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Thread: Interesting article about Scientist that manipulate data. |
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 7
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vlado101
Senior Cruncher Joined: Jul 23, 2013 Post Count: 226 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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Hello all,
----------------------------------------Read an interesting article on guardian about the incentives that Scientists have to manipulate data to increase funding and recognition: "What pushes scientists to lie? The disturbing but familiar story of Haruko Obokata" http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/feb/1...ontroversy-scientists-lie Just to be clear I am not trying to discredit the scientists that are involved with WCG. I guess I was surprised at these connections since I am not that knowledgeable about how scientists get funding or the bad incentives that exist that make scientists more likely to publish data that is not honest. In either case it was an interesting read :)  |
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jonnieb-uk
Ace Cruncher England Joined: Nov 30, 2011 Post Count: 6105 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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'Twas ever thus!
----------------------------------------Money is at the root of all evil. No reason to suspect that scientists would be any different to politicians when money is involved.  |
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mibere
Advanced Cruncher Joined: Jan 31, 2015 Post Count: 57 Status: Offline |
that scientists would be any different to politicians when money is involved. Ack! |
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KWSN-A Shrubbery
Senior Cruncher Joined: Jan 8, 2006 Post Count: 476 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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The main difference is peer review. Scientists love to discredit each other so the chances of something going unknown for very long are pretty slim.
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vlado101
Senior Cruncher Joined: Jul 23, 2013 Post Count: 226 Status: Offline Project Badges:
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Well the interesting part was this portion in the article:
----------------------------------------A few years ago, Glenn Begley put this suspicion to the test. As head of cancer research for pharmaceutical giant Amgen, he attempted to repeat 53 landmark experiments in that field, important work published in some of the world’s top science journals. To his horror, he and his team managed to confirm only six of them. That’s a meagre 11%. Researchers at Bayer set up a similar trial and were similarly depressed by the results. Out of 67 published studies into the therapeutic potential of various drugs (mostly for the treatment of cancer), they were able to reproduce less than a quarter. Some people also commented that there should be some changes in the way a new study is published. Not based on its originality or novelty first, but based on how many times that experiment can be reproduced, but there is a very strong human factor: Imagine it: you have sunk many long hours into your experiment, growing, manipulating and testing cells in various ways, all with a certain hypothesis – a hunch – in mind. You really want to prove that your hunch is right, that the money invested into your work was well spent, and that you aren’t just frittering your life away in a white coat, in a white room, under fluorescent lights. And of course, you want to get ahead in a competitive field, where the pressure to perform can be intense. But you get your results and they are disappointing. You can see straightaway what the data should look like and how, with just a tweak, you can improve them. All you need to do is count something a little creatively, shift a point on a graph or touch up an image. If you get rid of the original data, no one will ever be the wiser. And maybe your hunch is right anyway. Surely it is. You will find more proof – real proof – sooner or later if you just keep looking. All in all a lot of complex variables that can make a scientist look the other way, some for financial reward and others to make a difference, but in the end ending up making up data to prove it. |
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Former Member
Cruncher Joined: May 22, 2018 Post Count: 0 Status: Offline |
Waiting on someone, anyone reproducing the Andrea Rossi cold fusion results
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twilyth
Master Cruncher US Joined: Mar 30, 2007 Post Count: 2130 Status: Offline Project Badges: 
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I don't see how there's any incentive to cheat, deliberately cheat, if acceptance of your results depends on their being susceptible of reproduction. If you come out with something that is truly novel, it has to be reproduced for it to have any value. No one is just going to take your word for it.
----------------------------------------However I have no doubt that researchers are as susceptible to the herd mentality as anyone else. So if you have a well established thesis in a field that almost everyone regards as fact then publishing something contrary to that thesis could mean career suicide. A great book that deals with this is call The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Kuhn. It's an easy read as I recall. I read it as part of class on philosophy. Another problem though is the fact that we have cut back so much on basic research in the US. These days, if something doesn't have an immediately obvious practical application, it's harder to get funding - at least that's my impression. I suppose that's always been true but I think we used to do a better job of funding such research. For example, back in the 90's we were on track to build the largest particle accelerator in the world. IIRC it would have been 3 or 4 times more powerful than the LHC. But then everybody started complaining about Big Science and how the money could be better spent on smaller projects. Except those ended up getting cut as well.   |
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