Why Research Fraud Is Getting Worse

[Anonymous No.15887278]

Once a rarity, research fraud is on the rise at some of the nation’s most prestigious universities. What is most disturbing is that the fraud in question too often involves tenured professors with sterling reputations who betray the public’s trust.

https://www.jamesgmartin.center/2023/11/why-research-fraud-is-getting-worse/

Most recently, the venue was Florida State University, where Professor Eric Stewart was terminated for “research misconduct” and for the unprecedented number of his articles that were retracted.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/fired-scholars-disputed-race-research-totals-more-than-3000-citations/

Next in line was the City University of New York, which found “egregious misconduct” in data management and recordkeeping on the part of Hoau-Yan Wang, a professor in its School of Medicine who was working on an Alzheimer’s drug.
https://www.wsj.com/health/healthcare/alzheimers-researcher-found-to-have-committed-misconduct-49d6428d

Earlier this decade, Harvard Business School accused Francesca Gino, a prominent professor, of data fraud in four behavioral-science papers. (Ironically, Gino’s research concerned why people lie.) Acting on a tip from the social-science research blog Data Colada, Harvard placed Gino on unpaid leave and is seeking to revoke her tenure.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/30/business/the-harvard-professor-and-the-bloggers.html

After Harvard came Stanford, where the president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, resigned after a series of investigations revealed that he had failed to live up to standards “of scientific rigor and process” and had not corrected the record on numerous occasions. The founders of Retraction Watch estimate that “at least 100,000 retractions should occur every year.” When retractions are underperformed or underreported, public confidence in research is severely undermined.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/09/scientific-misconduct-retraction-watch

[Anonymous No.15887280]

In the past, universities were reluctant to hold their faculty accountable for misconduct because research brought in millions of taxpayer dollars. Schools still want the money, of course, but the fear of exposure on the Internet or consequences in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings has left them with little choice but to intervene. That explains what happened at Harvard, Stanford, and CUNY most recently. It also applies to the other elite universities, including Duke and Cornell, that have hosted misconduct over the past few years.

The best illustration of how the system works was seen in early October, when University of Pennsylvania researcher Katalin Karikó was awarded the Nobel Prize for medicine despite a strained relationship with her employer. According to the Wall Street Journal, Karikó’s prize offered a glimpse into “the clubby, hothouse world of academia and science, where winning financial funding is a constant burden, securing publication is a frustrating challenge, and those with unconventional or ambitious approaches can struggle to gain support and acceptance.” It’s a flawed system—and one that occasionally presents researchers with incentives to fudge the numbers—but it is highly resistant to change.

Yet too much is on the line to accept the status quo. In the final analysis, the academic culture that the Wall Street Journal highlighted is to blame. It demands research that is original, but that standard is often determined by the journal in which the research appears. Technical journals command greater respect than interdisciplinary ones. Books, ironically, don’t pay off because they take too long to write. And even if “successful” research breaks through, how much of it actually contributes to what former assistant secretary of education Chester Finn once called the “enlargement of human knowledge”?

[Anonymous No.15887281]

As one wag put it, the key to getting published in an academic journal involves five steps: Don’t pick an important problem, don’t challenge existing beliefs, don’t obtain surprising results, don’t use simple methods, and don’t write clearly. A serious look at the scientific literature reveals that much of it is scientifically meaningless.

But as long as researchers are heralded primarily on the basis of how often they publish rather than on the quality of their publications, little will change. (Even more advanced citational metrics have problems.) In 1988, Charles Sykes made it clear in Profscam that “volume rather than insight is what counts [in academia], and conformity rather than originality is what is rewarded.” In short, careerism prevails, while the actual advancement of human knowledge flounders.

Since this is the case, the source of research funding is crucial. When research involves federal money, the Office of Research Integrity needs to be given greater power to investigate misconduct. Former President Dwight Eisenhower, in his 1961 farewell address, was right in his warning about government grants, but even he didn’t go far enough. Campbell’s Law has since warned that “the more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”

The truth is that research is at a crossroads in this country. The present model has clearly paid off in the number of awards bestowed on researchers here. Since 1901, Americans have been the recipients of far more Nobel Prizes in medicine, chemistry, and physics than researchers in any other nation. But it has come at a price in the form of incentives to commit fraud.

[Anonymous No.15887282]

The question is how much scandal we are willing to tolerate. As Edward Archer explained to the Martin Center’s readers three years ago, “The relentless pursuit of taxpayer funding has eliminated curiosity, basic competence, and scientific integrity in many fields.” As a result, “scientifically meaningless research … endangers the public, confounds public policy, and diminishes our nation’s preparedness to meet future challenges.”

Nevertheless, the allure of federal funding is powerful, even in a world in which schools occasionally profit from research patents. As the New York Times has reported, “Universities make money from patents primarily by licensing them to outside companies, which turn them into commercial products.” In a standard licensing deal, royalties are split between “researchers, their academic department and the university’s general fund.” Although a 1980 law “gave universities ownership of patents arising from federally funded research,” the vast majority of licensing deals yield little or no money. This is why outside research grants are so important. Most universities simply can’t afford to fund scientific research without federal money.

With hundreds of millions of dollars on the table, universities will continue to openly denounce fraud, but they will covertly fight anything that threatens to reduce the federal dollars flowing into their coffers. Shrinking student populations, declining government support, and growing resistance to tuition increases on the part of the public make universities reluctant to be part of the research-fraud solution. It’s not a hopeful picture.

[Anonymous No.15887357]

>>15887278
>Once a rarity
lol

[Anonymous No.15887362]

>>15887357
Einstein was the worst, his entire theory is a fraud and now modern science is based on that fraud

[Anonymous No.15887597]

>>15887362
And you can't contradict the Einstein dogma because if you do you'll get accused of anti-semitism and your career will end, so we're stuck with his worthless failed theories forever, making scientific progress virtually impossible

[Anonymous No.15887621]

They would be held accountable in a more homogenous, socialist, idealistically driven society. Shame how things turn out.

[Anonymous No.15888925]

>Florida State
>prestigious

[Anonymous No.15888937]

>>15887278
Why would it get better instead of worse? Science sold itself to the political class and will continue to turn to absolute shit as a result. There is no better coming. Nothing is going to turn around. There will be no great awakening or purge. Science simply will become another ideological institution based on wishful thinking of the political class.

[Anonymous No.15888940]

>>15887621
It hasn't been possible to have a society like that since 1975. Materialist socialism and materialist capitalism won the ideological war.

[Anonymous No.15889701]

>>15888940
>the "socialism vs capitalism" meme
its always been a lie

[Anonymous No.15890754]

>>15887278
Good article, thanks for posting it

[Anonymous No.15891474]

>>15887281
>the key to getting published in an academic journal involves five steps: Don’t pick an important problem, don’t challenge existing beliefs, don’t obtain surprising results, don’t use simple methods, and don’t write clearly.
Its funny because its true, at least the conventional vanity press occasionally produces something worth reading.

[Anonymous No.15891507]

>>15887278
peer review is trash

[Anonymous No.15893053]

>>15891507
Peer review is strangling scientific progress

[Anonymous No.15893499]

>>15887597
its a shame because you know we're missing out on something good and very interesting as a result of being stuck with the "einstein the perfect super genius" paradigm.

[Anonymous No.15894455]

>>15893499
progress in physics is anti-semitic

[Anonymous No.15894481]

>>15893053
Explain. For hard sciences where experiments can be abdurdly expensive its quite nice to have some slave-scientist in China reproduce results

[Anonymous No.15894485]

if you "research" using online surveys, you are not a scientist.

[Anonymous No.15894496]

the Francesca Gino shit is hilarious. she refuses to admit any wrongdoing whatsoever. if you didn't know her sex, you'd know it just by the way she's responded.

[Anonymous No.15895170]

>>15894481
>abdurdly expensive
good to see that at least some of the posters on this board are brainy enough to not cripple themselves using autocorrect
and you're right about the abdurity of pouring such massive amounts of wealth into experiments which have no possibility of producing worthwhile or useful results. if billions are to be thrown away on science it should be done chasing some worthwhile ultimate goal greater than just publishing articles nobody will ever read in the academic vanity press

[Anonymous No.15895604]

>>15894496

[Anonymous No.15896119]

>>15894496
>Italian
No surprise. Irish, Italians and Jews ruined america long before brown people did

[Anonymous No.15896147]

>Once a rarity

[Anonymous No.15896904]

>>15896119

[Anonymous No.15896937]

>>15888940
what happened in 1975?

[Anonymous No.15897582]

[Anonymous No.15898683]

>>15887278
Those are just the tiny vanishingly small minority of cases of fraud which get discovered and publicized, for every one of those there are thousands more which go unnoticed. Nobody ever reads academic journals so you can publish whatever lies you want in there.

[Anonymous No.15899196]

>>15896904
Its worth noting that the one time an Italian made a movie about organized crime in America, the criminals depicted were all jewish. Jews make tons of movies and TV shows about Italian organized crime in order to try and make everyone think that its Italians doing all the crime when in reality organized crime is a 100% jewish operation.
All the casinos in Vegas are owned by jews, jews run all the big porno websites,

[Anonymous No.15899427]

>>15887280
Ted was right wasn’t he?

[Anonymous No.15899447]

>>15887362
Sorry what’s the fraud?

[Anonymous No.15899460]

>>15887278
Scientists became less christian over time and this stopped having an incentive structure to value humility or pursuing an objective abstract truth since without the pressure of faith to make you value the untested and basically irrational Christian assumptions about the nature of reality and what should be valued you default to something else. either a pre-existing social or cultural value or even further default to the biological norm. Since most people in the west don’t have the former anymore they end up with the ladder. With people people becoming materialistic or giving themselves up to fanatical mod driven ideologies to try and find fulfillment and psychological assurance. they stop believing in an objective truth, and the truth to them becomes only what will give them more power. That’s partly why there have been few major scientific breakthroughs or revolutions in the past several decades. People just care about gaining more from the current status quo.

[Anonymous No.15900925]

>>15899460
The assumption that God is perfect, but (((you))) are imperfect is what allows Christian scientists to honestly interpret data and other experimental results. Nobody else can do this other than Christians, which is why there have never been any good non-Christian scientists

[Anonymous No.15901584]

>>15887278
The lying in every aspect of society is getting worse because america is satan's country and the only way to keep child fuckers with low IQs in power is to gaslight your entire population 24/7 for decades until they're dysgenically bred into NPC flesh robots.

[Anonymous No.15901900]

>>15901584
That seems about right

[Anonymous No.15903352]

>>15901584

[Anonymous No.15904087]

>>15901584
>>15903352

[Anonymous No.15904145]

>>15887278
It sounds like fraudsters are being caught and fraud is being detected, as it should be and is expected, so the system is working, for now.
The reasons as to why fraud seems to be increasing might be because it either is increasing, or the same level of fraud is being detected better and therefore more frequently, or a combination of both.
Nonethless, it needs to be adressed, no doubt.

It seem slike money and susrvival mentality, competitive mentality shoumd be elimjnated from science, but thatsbasically hoping to eliminate human nature from the scientific process, which is a very difficult goal to achieve.

[Anonymous No.15904345]

>>15904145
>so the system is working, for now.
>Medical establishment won't stop misdiagnosing and killing patients
>People notice
>THE SYSTEM WORKS
That's not how shit works, brah.

[Anonymous No.15905344]

[Anonymous No.15905968]

>>15904145
retractionwatch estimates that only about 1 in 10000 frauds is detected, thats why people have started talking about using AI to detect fraud

[Anonymous No.15906998]

>>15901584
suspicious deletion
>>/sci/thread/15887278

[Anonymous No.15907827]

>>15905968
that low detection rate is because there isn't any sort of fraud police, scientists are just expected to be honest, which is a tradition that goes back to the day when they were also expected to be Christians, now that science is full of non-Christians it is also full of liars, because all non-Christians are dishonest people.

[Anonymous No.15908737]

>CUNY
lol

[Anonymous No.15910436]

>>15908737
ironically its a shitty school

[Anonymous No.15911155]

>>15887278
Fraud and dishonesty are common features of all non-Christian societies

[Anonymous No.15912494]

>>15887278
>“egregious misconduct” in data management and recordkeeping on the part of Hoau-Yan Wang, a professor in its School of Medicine who was working on an Alzheimer’s drug.
This one lead to billions of dollars of wasted effort by other researchers who went barking up the wrong tree as a result of "trusting the science" when the science turned out to be, as usual, completely fabricated

[Anonymous No.15912770]

>>15887278
Punishment for fraud needs to be higher. None of this revoking titles/tenure/grant bullshit, actual punishment like hard labor and execution. Won't solve the problem but will fuel my punishment boner.

[Anonymous No.15913285]

>>15912770
>None of this revoking titles/tenure/grant bullshit
they don't even do that, theres no punishment or consequences for publishing fraudulent science articles, which is why all science and scientists should just be ignored, they're not better or different than any other journalists

[Anonymous No.15913485]

>>15912494
Earlier than this I believe was that researcher out in Minnesota iirc, who was falsifying images of amyloid proteins to make up a mechanism for Alzheimer's. Seems like a lot of research related to this particular disease is bullshit.

[Anonymous No.15913508]

It's nothing new.
It's all falling apart and will be completely destroyed in the near future.
This has happened before.

[Anonymous No.15913513]

Science is dead and we have killed it

[Barkun No.15913518]

>>15913513
Yes. It is that. They're waiting til this is done so your punishment is how it should be. You'll do 2000 years, worth. You won't be the same after. So I'll ignore your words directly in my mind space and here for two reasons. 1. You're truthfully shit, a pussy and all your life is a hoax set up for you including the scenes with the weakened me in a young phase. 2. You'll regret these acts in a sec and come out a deformed old woman complaining 'they can't do that to peopllleee "sulk*.

[Barkun No.15913521]

>>15913518
You'll know my part clearly at the end

Remember I did this to you

[Barkun No.15913528]

>>15913521
Is that clear to you now, is it? Wait a sec then.

[Anonymous No.15914422]

>>15913285
Referring the them as "journalists", which is really all that they are, should be done more often

[Anonymous No.15916004]

>>15914422
if your entire job is publishing articles for journals then you are a journalist, not a scientist

[Anonymous No.15917643]

>>15916004
>if your entire job is publishing articles for journals then you are a journalist, not a scientist
Pretty much
inb4 "just a semantic argument"

[Anonymous No.15917695]

>>15905968
That number is as baseless as a feminist claiming 3-in-4 female students will be sexually assaulted in college

[Anonymous No.15918583]

>>15917695
your accusation relies on your total lack on knowledge on the topic

[Anonymous No.15919991]

>>15890754
this

[Anonymous No.15921503]

>>15887278
>Once a
maybe 150 years ago it was a rarity, its been common for a long time

[Anonymous No.15921601]

>>15887278
Institute the triple death penalty for writers of any academic paper that cannot be replicated or uses false citations or falsifies anything. You're welcome, I have solved the replication crisis.