the NIH paid for it and this kind of research must submit to an NIH approved archiving service.
plg 14y ago
Shoot first and ask questions later. Better to apologize after than to ask permission before. Too big to fail.
drucken 14y ago
"Deceased respondents no longer pose a risk," the letter said. - classic! Yes, science stops when the scientist is dead, says the US government ...
- RougeFemme 14y ago
  Or. . .even if doesn't stop, we now have an excuse to sit back and do nothing until our chain is yanked again.
skosuri 14y ago
This is one side of a story of guy that had just been fired and is filing a lawsuit. What exactly is the criticism of the paper since the paper is available? If the only argument is the threshold to consider something a hit or not on the screen, there is a ton of followup in the paper looking at those genes more closely. Am I missing something?
- demetrius 14y ago
  I don't understand why you've mentioned "on the screen". If the treshold is set too low, we'll end up with false positives. I.e. we'll think the study shows something when in fact it doesn’t. And this is not something that can be fixed in follow-up papers.
  - skosuri 14y ago
    It was a genome wide screen looking for synthetic lethality with another gene. As with all screens you get a bunch of hits and you follow up on the most promising ones, which they did in the paper.

101 points by jalanco 14y ago

I can't help but think some of this relates to this: http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.html http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about... The pressures that we put researchers under to deliver nothing but positive results is terrible. There is an overhead to research. There is an overhead to progress. Why do we try to eliminate it with such prejudice, when the consequences seem so obviously dire?

anigbrowl 14y ago
I strongly agree. I was struck by the mention that in the 60s 2/3rds of research projects were funded, whereas nowadays only 1/5th are. This is not just due to stinginess; there are more research labs chasing funding and grant applications have become professionalized, if not commercialized. Maybe this is also a function of more people pursuing academic success as a career path, because the rise of IT has resulted in a significant devaluation of labor-intensive work and thus the earning power of people engaged in it.
- marcelsalathe 14y ago
  1/5? That would be nice... NIH funding levels are at 1/10 nowadays.
  - plg 14y ago
    Paylines at many institutes are even lower, around 8% It's only going to get worse with the sequester
frozenport 14y ago
I have a theory that the change is due to the communication revolution. It is significantly easier to submit a proposal, and many proposals are now unsolicited, before you needed an 'in' and now you only need to submit the document through a website.
- HarryHirsch 14y ago
  NIH proposals are, as always, solicited three times a year, and the paperwork is also the mostly the same as always, except that some extra forms were added a few years back. What has changed is the fact that research is getting more expensive, and that the financing model of state universities changed in the last decade - state funds have declined, and there is a greater pressure on professors to bring in external funding. The NIH budget, on the contrary, has not grown. This is getting off-topic, but universities are in for an interesting time. A greater financial burden is placed on students, who then cannot find jobs thanks to the recession, the scramble for grant funding is increasing, there will be greater emphasis on teaching faculty, which at some point you cannot pay peanuts any longer. Altogether a perfect storm for deans.

olefoo 14y ago

I would trace this to the same root as the reason the largest banks are allowed to walk away from open corruption and money-laundering. We have inculcated into our society a servile deference to power. Nobody of any importance is held accountable for their actions, even if they would be universally recognized as wrong. While it may be shocking that a laboratory director is more concerned with the reputation of his institution than that it does good science in an ethical and responsible; I doubt anyone is terribly surprised. We know this, but to face it requires us to acknowledge our own complicity in the lie that things are alright, that we live in a stable society that is not on the verge of collapse. Our institutions are visibly failing, and we don't know what we would replace them with.

tome 14y ago
I don't agree with you, but I'll add evidence in your favour: Jimmy Savile.
- DanBC 14y ago
  Most of the problem was lack of trust of women making allegations, not undue deference for Savile. Other problems include lack of communication between local police forces, so a number of allegations from women in different areas don't pile up in one report. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21756150 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21756150) It's easy to say that these are because of deference to Savile, but let's not forget that many young women told police that they were being raped and forced to work as prostitutes and those women were also dismissed and ignored, and their attackers were not famous.
rayiner 14y ago
Oh yes, because a bunch of academics or paper-pushers at NIH have any power... The reality of why nobody addresses these concerns is: 1) It's bad publicity. Everyone is on board with making these things look good, from the universities that support this research to the federal government that spends billions funding this research. It doesn't serve anybody's interest to blow the lid on something like this. 2) It's boring. It's too esoteric to explain to the average person what actually constitutes scientific misconduct. 3) It's hard to pin down. Scientists aren't self-policing. Academics don't have a culture of ripping into each others' work, and indeed academia has a culture of letting everyone puff up their little egos. A given academic doesn't really rip into other academics so they don't rip into him.

wuest 14y ago

The crux of this sort of issue was laid bare relatively early in this article: results and papers are more important than good science, which leads to an increased incidence of fraud and related misconduct. If good science were actually valued, one scientist wouldn't have been driven to suicide by the fact that his research (assuming it was not fabricated to begin with) was being questioned and the colleague who raised valid questions wouldn't have lost his job. I can't imagine that this is all that uncommon a scenario.

kpierre 14y ago

Curiously, the data is publicly available: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE29662 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE29662

frozenport 14y ago
It better be, the NIH paid for it and this kind of research must submit to an NIH approved archiving service.

plg 14y ago

Shoot first and ask questions later. Better to apologize after than to ask permission before. Too big to fail.

drucken 14y ago

"Deceased respondents no longer pose a risk," the letter said. - classic! Yes, science stops when the scientist is dead, says the US government ...

RougeFemme 14y ago
Or. . .even if doesn't stop, we now have an excuse to sit back and do nothing until our chain is yanked again.

skosuri 14y ago

This is one side of a story of guy that had just been fired and is filing a lawsuit. What exactly is the criticism of the paper since the paper is available? If the only argument is the threshold to consider something a hit or not on the screen, there is a ton of followup in the paper looking at those genes more closely. Am I missing something?

demetrius 14y ago
I don't understand why you've mentioned "on the screen". If the treshold is set too low, we'll end up with false positives. I.e. we'll think the study shows something when in fact it doesn’t. And this is not something that can be fixed in follow-up papers.
- skosuri 14y ago
  It was a genome wide screen looking for synthetic lethality with another gene. As with all screens you get a bunch of hits and you follow up on the most promising ones, which they did in the paper.