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/sci/ - Science & Math

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File: 2.26 MB, 1x1, Schmidt-Cairns-Investigation-report_redacted-1.pdf [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15324468 No.15324468 [Reply] [Original]

Astrofaggot busted in whole cloth data fabrication
https://retractionwatch.com/2023/03/26/exclusive-australia-space-scientist-made-up-data-probe-finds/

A space scientist formerly based at the University of Sydney made up data in an unpublished manuscript, an investigation by the institution has found.

The researcher, Joachim Schmidt, “utilised Adobe Photoshop to make up results,” according to a letter dated Feb. 15, 2023, from Emma Johnston, deputy vice-chancellor of research at the University of Sydney, to scientists at the University of Michigan who reported complaints in late 2019 about work by Schmidt and his former professor Iver Cairns to the Australian institution.

“Given the above, the Panel found there had been breaches of the Research Code on the part of Dr Schmidt. The breaches were viewed as serious, and the Panel considered them to be sufficiently serious to warrant a finding of research misconduct as defined in the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research,” the letter, obtained by Retraction Watch, stated.

The fabricated image appears in a manuscript about the effects of weather in space Schmidt wrote with Cairns. The paper has yet to be published.

Sydney has also launched a probe into all the images published in papers Schmidt co-authored in the last five years, according to the letter.

In November 2020, Sydney was named the Academic Institution of the Year at the Australian Space Awards, and Cairns was one of the scientists who accepted the award. According to his LinkedIn page, Schmidt was a lecturer at Sydney’s School of Physics from November 2010 to March 2021.

Schmidt could not be reached for comment. A spokesperson for Sydney told Retraction Watch that Schmidt had not been dismissed from the university; instead, he left the institution after his fixed-term contract expired.

>> No.15324470
File: 399 KB, 512x512, astronomy and anime.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15324470

Gábor Toth, one of the scientists at the University of Michigan whose model Schmidt used, noticed the fishy image in the manuscript when Cairns emailed it to him and asked if he wanted to be a co-author.

According to a redacted version of a Jan. 2023 report on the case obtained by Retraction Watch, the investigation panel determined that Schmidt used Photoshop “to alter or create” a figure in the 2019 manuscript that was purported to be the output of Toth’s model. Neither Schmidt nor digital forensics experts could reproduce the image with the model.

The panel concluded that Schmidt alone produced the Photoshopped figure.

“At interview, Professor Cairns explained that he has no experience with Photoshop, confirmed that he did not make any amendments, and could not recall asking Dr Schmidt to make any adjustments using Photoshop,” the report stated. It noted that the creation or alteration of the figure “amounted to fabrication and falsification on the part of Dr Schmidt.”

“The cheating is so obvious that it can be understood by anyone, no scientific knowledge is needed,” Toth told Retraction Watch.

Richard de Grijs, a physicist at MacQuarie University in Australia, and Rob Wittenmyer, an astrophysicist at the University of South Queensland, who carried out the investigation, wrote in the report that if one were to accept Schmidt’s claim that he used Photoshop to make the internal structures of the image brighter and more visible, there would need to be an explanatory note in the paper.

“This should have been done at the draft stage so that Professor Cairns and other prospective authors were made aware of the adjustments for the purposes of their consideration of the draft paper,” they wrote.

>> No.15324475
File: 106 KB, 1024x893, 1600055773482.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15324475

The report exonerated Cairns of any wrongdoing, noting that he had no involvement in producing the figure in question and wasn’t aware that Schmidt had fabricated and falsified the image.

But Toth isn’t satisfied. He said Cairns deserves some blame and that clearing him of wrongdoing is “completely irresponsible”.

Cairns declined to comment, citing confidentiality agreements. Wittenmyer and de Grijs also declined to comment on their report, citing confidentiality.

Toth has claimed nobody in the community believes the results described in Schmidt and Cairns’ other papers.

In a rebuttal he published on another of Schmidt and Cairns’ preprints last month, Toth wrote the results were so outlandish they had “only one reasonable explanation”: that they “were most likely not obtained by reproducible numerical simulations.” Previous papers by the duo using the same technique are “similarly questionable,” Toth wrote.

“It also seems likely that several published papers with questionable content have slipped through the peer review process,” Toth continued. “Readers and reviewers who only rely on the manuscript and published papers may or may not be able to distinguish genuine science from the type of content presented by [Schmidt and Cairns].”

>> No.15327027

More evidence that soientists are all morons & liars.

>> No.15327601

>>15324475
>The report exonerated Cairns
Boss got his name on the publication, but then disavowed all responsibility when the publication was publicly outed as fraud, threw his underling under the bus to save himself. Bet if anyone looked closer they would see this pattern of behavior by Cairns repeating itself over and over again.

>> No.15328501

>>15327027
also more evidence that soience is fake & gay asf

>> No.15328523

>>15327027
Scumbags do make such bizarre errors, I suppose he assumed he would be happy for the extra authored paper, and go along with it.

>> No.15329109

>>15324468
>made up data in an unpublished manuscript
so does any /lit/ writer. what's the issue? let the man write

>> No.15330218 [DELETED] 

Retractionwatch is a tiny organization with very few employees. Furthermore, it takes more effort to root out fraud than it does to create it.
So if Retractionwatch is publishing these incidents regularly than that means there is a massive massive amount of fraud which is going unnoticed.

>> No.15330226

>>15330218
There are entire schools of the hard sciences which produce no results and perform no experiments. Most people don't even realize this.

>> No.15330701 [DELETED] 

>>15324468
ok i really dont want to try and derail this thread but ive been on 4chan for like 10 years now and i had no idea you could upload pdfs what the fuck

>> No.15330713

>>15330701
It's relatively recent.

>> No.15331522

>>15330701
it should be banned, trannys have been abusing the feature to post kiddie porn which doesn't appear in the thumbnail.

>> No.15332656 [DELETED] 
File: 27 KB, 750x755, james webb sausage telescope.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
15332656

par for the course in astronomy, its all fakery hiding being
>you can't see it because you don't have a $20billion telescope, so you'll just have to trust us
and the vapid soigoys swallow the story errrry single time

>> No.15332895

>>15324468
>Source?
>I made it up
Based

>> No.15332908

>>15324470
Wow this is awesome gaslighting vector. Imagine filling the internet with these images that aren't provably antisemitic.

>> No.15333078

>>15324468
>unpublished manuscript
Absolute nothingburger. Unless they can prove intent to deceive, the razor sides with it being a placeholder.

>> No.15334912

>>15332895
lmao

>> No.15335992

>>15327601
unfortunately retractionwatch has a tiny staff, which is a shame. imagine how much better science would be if the people contributing to the replication crisis had a large body of people to police them

>> No.15336849

Trust the soience!!
Trust the soientists!!

>> No.15338083

The really sad thing about this is we live in a world where scientists presume then can just photoshop data and get away with it and it won't make any difference. We'd all be so much better off if the scientists took their jobs as seriously as the way they're portrayed to in movies and TV shows.

>> No.15338599

>>15338083
>photoshop data and get away with it and it won't make any difference.
it doesn't make any difference, kinda shows you how important scientists really are.

>> No.15338675

It's frustrating because when peer review is done right it leads to better science - I had one of my papers rejected last year, and rightly so because it had some issues with my experiment I'd overlooked (things which were admittedly easy to miss, but which called my results into question). I went back to the experiment, fixed and refined the issues, got the same results, and my paper got approved - the same conclusions, but now a much stronger foundation supporting them.

Too many papers get rejected or approved solely on the basis of bias. Good work shouldn't be rejected because someone disapproves of the conclusions and bad work shouldn't be given a pass just because someone 'trusts the brand' (researcher).

We should all strive to produce quality work that can pass the muster of our colleagues' skepticism, but that skepticism should always be fair, reasonable, and grounded in established results.

>> No.15338697
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15338697

>>15338675
it would be nice if we lived in a perfect world and everyone was honest, but that is not the case and things only seem to be getting worse.
i think a lot of the problem is people get into science for all the wrong reasons, if it wasn't shilled as a prestigious, noble pursuit then fewer people would pursue it as a status symbol. science would be better off if the job held the same status as toilet cleaner

>> No.15338845

>>15338697
>science
>status symbol
Amazing bait.

>> No.15339114

>>15338697
It is not so much about status as it is about getting tenure Academia these days favour brutality, sharp elbows, politics, and massive fraud.
And it is now so dysfunctional that academic institutions will now defend fraudsters since the fraudsters have a high publication count and also bring in lots of grant money.

>> No.15339698

>>15339114
thats been going since the 1990s at least.

>> No.15339996

>>15324468
>(((Schmidt)))

>> No.15340000

>>15339698
and what?

>> No.15340252

>>15339698
I know. The first stories of large scale fraud that I heard, was about Chinese postdocs who were willing to do anything to avoid being sent home after the massacre in 1989. PIs without moral scruples then split postdoc fellowships into two and hired two Chinese postdocs for the cost of one fellowship, thus doubling the publication rate. It was a moral collapse, one part desperation and one part slave driving blackmail mindset.
I think that is when things really ook a nose dive, and we never recovered.

>> No.15340555

shades of the jwst sausage episode

>> No.15341352

>>15340555
Yeah, but that was supposed to have been a joke.
OP wasn't retracted with "just kidding guys'

>> No.15341408

>>15341352
A paper actually has to be published to be retracted.

>> No.15343780

>>15341408
no i doesn't, it can be retracted during earlier phases before publication

>> No.15345618

>>15339698
"science" has been claiming the world is going to end from global warming in 12 years since 1988.