[HN Gopher] Internal review finds falsified data in Stanford Pre...
___________________________________________________________________
Internal review finds falsified data in Stanford President's
Alzheimer research
Author : haltingproblem
Score : 218 points
Date : 2023-02-18 15:48 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stanforddaily.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stanforddaily.com)
| zaroth wrote:
| > _Genentech, in a written statement to The Daily, confirmed that
| an internal review took place in 2011, a fact that was not
| previously public. The company characterized the review as
| "routine." When asked whether this was accurate, the scientist
| whom The Daily confirmed belonged to the research review
| committee said, "no no no no no no."_
|
| So wild reading that. Would be very funny if it wasn't so deadly
| serious.
| [deleted]
| bluecalm wrote:
| Let's see how many of his current positions (Stanford president,
| boards of directors, advisory boards) he is going to keep.
|
| It seems to me lying is a great strategy in today's society as
| you rarely face harsh consequences and you about never lose more
| than you have already gained thanks to it.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| Yep, no accountability in institutions on political and
| business levels. And judicial systems go along with it. Their
| digging their own graves.
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| The denial quotes throughout the article are suspiciously narrow.
| In particular, they are always specific to the Nature paper,
| whick leaves plenty of opportunity for investigation and
| discussion of internal documents that preceded it.
| evrydayhustling wrote:
| Have to reply to myself to say that Lavigne's own denial is
| much more robust. It is linked in a comment below.
| JadeNB wrote:
| The comment (by a user whose name ends with ...HNtho):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34849006 . The rebuttal:
| https://tessier-lavigne-lab.stanford.edu/news/false-
| allegati... .
| bhk wrote:
| Actually, it smacks of misdirection to me. He portrays the
| matter as one of a mistaken theory or hypothesis that was
| later invalidated (how science works), which deflects from
| the key allegation of _experimental data_ being falsified or
| fabricated.
| norwalkbear wrote:
| The universities need be audited.
| lapcat wrote:
| I've always had the impression that we don't live in a
| meritocracy but rather a mendacracy, where the biggest liars and
| cheats rise to the top.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| It's certainly feels like that more and more.
| [deleted]
| shanebellone wrote:
| "mendacracy"
|
| Did you make this word up? I can't seem to find it anywhere.
| hiddencost wrote:
| It may be a neologism, but it's a fun one. See the etymology
| of "mendacious".
| lofatdairy wrote:
| If you've seen Cat on a Hot Tin Roof you'd probably
| remember how frequently mendacity is used, too.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| Mendacracy does have a funny feel because there's an "a"
| where my brain wants to see an "o" instead. Most of the
| Greek prefixes had an "o" e.g., aristos. Can anyone think
| of a counter-example?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Most of the Greek prefixes had an "o" e.g., aristos
|
| Most Greek prefixes don't have an o. Instead, the o is
| used to connect the consonant at the end of the prefix to
| the consonant at the beginning of the root.
|
| Where the prefix ends in a vowel, that vowel is used
| directly. Compare anabasis, catabasis, analyze, paralyze,
| metamorphosis, polygon, etc etc etc.
|
| None of this works here, because "mendax" is not a Greek
| word. (Which doesn't help "mendacracy" - the epenthetic
| vowel in Latin is i.) The Greek word for liar is pseustes
| pseustes; you probably want pseustocracy ("rule by
| liars") or perhaps pseudocracy ("rule by lies", but seems
| more likely to be interpreted as "false rule").
|
| It's not clear where the rest of the root of "mendax" is
| supposed to have gone in "mendacracy"; if you really
| wanted to jam it onto the -crat ending, you should end up
| with "mendacicrat".
| shanebellone wrote:
| Whoever you are, thank you for teaching me two new words
| today. I've never seen or heard of neologism or mendacious.
| Today is shaping up to be a good day.
|
| :)
| brookst wrote:
| Not the person you're replying to, but glad you
| inmutaplexed something new!
| lapcat wrote:
| I did make it up, but Google Search indicates that I wasn't
| the first to come up with this combination. It seems pretty
| natural to substitute mendacious for meritorious.
| shanebellone wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification. It might be me, but quotes
| would have made that obvious.
| amelius wrote:
| Until they get caught.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| That doesn't even matter anymore. See George Santos, R-NY.
| natch wrote:
| Or for that matter, see: /\w+(?: \w+)+
| R-[ACDFGIK-PS-W][ACDEH-LNORSTVXYZ]/
| natch wrote:
| This intentionally does not match some states that
| currently do not have R- representation, but by
| coincidence of letter combinations lets some others
| through. Fixing this is left as an exercise to the
| reader.
| lordnacho wrote:
| When I was young I really believed in meritocracy. I mean I
| knew there were royals who didn't have to work, but I thought
| by and large if you put in effort people will see it.
|
| Then as I worked for a few years it became apparent this isn't
| close to being true. I ran into a huge number of people who
| reached the top by various forms of lying, whether it was
| little lies like taking credit for others' work or bigger lies
| like scam websites, or even bigger ones like crime. It's
| actually interesting how people will just tell you these things
| if you are even a bit friendly with them.
| hgomersall wrote:
| You definitely need to be good at lying, so on some level we
| have a meritocracy.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| so you have been to Palo Alto !
| marcinzm wrote:
| I agree but this brings up to me a broader question of what
| is a meritocracy. It is usually defined around wealth or
| social class. If someone lacking both cheats their way to the
| top through their own efforts and talent then to me that
| counts as a meritocracy.
| [deleted]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kakistocracy
| kodah wrote:
| When I was in charge of hiring I dealt with this every day. A
| huge swath of software engineers lie about their skills,
| involvement in projects, and just general accomplishments.
| These also tended to be the people who did best in our leetcode
| exercises.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| how did you find candidates? what were your internal (non-
| public) criteria ?
| kodah wrote:
| From what I remember the recruiters would surf linked in
| and post on job sites. For context, that was a pretty
| average product company in the Fintech space.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| I can imagine people with strong sense of ethics not
| really wanting to work in fintech
| kodah wrote:
| Just my opinion, but if you work in software you likely
| have significantly diluted morals and ethics. We work in
| a highly extractionist industry. For that reason, I doubt
| that was the issue. After all, Google and Facebook still
| get lots of job seeker traffic.
| salawat wrote:
| Do they get angry at crap? Given the choice between making
| their own life easier, and making the User's life easier,
| which way do they go?
| nobodyandproud wrote:
| > When I was in charge of hiring I dealt with this every day.
| A huge swath of software engineers lie about their skills,
| involvement in projects, and just general accomplishments.
| These also tended to be the people who did best in our
| leetcode exercises.
|
| How did you filter for the lies/bs? Did you drill them to see
| if they actually knew the topics at hand?
| georgeecollins wrote:
| >> These also tended to be the people who did best in our
| leetcode exercises.
|
| Right, because the person for whom the goal is to get a great
| job / promotion, will leap through the hoops required.
| Another type of person might care more about what they are
| working on, or their professional goals or their values and
| less about playing the game.
| lapcat wrote:
| I find it a bit curious that this reply focuses on software
| engineers, who are not at the top: "When I was in charge of
| hiring".
|
| [EDIT:] Let me put my reply into some further perspective:
|
| 1) It's well known that job advertisements blatantly lie
| about the job description and requirements. The standard
| advice software engineers give to each other is to apply to
| jobs even though you don't meet all of the requirements,
| because the requirements often turn out to be optional, more
| of a unicorn wish list.
|
| 2) Ask yourself, which companies and which jobs specifically
| do lying software engineers apply to? Do those companies
| perhaps have a culture rewarding this behavior? And could
| honest software engineers be averse to applying there,
| instead seeking places or means of employment that are more
| amenable to their personal ethics?
| robocat wrote:
| I think your reply is insinuating that kodah writes job
| adverts that egregiously lie, which is not replying in good
| faith. You could write about common bad industry practices
| without implying that kodah is participating in those
| practices. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| lapcat wrote:
| > You could write about common bad industry practices
| without implying that kodah is participating in those
| practices.
|
| I literally did that: "It's well known" "The standard
| advice software engineers give to each other". Is
| anonymous "kodah" well known? No. Do software engineers
| give each other standard advice about getting hired by
| kodah? No. Also, I talked about "companies" plural, not
| kodah's company singular.
|
| The only one who insinuated about kodah, and about me, is
| you. You ought to read the guidelines yourself with
| respect to my comment and your own reply.
|
| The intended implication of my previous comment was that
| the behavior of software engineers in our industry is
| driven largely by how companies are run, by their
| management practices, how their hiring works, how their
| promotions work, etc. The engineers themselves are not
| really in the driver's seat, they're in the passenger's
| seats, and the incentives for current and potential
| employees are often perverse.
| kodah wrote:
| I was a tech lead, I did first round interviews and had a
| larger amount of input, outside my manager, with respect to
| whom to hire. Hopefully that clarifies that bit.
|
| 1. I would say that our listing was accurate other than the
| fact that we actually worked in 4-5 major languages, not
| just the one advertised. That was never much of an issue
| though, we screened for a certain level of adaptability. To
| me there's a very big integrity difference between lying
| and applying for a role which you don't meet all the
| requirements. If you tell me, "I haven't worked on
| Kubernetes before, but I've worked on distributed systems
| and have messed with a lot of REST apis." I'd be
| understanding, no one can have all the right experience at
| once. Contrast that with someone having Kubernetes all over
| their resume only to find out they've pushed a button on an
| automated deploy pipeline and don't know the difference
| between a Deployment and a StatefulSet. The latter I
| consider a lie.
|
| 2. No, I know that company didn't have a culture of
| rewarding lies. In order to claim things for promotions you
| had to have multiple peers back up your claims.
|
| What preempted the lies was probably discovering that we
| primarily did software development kit work, which most
| engineers have not done or don't have a ton of experience
| doing. Mix that in a bowl with the fact that we were easier
| to get hired at than Google and paid slightly above average
| (at times) it was fertile ground to attract candidates
| willing to espouse some aspirational stuff as if it were an
| accomplishment. This was especially relevant around Senior
| hiring when we'd ask about leading initiatives. A lot of
| SWEs have delivered software in a team, but few SWEs have
| _led_ those initiatives, or only owned a very small part
| which they worked with (usually) one other engineer to
| deliver.
| lapcat wrote:
| > I would say that our listing was accurate other than
| the fact that we actually worked in 4-5 major languages,
| not just the one advertised. That was never much of an
| issue though, we screened for a certain level of
| adaptability.
|
| You could only screen who applied, and the job posting
| inaccurately described the language(s) used. How could
| that not have an effect on the applicant pool, and how
| the applicants approached the application?
|
| > No, I know that company didn't have a culture of
| rewarding lies.
|
| Banking and financial services? Hmm...
| devmor wrote:
| I find that amusing because the people I've worked with who
| understood their job the least were also the type to
| constantly shill sites like leetcode.
|
| Obsessed with how they stack up compared to others... Perhaps
| coming from a place of insecurity.
| [deleted]
| IncRnd wrote:
| From Nikolaev in the article: "I can only speak for myself...and
| say I did not do anything wrong when I was at Genentech."
|
| That's practically the canonical form of saying, "I did it, but
| I'm going to demur and blame it on other unspecified people."
|
| People who test the veracity of others call this an "exclusion
| qualifier." [1]
|
| [1] https://jacksonzheng.com/the-cia-uses-these-methods-to-
| tell-...
| zetazzed wrote:
| Still not the most controversial Stanford president... The first
| pres there, David Starr Jordan, has long been accused of covering
| up the murder of Jane Stanford:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Starr_Jordan. Oh, he was a
| eugenicist too, but I guess that's less surprising?
|
| (Covered at length in the book "Why Fish Don't Exist")
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The problem, or a problem, is us. We overlook lies of certain
| forms, almost without thinking.
|
| For example, look at the claims that the Genentech internal
| review was routine. I don't believe it at all; I read it as 'we
| believe this claim will stand because you can't prove otherwise'.
| That is not honesty at all, but a normalized protocol for lying.
| I'll bet you didn't think twice about the integrity of doing
| that.
|
| But my key point is that, if that claim is disproven, what is the
| result? Do we say Genentech and the individuals making these
| claims are liars, and not to be trusted? Are they shamed and
| shunned, their reputations damaged? No, we've normalized
| accepting these lies; it will just be viewed as losing a game, as
| the normal result of the protocol - it was disproven so the claim
| falls. Honesty is not implicated.
|
| We are lied to because we accept it, we normalize it, we don't
| even notice it.
| kickaha wrote:
| Boy. There's a lot to say about this story.
|
| But the most remarkable thing is the incredibly high quality of
| the journalism. Unbelievably thorough investigative reporting,
| outstanding exposition of highly technical items. From a college
| newspaper!
| TEP_Kim_Il_Sung wrote:
| It is only high quality reporting until proved otherwise.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Goes to show how important being able to reproduce results of
| experiments is - especially in medicine. Me thinks we need more
| of it.
| manquer wrote:
| Why is it surprising that college newspaper did it ?
|
| It is lot more likely to be able to get to spend countless
| hours required than a large commercial publication for an
| investigative piece ?
|
| Student journalists get paid far less if anything at all and
| will definitely be motivated in a story about their college and
| put in the extra hours than a professional journalist also
| easily tap into subject matter expertise right there in their
| college
|
| Journalism quality is a primarily function of how motivated the
| journalist (and the publisher) is about the story, there is no
| shortage of talent in university like Stanford.
| dgs_sgd wrote:
| I've heard from several friends at Stanford that the
| president is not well liked among the student body. That
| could be a secondary motivation for producing high quality
| journalism in an attempt to bring potential wrongdoings to
| light.
| Animats wrote:
| I wonder if the university will take action against the
| students involved.
| bakul wrote:
| Why would Stanford do that? Baker's author page shows this
| is not his first such investigation.
| https://stanforddaily.com/author/tabaker/
| whamlastxmas wrote:
| It's not without precedent at other universities. Let us
| not forget UC Berkeley I believe that unlawfully arrested
| student protesters and sprayed them with pepper spray
| while they were sitting there in handcuffs
| lofatdairy wrote:
| Iirc that was UC Davis (doesn't change anything except
| making sure the correct institution receives the black
| mark) and they tried to pay some org to remove that pic
| from the internet lmao.
| [deleted]
| cozzyd wrote:
| I worked with the daily when I was a student (not doing
| reporting, but layout). Many of the people I worked with are
| pretty high profile journalists now.
| hodgesrm wrote:
| It's really good. The most interesting part for me is toward
| the end where the article adduces evidence that Tessier-Lavigne
| rather than simply retracting instead wrote later papers that
| swept the earlier conclusions under the rug. The investigators
| mastered not just the science but the bureaucracy of research,
| making it a great read at multiple levels.
|
| > Schrag, the Alzheimer's researcher without knowledge of the
| internal review, told The Daily that "to his credit, Dr.
| Tessier-Lavigne authored several of the later studies which
| revised the findings of his 2009 paper."
|
| Some smart kids over there in Palo Alto. I hope they keep at it
| when they graduate.
| fredsmith219 wrote:
| Canceling all fun on campus is just inviting any and all negative
| press and reviews that the students can dig up.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Each of the four senior Genentech scientists was contacted
| individually by The Daily and was unaware of the others'
| accounts. Their independent accounts, given over several hours of
| interviews, were highly consistent with each other, and also
| consistent with publicly available information about the
| research.
|
| It doesn't invalidate the entire story in any significant way,
| but after all these years, even after an hour or a day or two,
| wouldn't they all have been aware of each other's accounts and
| points of view? They may have explicitly reconciled them years
| ago - 'holy cow, what are we going to say?' Genentech may have
| coached them - in fact, I would almost expect it.
| fuckHNtho wrote:
| see his rebuttal here: https://tessier-lavigne-
| lab.stanford.edu/news/false-allegati...
| lapcat wrote:
| I've vouched for this comment. Not sure why it was flagged.
| Regardless of whether you believe Tessier-Lavigne's denial,
| it's directly relevant to the story.
| hitekker wrote:
| The GP appears to have been shadow banned for stirring flame
| wars like accusing Bill Gates of being a pedophile. The
| username is a bit of a tell.
| steponlego wrote:
| Well his wife divorced him specifically because of whatever
| he did on that island. We can assume it wasn't just
| drinking beer and shooting hoops.
|
| https://news.yahoo.com/melinda-french-gates-says-
| jeffrey-135...
| paganel wrote:
| > Bill Gates of being a pedophile.
|
| The former CEO of Barclays (one of the biggest banks in
| existence) has just been ousted as having been a pen-pal of
| Epstein the pedophile [1], so I don't see what would make a
| person like Bill Gates so special.
|
| But, yes, the stories related to him and Epstein do get
| flagged almost instantly. Also, see the reasons behind
| Melinda Gates's divorce (a story that also got flagged in
| here).
|
| [1] https://www.thedailybeast.com/jpmorgan-executive-jes-
| staleys...
| stanford_labrat wrote:
| To give some perspective, nowadays all PhD students generally
| take something called "Responsible Conduct of Research". This is
| an ethics class and it specifically covers things like falsifying
| data, plagiarism, how to ethically work in animal models etc. At
| my institution we actually had two whole lectures related to
| this, one was specifically about image manipulation and the other
| was about falsifying data.
|
| Another very high profile article related to Alzheimer's and
| plaque formation was also recently retracted...weird. I've become
| very skeptical these days, of my fellow scientists, which is both
| a good and a bad thing.
| csa wrote:
| > To give some perspective, nowadays all PhD students generally
| take something called "Responsible Conduct of Research".
|
| Unfortunately, I think that these sorts of classes mainly serve
| as either CYA or to check a box for a funder.
|
| Most of the folks who do unethical stuff (in general) either
| think that what they are specifically doing is not unethical,
| or they just don't care ("playing the game" is something I've
| heard quite a bit).
|
| In certain fields, especially if you include anything that's in
| a gray area of ethics, unethical behavior is more the norm than
| the exception.
| rencrisa wrote:
| > nowadays all PhD students generally take something called
| "Responsible Conduct of Research"
|
| I think that is a broad generalization. I never had to take an
| ethics in research course as a PhD student.
|
| > falsifying data, plagiarism, how to ethically work in animal
| models ... image manipulation.
|
| My take is that this may be a "field"-dependent class. My PhD
| is in a non-experimental field (math); thus, we cannot have
| these sorts of issues (minus plagiarism).
| gdmt wrote:
| I think this is a requirement for PhD programs funded by T32
| training grants from the NIH.
| mabbo wrote:
| > I never had to take an ethics in research course as a PhD
| student.
|
| What often happens is that a given program is required to
| include an ethics portion or course, so the university has
| some mandatory class whose syllabus reads "this class will
| include an ethics portion".
|
| Then there just never seems to be the time needed to get to
| that material.
|
| At least, that's how my computer science degree went.
| [deleted]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Stanford seems to have a deep and recurring corruption problem.
| The admissions scandal. SBF. This.
|
| Is it just availability bias on my part?
| wdb wrote:
| Isn't Stanford also the university where a lawyer professor was
| very misandrist and Stanford didn't looked into it?
| Brigand wrote:
| Perhaps a factor is that somebody bothered to check. Who knows
| what is going on elsewhere.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Probably observation bias. Stanford is a big target that sticks
| out. Corruption is a part of all institutions; it is
| fundamentally inevitable.
| bluGill wrote:
| Places that care and investigate will in turn find corruption
| and you are likely to hear about it. Be concerned where you
| hear nothing as that sometimes means they don't care and are
| covering up.
|
| There are also ethical people and companies you hear nothing
| about, but in a all but the smallest orginizations it takes
| extreme effort to not have at least some
| salawat wrote:
| ...you know what else is a big target that sticks out?
|
| A giant ball of corruption and deceit. Sometimes, a cigar is
| just a cigar.
| lofatdairy wrote:
| Probably more so that Stanford's meteoric rise in prestige and
| social capital that it attracts a number of affluent, well-
| connected, ambitious types who are willing to set aside
| morality and used to getting their way. I highly, highly doubt
| Stanford educates the number of future scammers (Do Kwon,
| Holmes, etc) who matriculated there to conduct fraud, nor that
| they're representative of the institution at large.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
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