[HN Gopher] Stanford president resigns over manipulated research...
___________________________________________________________________
Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, will retract
3 papers
Author : dralley
Score : 1474 points
Date : 2023-07-19 17:43 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (stanforddaily.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stanforddaily.com)
| mochomocha wrote:
| Between Marc Tessier-Lavigne, operation Varsity Blues and SBF
| parents, the scandals involving Stanford keep on coming. It's not
| sending a good signal when it comes to the overall integrity of
| the institution.
| hellomyguys wrote:
| Don't forget Elizabeth Holmes and Do Kwon!
| [deleted]
| juicybilberry wrote:
| Believe me, this isn't just Stanford. I give credit more to
| some kind of internal whistleblower investigative subculture
| there shining a light on things than it being something
| qualitatively different about Stanford as an institution.
|
| For every one of these stories you hear, I am aware of others
| that will never ever see the light of day.
| tremon wrote:
| _I am aware of others that will never ever see the light of
| day._
|
| It seems that you are in a position to change that, but
| choose not to. Why?
| squarepizza wrote:
| Personal and professional reputation
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| People forget VERY quickly. Think of all of the Meta scandals.
| People will still gladly hire anyone who worked there, it's an
| amazing brand name to have despite whatever damage to society.
| You'd have to get to an Enron-level fiasco for people to start
| looking at you suspiciously.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| I think that is reasonable. The alternative is that all
| 80,000 Meta employees have their professional reputations
| tarnished by something that happened a decade ago that they
| probably had nothing to do with
| srcreigh wrote:
| Fraud isn't even negative at a certain point. Whichever
| person is the top of a prestigious fraud ring still deserves
| a kind of clout. There's skills and talent involved not to
| mention how fraud itself is sadly valuable for most
| organizations.
| stcroixx wrote:
| This isn't true - I've been hiring programmers for many years
| and Meta/FB are definitely on my blacklist. I consider the
| damage they've already done far worse than Enron and they're
| not finished yet.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| It's not about forgetting, it's about other people not caring
| about things that aren't relevant to a job they're hiring
| for. For example, Meta is known for having a relatively high
| bar for engineering talent, and that is the signal people are
| looking for.
|
| Even in the Enron case, I know a bunch of people who were
| snapped up from Enron after they collapsed. The Enron fraud
| was concentrated among relatively few people at the company,
| so it's not like their failure tarnished people who weren't
| in on the fraud.
| kejoma wrote:
| Don't forget the whole Tirien Steinbach mess at Stanford Law.
| okintheory wrote:
| Very glad to see this. The Stanford Daily did a great job
| reporting this. Reposting a comment that I found instructive from
| the discussion on this piece [1]. About the Genentech report [2]
| which made MTL look very very bad.
|
| ``` APersonWhoCanRead 3 months ago
|
| It seems to me that the linked report goes as close as possible
| to accusing MTL of fraud as one could hope given that it's coming
| from Genentech lawyers that are trying to keep the company out of
| trouble:
|
| "In order to assess whether the 2009 Nature paper contains
| duplicate images, the diligence team consulted an independent,
| outside expert who specializes in detecting image manipulations
| in scientific publications. This expert concluded that two sets
| of figures, Figures 1d and 5e and Supplementary Figures 9c and
| 17c, include duplicate images. The expert also concluded that a
| Western blot panel for Caspase 6 in Supplementary Figure 6d
| appears to include a composite of two images. We have not
| determined how these anomalies occurred."
|
| "Genentech scientists and research associates had difficulty
| reproducing certain results reported in the 2009 Nature paper, in
| particular, the binding interaction between DR6 and N-APP (the
| N-terminal portion of APP). Prior to publication of the paper,
| employees other than the authors performed binding experiments
| that showed inconsistent results - sometimes binding between DR6
| and N-APP was detected, and other times, it was not. Some of the
| employees who performed those experiments attributed the
| inconsistent results to variability in the purity and quality of
| the reagents used." --> Clearly, some employees attributed the
| inconsistent results differently - I'm guessing as fraud. -->
| These determinations were made before the paper, which contained
| fabricated data (c.f. above), was published. Clearly, the first
| author would have been told, and most likely also MTL.
|
| "Senior leaders at Genentech including Dr. Tessier-Lavigne knew
| of the inconsistent binding results, and there was uncertainty
| and speculation within the Genentech Research organization about
| why the binding interaction between DR6 and N-APP could not be
| reliably reproduced or confirmed."
|
| "Also following Dr. Tessier-Lavigne's departure, one senior
| leader in gRED urged that the 2009 Nature paper should be
| retracted or corrected in light of the inconsistent binding
| results. Other senior leaders recognized at the time that this
| was an action only Dr. Tessier-Lavigne or another co-author could
| take with the journal." --> MTL was asked to retract and did not.
|
| TLDR: the report is very damning. Why don't you try to dispute
| some of the facts reported by the Daily, instead of writing
| nebulously that their headline is misleading.
|
| ```
|
| UPDATE: To clarify, that comment is responding to another comment
| saying "the report is very positive for MTL"
|
| [1] https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/06/stanford-president-
| rese...
|
| [2] https://www.gene.com/download/pdf/Findings-
| of-2023-Genentech...
| londons_explore wrote:
| I bet that for every case of scientific fraud that is obvious
| from the published paper (like this one), there are 10 cases of
| scientific fraud which are never detected.
|
| Think about it - a domain expert will do a far better job of
| faking data than a random joe, and will be aware of most
| statistical tests that could find out.
| akhayam wrote:
| Breaking the rat race of academic publications is long overdue.
|
| In some domains, the call to break this vicious cycle is already
| happening. E.g. ACM Sigcomm is one of the most prestigious and
| exclusive conference in Networking and Distributed Systems
| research. Some of the most profound researchers in that domain
| are driving a pledge to fundamentally rethink what the conference
| accepts and what gets presented:
| https://sigcomm.quest/proposal.html.
| Upvoter33 wrote:
| And it's a bad proposal. To wit: "Concretely, after a paper has
| been thoroughly discussed, any paper that still has at least
| one advocate for acceptance should normally be accepted."
|
| This is a terrible idea. People will have friends who get their
| papers in, in return for the favor of the same.
|
| Agree with your general point though. No easy answers though.
| jimkoen wrote:
| >This is a terrible idea. People will have friends who get
| their papers in, in return for the favor of the same.
|
| But this is already the case. In some fields even double
| blind doesn't work because community members are aware of
| each others research. If you're one of two people worldwide
| who's specific specialization is the compression of semantic
| knowledge streams, you're probably willing to be money on
| your ability to spot your colleagues research.
| seewhydee wrote:
| Looking through report issued by Stanford's scientific panel, it
| seems quite clear that (i) Tessier-Lavigne and/or people in his
| group have been very naughty indeed, and (ii) most of their image
| manipulations might have escaped notice if they'd only used fuzzy
| select.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| justsayit wrote:
| MSG got a bad rap due to a joke by scientists.
|
| No matter how well educated, they're still just people and
| biology is optimized for success.
|
| At this point society needs to have a good long think about
| enabling the reach of any specific individual.
|
| Our math is not holistic truth as it's been shown there can never
| be one true set of axioms. All philosophy is relative to human
| awareness and agreement. The masses have always agreed rent
| seekers are leaches who externalize providing for themselves.
|
| We need to stop creating landed gentry; they're all just one of
| billions like the rest. The work is important, not their
| figurative identity; we don't need _them_ to carry out the work.
|
| 3 months labor, 3 months off, 6 months white collar work. A
| rotation such as that would effectively act as term limits on
| social influence.
| cvoss wrote:
| The quotes from the chair of the board and from the president
| himself in the second paragraph of the article are very
| important. Neither concedes that Tessier-Lavigne's conduct
| disqualifies him from his position as a preeminent researcher.
| (Indeed, he will retain his tenure as a professor.) It is the
| impact of the report and the discussions of the allegations which
| make his continued presidency untenable. Do you note the
| subtlety?
|
| Secondly, I encourage every interested reader here to pull up the
| actual report and read it. (The report and other statements from
| the board can be found on the board's website [0].) In a large
| laboratory, both honest mistakes and intentional data
| manipulation will occur. They just will. There is no evidence to
| suggest Tessier-Lavigne participated knowingly in fraudulent
| activity. All the evidence points to the fact that he was made
| aware of the issues at some point or another, proceeded to take
| some corrective action, but did not ultimately do enough. Pass
| your judgments on his actions and inactions, by all means, but
| make sure you're passing judgment on what happened, not on the
| impression you get of what happened from reading news articles.
|
| [0] https://boardoftrustees.stanford.edu
| balozi wrote:
| Corporatized academia is far worse than Hollywood and Wall Street
| when it come to protecting bad actors. The name of the the game
| is "don't rock the boat and keep the grant money flowing". Nobody
| wants to bring focus on another's questionable activities lest
| their own receive focus.
| gregwebs wrote:
| There's a lesson here- if manipulated research is so game
| changing that drug companies are trying to reproduce it and it is
| used to propel a career to a university president then there will
| be consequences.
|
| Otherwise the estimates of published research being manipulated
| range from 20 percent to being a majority and it's difficult to
| get corrections or retractions.
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
| https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/07/05/time-to-assume-that-hea...
| http://science.sciencemag.org/content/349/6251/aac4716
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3655010/
| http://www.nature.com/nrd/journal/v10/n9/full/nrd3439-c1.htm...
| http://www.nature.com/news/1-500-scientists-lift-the-lid-on-...
| veave wrote:
| Trust the science, they say.
| [deleted]
| foogazi wrote:
| Trust but verify
| raincom wrote:
| Verify then trust
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| For his work that was funded with federal grants [1], are there
| criminal charges prosecutors can bring?
|
| [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19225519/
| tlogan wrote:
| I have a question: how to fix this? Could enhanced peer review
| provide a solution? However, the peers are not detectives so I
| really do not know.
|
| It appears we are caught in an inevitable cycle: success in
| academia is intrinsically tied to more published papers. That
| inevitably fosters widespread fraud, as a small proportion of
| unscrupulous individuals will ultimately corrupt the entire
| system. As noted in the report, his lab had trend of favoring the
| winners.
|
| Furthermore, we need to consider that there are very powerful
| external influencer such as politics and corporations, which can
| sometimes lead to the distortion of data.
| nomilk wrote:
| For every false paper, I wonder how many other researchers waste
| time pursuing research on false premises. And worse, how much do
| fake papers influence broader society, through policy and
| individual decision making.
|
| I wonder if any economists have tried to measure the $ cost of
| fake research.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| And doping. Now you think what? But. It is hard to compete with
| people doing drugs to be able crunch 16h seven days a week to
| get a result.
| throwaway4837 wrote:
| The cost of pursuing dead ends in science is NECESSARY and much
| greater than the cost of pursuing fraudulent results, albeit
| the latter being unnecessary. Probably 70%+ of time is wasted
| on paths that lead to nowhere, and that is part of the process.
| I would guess less than 1% of time is wasted because of
| manipulation. The process finds fraudsters (bad) well enough,
| and the process of being wrong (good) will always be central to
| science, even though it's so expensive.
| rcxdude wrote:
| It's definitely a source of wasted effort (I think almost every
| postgrad student has a story of trying and failing to get
| something described in a paper to work), but I would say that
| fraud is only a small fraction of failure to replicate cases.
| It's also quite common that there is some other factor making
| it difficult to get something working in your lab that worked
| somewhere else (which to be clear is still a problem, but a
| different one).
| EMCymatics wrote:
| Dont forget people who spend resources just replicating
| studies.
| tptacek wrote:
| Papers don't establish ground truths in science; they start a
| conversation. When bad papers are published due to misconduct,
| there's a cost --- a pointless conversation occurs. But it
| doesn't shake the foundations of science. People that actually
| do science understand the implications of a published paper.
| surement wrote:
| > Papers don't establish ground truths in science > it
| doesn't shake the foundations of science
|
| the comment doesn't say any of that, just that resources are
| wasted participating to these "conversations"
| thaw13579 wrote:
| Papers are often rejected due to lack of novelty compared to
| previous work, especially if they contradict it. How many
| paper were similarly rejected because this fraudulent work
| was published?
| dilawar wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder, even after getting caught, academics has the
| least to loose? The guy with still be a professor, right?
|
| Can a doctor, and lawyer remain in his profession after such a
| malpractice?
|
| PS: Politicians dont count. Corrupt as they maybe, they still
| have to face the music every 4-5 years.
| sgammon wrote:
| stanford daily absolutely killing it
| catsarebetter wrote:
| Wild that this wasn't covered up
| j7ake wrote:
| Was this fake research funded by tax payers? Can they sue this
| scientist to get some money back ?
| [deleted]
| hackernoteng wrote:
| And they wonder why we dont all just "trust the science!"
| hackernoteng wrote:
| Anyone else vomit when they try to read academic "papers"? Its
| like they are all written by some kind of Borg cult
| kstrauser wrote:
| Nope. Sorry, that's on you.
| jacquesm wrote:
| How does academia deal with the fall out 'downstream' from such
| retractions? Does this automatically invalidate each and every
| paper that cited this one as a source? If not why not? Because if
| that were the consequence I think a lot of people would be far,
| far more cautious about what they cite and whether or not it has
| been reproduced.
| anjc wrote:
| > and whether or not it has been reproduced.
|
| Nothing would ever get done if this was the bar for citation.
| Real advancements take place on the back of fraudulent results
| in widely cited papers. Actually, even within papers that have
| fraudulent results, advancements happen.
|
| The motivation for such fraud is because work generally wont
| get published without positive results, even if the work was
| excellent. The fraud doesn't take the place of hard/great work.
| I'm not defending the practice.
| jraph wrote:
| Not many things are automatic in research paper publishing...
| It all good old PDFs in which even the publication date doesn't
| always appear. You have to look up the title and find out in
| which journal / conference it's been published, and you get the
| date.
|
| Anyway, it would not be fair to automatically invalidate papers
| citing retracted ones. Including:
|
| - reproduction attempts
|
| - some minor citation in related works
|
| - it's usually not obvious that a paper is manipulated or even
| wrong without any bad faith involved
|
| Now, I wish we could update papers with disclaimers and notes,
| but again, we are dealing with good old PDFs that are never
| going to be updated...
|
| Good luck even noticing that a paper was retracted.
|
| I wish we had better formats and publication processes.
| jacquesm wrote:
| You could deal with that in a reader or in a service where
| you upload a draft of your paper which then spits out a list
| of potentially problematic citations, even if those are more
| than one step removed from your first citation.
| jraph wrote:
| Sounds like a useful tool!
| velosol wrote:
| I'd just like to expand a bit on the minor citation: you
| often cite the seminal papers in a field simply to give
| context to the work you're doing and, in some fields, to show
| competing or past equations as contrast to your method of
| doing something.
|
| None of those require the paper you're citing to be free from
| fraud: seminal works with fraudulent or inaccurate results
| may still have preparation methods that are applicable to
| novel, non-fraudulent, experimental techniques and equations
| are rarely at issue with data manipulation or other fraud.
|
| There's still space to be aware of retracted papers in
| citations as building directly on those results and managing
| to show an improvement on doctored data would be suspicious
| but I'm pretty sure that is the minority of citations in many
| fields.
| throwanma wrote:
| I've been thinking about this for a while, what if we had a web
| of fraud explorer where you can follow the citations of
| fraudulent papers. And this just might align incentives more in
| a direction of caution.
| seydor wrote:
| To be blunt, running an institution does not necessarily require
| the scientific creds in question. But interesting that they cast
| the first stone
| msie wrote:
| I'm confused.
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/07/19/stanford...
|
| "A panel of experts concluded that Tessier-Lavigne, a
| neuroscientist who has been president of Stanford for nearly
| seven years, did not engage in any fraud or falsification of
| scientific data. It also did not find evidence that he was aware
| of problems before publication of data."
| skilled wrote:
| Let me clear up the confusion,
|
| > Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, will
| retract at least three papers
| yborg wrote:
| I.e. he's nobly taking the fall for fraud committed by others
| that he knew nothing about in the lab he was paid a large
| amount of money to run and who attached his name to said
| papers he had nothing to do with.
|
| Even the spun version doesn't make him look very good.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| It helps if you read the following paragraph.
|
| They couldn't prove he personally did the manipulation.
|
| He oversaw work at three different institutions over two
| decades that resulted in manipulated data by _someone_ , and
| didn't issue corrections when those manipulations were pointed
| out. If he didn't do it, he was incompetent or uninterested in
| fixing the issues.
| msie wrote:
| Yes, I think most people (like me) will get the impression
| that he was personally involved in fraud but at most he is
| guilty of what you speak of.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| At most, he's guilty of fraud. That's unproven, but not
| impossible.
|
| At the _least_ , he's guilty of not noticing/caring about
| stuff he really should have cared about, and as a result
| wasted a whole bunch of money and human life (not just in
| his own labs, but those relying on his work) that we can't
| get back.
| msie wrote:
| It is so frustrating when everyone is working hard to
| raise money for research to see it pissed away like this.
| I just saw a commercial for an upcoming cancer charity
| show put on by celebrities and I got really angry.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Stanford is a toxic dump. It's time for people to stop holding
| the school in such high regard. Perhaps the school that brought
| us "Theranos" isn't good.
| whatscooking wrote:
| More evidence that science in its current state is more of a
| religion than science. People only using it to further their
| agenda
| gloryless wrote:
| This guy is like an actual billionaire. I have no idea if his
| fraud extends to the actual drugs he's made money from, but I
| wish these kinds of people were held to higher standards. Zero
| chance he's gonna have any legal repercussion.
| obblekk wrote:
| I wonder if there should be criminal liability for this...
| literally billions of dollars of misdirected research effort for
| what may be a fraud.
|
| Are amyloid plaques not an issue at all then, or coincidentally
| still an issue (but not justified by the research this person
| did)? Would be funny if this is a real world Gettier case.
| beefman wrote:
| Which papers are being retracted?
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Trust the science, bro
| dehrmann wrote:
| > According to Jerry Yang, chair of the Stanford Board of
| Trustees...
|
| Also the co-founder of Yahoo!.
| ericpauley wrote:
| Dupe: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
| xpm-1991-07-30-mn-131-st...
|
| /s
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Ok, I know this is a bit of a stretch, but bear with me: I think
| we are seeing something similar to the doping scandal that took
| down Lance Armstrong and many others a while back.
|
| There was at least one year's Tour de France in which all but one
| participant were later found to have been doping. In other words,
| you didn't get to that level of that competitive activity, if you
| didn't cheat, because it wasn't possible to outperform people
| with such a significant advantage. It actually became a contest,
| not just of bicycling, but of doping, because getting away with
| it was quite difficult and it took years for the world of cycling
| to get good enough countermeasures to shift the advantage to non-
| doping.
|
| Academic research has, for decades now, been a very competitive,
| high stakes endeavor. Many fields have more people trying to work
| in it, than there are spots (i.e. grants and endowed chairs)
| available. If you have twice as many aspirants as slots
| available, and "only" 25% of them cheat (in this case, fudge
| their data to get more interesting results), then you get
| something like 50% of your field filled with fraud.
|
| Moreover, the closer they are to the top, the higher the
| likelihood that they are "doping".
|
| I live in Austin, TX, and I remember when nearly all of Lance
| Armstrong's competitors had been busted, but he had not yet. I
| said to other people, "well, that's it then, he must have been
| doping. You can't win the Tour de France 7 years in a row against
| doping opponents, if you're clean. Either doping doesn't work, or
| he was doping."
|
| I recall several people disagreeing, convinced that he was clean.
| He wasn't clean.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Any competition without an effective referee (from the Tour to
| Academics to presidential races) will devolve to the lowest
| level. People always seem surprised by this...
| nemo44x wrote:
| Universities are in the business of creating/discovering truth
| _and_ shipping it. A Positivist review quickly shows things
| like math are easy to prove true. As you work your ways down to
| the humanities it becomes increasingly difficult. And
| competitive.
|
| Shipping truth that isn't powerful isn't as attractive to your
| customers as truth that is. So you're incentivized to develop
| truth that is. And you do this by hacking the accepted
| standards in knowledge pursuit by starting with a conclusion
| and working backwards. You tell a story based on the evidence
| that's useful.
|
| Now it's "the science" or at the very least "there's studies"
| and this is useful to both the customers (NGOs, journals,
| activists, lobbyists, media, anyone that wants to influence
| policy) and the university (attracts money, reputation and
| status) and the people shipping it (tenure, book deals,
| speaking fees).
|
| It's not a conspiracy. It's just simple incentives. The poor
| guy who spends his time figuring out what the truth is not or
| that ships truth that isn't immediately useful to the customers
| is looking for a new job after his grant dries up.
| friendzis wrote:
| Exactly. In other words, there is a huge difference between
| science as "pursuit of knowledge through thoroughly applied
| scientific method" and science as "product of academic
| process".
|
| Incentive structures make sure that the latter is dominant in
| _published science_.
|
| Even if there was no intentional fudging of data, results and
| interpretations by scientist teams, the results of science as
| a whole could still be _heavily_ (over time) influenced by
| simple biases in selection of grant applications. For example
| if you only fund researches of type "thing X good" and
| dismiss all applications trying to prove "thing X bad", you
| will eventually gather enough evidence for X to appear good,
| regardless of how objectively "good" it is.
| derbOac wrote:
| The other level of problem is that truth in reality means
| consensus. You can argue about what truth is in reality, but
| functionally it means consensus.
|
| So it's not even about what is or is not true, or what is
| recognized as useful in the short term, it's that what
| defines truth at any given time is what is popularly believed
| to be true.
|
| This sounds very flaky but it has real consequences because
| the incentives aren't just to find positive results, it's to
| find positive results that are likely to be accepted by the
| majority of the academic field. This kind of positive
| feedback loop is bound to lead to pressure because science
| almost by definition has to get some things incorrect -- it's
| how progress is made. So people are actively punished for
| going against the grain, or exploring areas where our
| knowledge is limited and therefore prone to lots of negative
| results because we just don't know.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > The other level of problem is that truth in reality means
| consensus
|
| That's the job of the prestigious media. They manufacture
| consent to the masses. They propagate right-think. Again,
| not a conspiracy but simply incentives.
|
| Anyways, there is _objective truth_. Not everything can be
| settled that way though and you're right in that "truth"
| can mean consensus in many instances.
|
| The problem with that is that in many things the dissent is
| tasked with proving claims _untrue_ , because of the
| consensus, rather than those making claim to knowledge
| having to prove it _is true_. There's a lot of this today.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Perceived truth is consensus. But greater truth, reality
| itself, remains true even if not a single person is able to
| perceive it. You can't actually modify reality with wishful
| thinking.
| cb504 wrote:
| For these scientific papers, at a minimum
| truth==reproducibility.
|
| For humanities and social sciences, it could mean
| consensus, but in hard science it is different. You are
| doing experiments that produce data. If someone else
| repeats the experiment, they should get the same data.
|
| In this case, no one could reproduce the results of the
| papers in question.
|
| I wonder how widespread this has become. How many
| scientists, driven to publish, know that it is too
| expensive to reproduce their experiment?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Doping in sports is so much more complicated than most people
| think it is.
|
| For starters there's so many performance enhancing substances,
| and entire underground industries for developing and producing
| them. All of these drugs would be banned by the blanket
| prohibition on unapproved substances, but in practice many of
| them don't have any screening procedures, so won't turn up in
| any tests.
|
| There's also the fact that many performance enhancing
| substances are biologically identical to substances your body
| is naturally producing (like bio-identical testosterone for
| example). The only way to test for these is to test the ratios
| of certain metabolites (with a margin for error to avoid false
| positives). In practice this basically means any athlete can do
| steroid cycles, as long as they are only boosting their test
| levels up to that of a genetically elite outlier.
|
| You also have the therapeutic use exemption, which allows for
| legitimate therapeutic use of banned substances. Testosterone
| replacement therapy is a legitimate therapeutic use of
| steroids, and some sports are known for abusing TUEs for this
| usecase.
|
| Testing for PEDs is way less precise than a lot of people think
| it is, and any motivated athlete can get away with PED use to
| some extent, no matter how much testing you subject them to.
| There's good reason to be suspicious of a lot of athletes. One
| massively suspect category of athlete is all of the ones
| in/near their 40s who somehow manage to maintain physiques as
| good as/better than they had in their early 20s.
| notknifescience wrote:
| I would be very much interested in reading more about this,
| do you have any good articles you could point me to?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| This paper is a bit out of date, but gives a reasonable
| overview of the challenges of testing for testosterone
| supplementation
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2657495/
|
| Paper on challenges of detecting growth hormone
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3830297/
|
| Testing for both of those substances has improved, but
| still leave plenty of room for abuse.
|
| Use of "unknown" or the constant stream newly developed
| substances is naturally not rigorously studied, but here's
| a couple of articles referencing the challenges they pose.
|
| https://thetruthaboutforensicscience.com/undetectable-
| perfor...
|
| https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1955231-undetectable-
| the...
|
| UFC is notorious for testosterone TUEs, but that's mostly
| because they regulate things differently to most other
| sports
|
| https://www.espn.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/10500652/therapeut
| i...
|
| Top flight soccer is another sport that's constantly
| garnering attention for TUEs, but most of the coverage of
| that is speculative, because other than high level
| statistics the TUE process is naturally not very
| transparent (and most of the recent coverage on the topic
| has been replaced by controversy relating to trans
| athletes).
| PleasureBot wrote:
| Depending on the substance and quality, the time it is
| detectable can be as short as 12 hours to a few days. There
| is a reason lots of athletes refer to drug screenings as "IQ
| tests". Only the dumb or careless get caught.
| galenko wrote:
| In my personal, anecdotal experience...
|
| Once you get far enough in ANY sport, you start considering
| tradeoffs between risking long term health and improving
| performance. If you are a competent adult, you can evaluate
| your drivers, consider risks.
|
| But without fail, in ANY competitive sport, you realise that
| you have to risk health in order to achieve that next
| performance tier, there is no other way.
|
| Once you get into that 1-10%(depending on sport) elite level,
| you realise that there is no way you can compete without
| PEDs.
|
| I've participated in (taken myself) and have been a witness
| to this in weightlifting(olympic and strongman), soccer,
| cycling and swimming. Starting young. Real young.
|
| Coaches of different sanity levels are trusted to make the
| right choices and not often questioned by busy or absent
| parents.
|
| Everyone cheers on when medals are won and records are
| broken, without consideration for how it happens.
|
| I personally had no idea I was taking hormone modifiers until
| about 16, it started at 11.
|
| My coach just gave me what he said were vitamins and I never
| questioned it, he was the closest thing to a father I had,
| his authority was absolute.
|
| At 16 I found myself in a hospital yellow as a banana on the
| brink of liver failure, that's when I found out.
|
| Everyone on our team took what the coaches gave. Once a while
| we'd see a parent get into a shouting match with one of the
| coaches about something we didn't understand and that kid
| would never come back again.
|
| Some of the guys I trained with went on to become highly
| recognisable names in their respective sports. One even has a
| supplement brand. Those I've kept in touch with continue PED
| use, that is the price of being at the top of the game.
| Graziano_M wrote:
| > It actually became a contest, not just of bicycling, but of
| doping, because getting away with it was quite difficult and it
| took years for the world of cycling to get good enough
| countermeasures to shift the advantage to non-doping.
|
| Not just a contest of hiding doping, but of winning against
| others who were doping. If everyone is doping, then you could
| argue it's still a fair playing field, just with a higher skill
| ceiling.
| noah_buddy wrote:
| It's not a fair playing field because there were still people
| who did not cheat.
| Graziano_M wrote:
| That's why I said, "If everyone is doping" :)
| optimalsolver wrote:
| But that's not what you were actually implying.
| DrBenCarson wrote:
| As long as they knew others were doping, I would argue it
| was still a fair playing field. The real advantage is in
| others not knowing you are illegally enhancing performance.
| jnsaff2 wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christophe_Bassons
| friendzis wrote:
| > If everyone is doping, then you could argue it's still a
| fair playing field, just with a higher skill ceiling.
|
| No, because now you have at least two contests in parallel:
| the race event for the cyclist and through-the-year "doping
| and not getting caught" for medical/management team.
|
| For example one prominent olympic level swimmer was
| disqualified because they failed to appear for testing
| multiple times. Why would one do that just to come back after
| disqualification?
| johntiger1 wrote:
| You've hit the nail head on. Also applies to China's anti-
| corruption programs. Everyone who achieves any level of
| political power is corrupt, but framing it in an anti-
| corruption campaign allows you to target your political
| enemies.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| No need to single out China. All politics, and guess for
| Academia, can extend to all human organizations, Church,
| School, Government.
| merman wrote:
| You're making the preposterous assertion that all
| countries' politicians are equally corrupt. That needs some
| extraordinary data to support.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Didn't say equal. Just that all 'large' human
| organizations tend towards corruption.
|
| Churches, Governments, Academia. Hierarchies form,
| incentives drift over time and become mismatched with
| original intent. The proof is in history, look at Church
| abuse, Inquisition, look at grade fixing, admissions
| scandals, look at Volkswagen tweaking emissions, look at
| CEO's lying to promote products. Our entire society is
| based on the ebb and flow of some kind of corruption, or
| ebb-flow of Law.
|
| Even today, in America, half the population think that
| the laws themselves are corrupt and should be broken.
| Judges aren't trusted. So who is corrupt if you don't
| have any foundation to judge anything against?
|
| I'm totally against China taking Taiwan, but from a
| 'certain point of view', they have point. It was a part
| of China before the war, and the mainland 'won'. So they
| think of it as unification.
|
| Again. I am totally against China taking Taiwan. Just
| think it is bit more nuanced.
|
| Actually, think we are agreeing.
| merman wrote:
| If there's no need to 'single out' China then there's no
| need to 'single out' doping in cycling, and no need to
| 'single out' this one particular Stanford President
| researcher, etc. The objective of your comment, that I am
| pointing out, is that you are hand-waving corruption in
| Chinese politics away by saying "but what about..."
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| I agree with that. If we hand-wave away all cases, then
| we never tamp them down. Corruption would continue to
| grow.
|
| So, we should call out all cases. Even if there are so
| many cases to cause one to become tired of the fight.
|
| Maybe I was just reacting that in todays world the lines
| have blurred enough that it is sometimes hard to tell if
| you are fighting corruption, or if you have become the
| corruption.
|
| From different points of view both these are correct:
|
| "The US experienced a Coup attempt by a president that
| then did not suffer any consequences for his un-
| constitutional actions"
|
| or
|
| "The President, fighting for the American Way against the
| corrupt deep state government attempted to bypass a fake
| election to continue his quest to root out evil? "
| Georgelemental wrote:
| I know several Tour de France aficionados, who would claim that
| doping remains rampant, they are just better at hiding it now.
| [deleted]
| brailsafe wrote:
| I suppose you could probably also say the same of certain
| housing markets. If the cost to rent or buy a place is
| sufficiently high and the system actively prevents the prices
| ever coming down to a point where people who didn't inherit
| huge sums or came into that money some other way have a chance,
| you might as well do whatever you can because the constraints
| have been laid before you. At a certain point, you're just
| evening the playing field and surviving.
| EvgeniyZh wrote:
| There are at least two problems with this argument. First,
| faking a research in a way that won't be detected is hard,
| especially if aim for high impact paper which probably will be
| studied by others. That's why we hear a lot about fraud in top
| tier venues. Lower ones probably have more problematic
| publications. Second, having fake results won't guarantee you a
| high quality publication, leave alone position in the future.
|
| I can imagine some kind of first order phase transition in
| which the amount of fraudsters becomes so large that self
| correction breaks and instead they start to endorse each other.
| But that'd be evident from the outside, since science will stop
| producing real life results. We're definitely not there yet.
| ramblenode wrote:
| > First, faking a research in a way that won't be detected is
| hard, especially if aim for high impact paper which probably
| will be studied by others.
|
| Fake is a spectrum. Soft faking is easy and
| widespread--"p-hacking" is the polite term.
|
| The stakes for faking it are low because most research is low
| impact, most research is seldom reproduced, and even bad
| research is rarely retracted. For that which is reproduced
| there is plausible deniability--"researcher degrees of
| freedom". Getting a high impact study published is more
| important than having one retracted, so researchers follow
| that incentive structure.
|
| > But that'd be evident from the outside, since science will
| stop producing real life results. We're definitely not there
| yet.
|
| Have you taken a look at the biosciences, social sciences,
| and medicine? Basic research hasn't been reliable for
| decades.
| EvgeniyZh wrote:
| > The stakes for faking it are low because most research is
| low impact ... Getting a high impact study published
|
| That's contradictory. For low impact studies you can fake
| whatever you want, because nobody really cares. That
| probably wouldn't promote your career either tho.
| Publishing bunch of organic semiconductor papers in Nature
| and Science will promote your career, but won't hold.
| That's the point.
|
| > Have you taken a look at the biosciences, social
| sciences, and medicine? Basic research hasn't been reliable
| for decades.
|
| Not deeply, but I surely can come up with bio/med research
| with real life applications that appeared in last 2-3
| decades. Say mRNA vaccines?
| Kbelicius wrote:
| > That's contradictory.
|
| What is contradictory in a claim that most research is
| low impact thus easier to fake while the incentives for
| publishing high impact research skews to publishing
| bad/fake papers since publishing is far more important
| then having a paper retracted?
|
| > Not deeply, but I surely can come up with bio/med
| research with real life applications that appeared in
| last 2-3 decades. Say mRNA vaccines?
|
| Nobody said that all research is faked.
| EvgeniyZh wrote:
| Ok, not contradictory, it is just two claims unrelated
| both between themselves and to my original claim. Yes,
| low impact research is easy to fake. Yes, there is
| incentive to publish fake high-impact papers. Yes, it is
| hard to create and publish fake high-impact impact
| research.
| kortilla wrote:
| The entire fields of sociology, social psychology,
| economics, literature, theological studies, etc are all
| low impact. Even if you get in the best journals, it's
| high impact for your career but low impact to society so
| it will get very little scrutiny apart from the tiny
| slice of academia you compete with.
| EvgeniyZh wrote:
| Again, I know that academia is very different among
| fields, but usually high impact for career ~ high impact
| for (sub)field, meaning people will want to look at your
| data and possibly try to replicate it. Outside scrutiny
| for science is extremely rare anyway
| NovaDudely wrote:
| It doesn't even need to be deliberately faked data but more
| data published without much due process to ensure it
| validity.
|
| I have had about three people working in the research fields
| that have used the term, off the record of course, "Publish
| or perish".
|
| Get it out the door, try to get the funding and hopefully if
| it works out, solve the issues before it becomes a problem.
| jvans wrote:
| It doesn't have to be outright fraud. I imagine the vast
| majority of manipulations are extremely subtle. Intentional
| selection bias, multiple hypothesis testing without
| correction or reporting the failed hypotheses(p hacking).
| Most of these would improve your chances of finding important
| results significantly and be almost impossible to detect
| EvgeniyZh wrote:
| For the first argument I can't really speak beyond my field
| (physics, or specifically condensed matter physics), where
| I think it's fairly hard to be subtle. Often it's partial
| data presentation which allows for inverse Occam razor [1]
| (proposing fancy explaination instead of a simple one),
| which is why full data publication requirement are
| important (and seem to happen more).
|
| In smaller sub (sub)fields sometimes fraud becomes large
| enough to self-sustain, like it happened with Majoranas
| [2,3] but even that kind of self-corrected. [1]
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.08284 [2]
| https://twitter.com/spinespresso/status/1503352928656138241
| [3] https://espressospin.org/2022/11/17/the-fallen-angel-
| particl...
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _without reporting the failed hypotheses(p hacking)._
|
| This one is so subtle, it's probable that many of the
| people doing it don't even realize they're doing something
| wrong.
| [deleted]
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I don't think this kind of fraud is even remotely close in
| scale to the cycling doping you mention.
|
| My primary reason for believing this is that as a scientist
| myself, I've never done it, and none of my coauthors has ever
| proposed to do something like that. I have seen other kinds of
| fraud (e.g. ghost authorship) but not result manipulation.
|
| But of course, If I were a fraudster myself I would also say
| that I've never done it :)
|
| So a more general argument: scientific "doping" is just not as
| straightforward as cycling doping. In cycling, it's clear that
| if you don't get caught (and have no scruples) you benefit from
| doping, it makes you stronger.
|
| In science, you first need an idea that looks
| original/promising, and then you do the experiments and see if
| the idea works or not. This kind of "doping" will only help if
| you (1) are good at generating ideas, but (2) these ideas often
| don't work. At least in my field, this is possible but far from
| the most common situation to be. And in other situations, there
| is not much benefit to faking results.
| noobermin wrote:
| >My primary reason for believing this is that as a scientist
| myself, I've never done it, and none of my coauthors has ever
| proposed to do something like that.
|
| Are you sure? Also a) how far along are you and b) how far
| from actual research work are you at this point?
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I'm a full professor and PI of several projects. So sadly
| more management than actual hands-on research lately, but
| I've gone through all stages, of course.
|
| And yes, I have more than 100 papers and in their making I
| haven't fabricated data or seen anyone do so. If there is
| fake data in any of them, it would be because someone
| included it behind my back. But I doubt it's the case, as
| during the course of my career we tried various things that
| didn't work and we just moved on to other experiments. I've
| never had a student or collaborator even suggest "let's
| just edit the data and publish it". The most that we have
| done is to try to cast negative results in a positive light
| to make them publishable ("the results are promising...",
| "the results are mixed but show improvements for some
| dataset..."), but without touching the data or saying
| anything factually incorrect.
| jimkoen wrote:
| > if you (1) are good at generating ideas
|
| I have been joking with my former boss (who is a professor)
| about how easy it is to come up with good ideas. We each have
| five to six One Billion Dollar ideas before breakfast, and
| another 1-2 while in the shower! /s
|
| Coming up with ideas is _ridicolously_ easy, executing on
| them is the hard part. If you're a seasoned researcher, it
| shouldn't be hard to guess at the "meta" of your field,
| you're probably aware of promising ideas discussed among your
| colleagues. What if you faked results, proving one of these
| ideas?
|
| And the bar for cheating is _suprisingly_ low. I'm not a
| researcher myself, but I've experienced how my work is torn
| apart in peer review. But if you're dealing with data,
| apparently no one makes sure to actually check it before
| approval.[0][1]
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/d2Tm3Yx4HWI?t=846 (analysis on the
| original data from the Francesca Gino scandal, which already
| looks suspicious without statistical analysis)
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/KsSuhP60qnI (faked data from the Hendrik
| Schoen scandal at Bell Labs, as long as you make outrageous
| claims no one can verify, you can continue to publish in top
| journals)
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| I suppose this is heavily discipline-specific. In my
| specific subfield of CS, the execution is often a Python
| program or bunch of scripts that can be (and often are)
| coded by an undergrad if given enough guidance on what
| exactly is wanted. And then of course the way of presenting
| it in the paper, choosing which data to show, etc. but
| cheating doesn't help much there. The hard part in my view
| is coming up with _what_ Python program should be written
| (i.e. coming up with a relevant algorithm, experiment,
| evaluation methodology, etc.).
|
| I can see how in other fields, e.g. biomedical, execution
| could be more challenging and ideas more plentiful.
|
| Anyway, I don't think ideas (read: good ones, because
| obviously anyone can have nonsense ideas) can be a
| commodity in any field. It is quite widely accepted that,
| e.g., when applying for an ERC grant (the highest-regarded
| individual research grants in Europe), having a good idea
| is as important as the CV if not more. This wouldn't be the
| case if coming up with good ideas were so trivial.
| slingnow wrote:
| You make it sound so straightforward and simple.
|
| > and then you do the experiments and see if the idea works
| or not
|
| The problem is "if the idea works or not" can be very fuzzy.
| With a little p-hacking, anything can work! If nothing in
| your original data/experiment supports your hypothesis, you
| can just cherry pick some part of it that gives "significant"
| results.
| alijrtaliw wrote:
| I (and others before and after me) filed complaints that my
| advisor at UT Austin was falsifying data. University ignored me
| and gave him tenure. It is commonplace and admin doesn't care
| as long as it doesn't affect the endowment.
| [deleted]
| canjobear wrote:
| Are you willing to say who it is?
| bigfoot675 wrote:
| Yeah I'm also curious
| azuriten wrote:
| > There was at least one year's Tour de France in which all but
| one participant were later found to have been doping. In other
| words, you didn't get to that level of that competitive
| activity, if you didn't cheat, because it wasn't possible to
| outperform people with such a significant advantage.
|
| This is not true. Even during the 1904 Tour de France where 9
| people were disqualifed because of, among other actions,
| illegal use of cars or trains [1] - 27 riders finished the
| race.
|
| Tour de France in the modern era has up to 180+ competitors
| lining up, and there hasn't been a case of 100+ riders being
| disqualified for doping.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1904_Tour_de_France#Disqualifi...
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Thank you for the correction, I either heard wrong back then,
| or misremembered. I think the analogy/logic still applies,
| though. Actually, this suggests even more strongly that the
| higher their position in a competitive field, the more likely
| they are doping...
| rukuu001 wrote:
| Yeah not the whole peleton, but most of Armstrong's main
| rivals right? Like Contador etc. (I know his test was
| contentious).
| areyousure wrote:
| Indeed, the claim needs to be adjusted to be correct. One of
| the worst recent years was 2005: https://en.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/Doping_at_the_Tour_de_France#2...
|
| There, the claim is that _of the top 10 finishers_ , all but
| one participant were either stripped of result in _that race_
| or failed tests /were sanctioned for doping in another race.
|
| (The remaining participant, originally #8 Cadel Evans, was a
| documented client of Michele Ferrari.)
| tfyoung wrote:
| A one-off consultation prior to his road racing career to
| see if he the right kind of fitness for road. I don't think
| the association should be used to tarnish Cadel without
| further evidence.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Unbelievable, no wonder people don't trust the science!
| scrum-treats wrote:
| There's a reason for maintaining separation of corporate
| capitalism and science/academia. People are persuaded by the
| almighty dollar and the prestige. Before you know it academic
| institutions and "prestigious" scientists are pushing
| propaganda, for kickbacks.
|
| While it may be difficult at times to maintain ethics and
| integrity, it's always worth the commitment. Always.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Thankfully Daddy Business always tells us when he lied to us.
|
| Science is self-correcting. Not always right. This is part of
| what self-correction looks like. It beats all known
| alternatives.
| stuckinhell wrote:
| Science didn't self-correct here. The checks and balance in
| the scientific systems failed so badly, a student journalist
| uncovered the fraud. The problem is that Science has become
| in your words "Daddy" Business.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Oh, I see. Was the fraud revealed during discovery? Or was
| it a deathbed confession? No. But it was revealed, and
| championed by an undergraduate journalist.
|
| It's important to track the provenance of ideas, and Theo
| Baker wasn't the first person to identify the falsified
| data. He has done _great_ work keeping Stanford from
| burying the story, but he isn 't Elizabeth Bik, combing
| through old Science articles looking for duplication.
|
| And now the papers have been retracted, and the responsible
| party faces laughably trivial consequences, all things
| considered. A self-correcting system isn't going to get it
| right all the time. The papers were under the aegis of a
| powerful man, so it's not surprising that it took some time
| for them to be corrected.
| momirlan wrote:
| so much for "this is science, anything saying otherwise is
| conspiracy".
| mzs wrote:
| the 2009 paper repeatedly referred to in this article:
| https://doi.org/10.1038/nature07767
| d136o wrote:
| So... what's going to happen now with all the behavioral science
| people and their fabulous data
| fdsafdsava wrote:
| Still a member of the national academy of sciences.
|
| https://www.nasonline.org/member-directory/members/20010006....
| jpcfl wrote:
| Trust the science (TM).
| jononomo wrote:
| Doesn't it seem like this kind of fraud should result in prison
| sentences? I'm so sick of frauds in academia. I really wish the
| elites in our society still took the idea of Hell seriously.
|
| Also: "will resign effective August 31"??? Shouldn't this guy be
| locked out of his office, have his laptop confiscated, and be
| banned from campus immediately?
| [deleted]
| tptacek wrote:
| That depends on what percentage of grant money you believe
| should be spent on extra administration and ass-covering, which
| is the standard institutional response to liability. Bear in
| mind: a healthy chunk of grant money is already taken as a rake
| by the sponsoring university.
|
| Again, the optimal amount of research misconduct isn't zero!
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Absolutely, but given the magnitude of the impacts, I'd like to
| go after white collar crime first.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Absolutely, but given the magnitude of the impacts, I'd
| like to go after white collar crime first.
|
| This is literally white collar crime.
|
| Like most white collar crime, it's not reported in "crime
| statistics", and it may not be prosecuted for any number of
| reasons, but it's literally the definition of white collar
| crime.
| londons_explore wrote:
| A transition period for a leadership role tends to be a good
| plan, especially when the misconduct of the old leader is
| rather tangential to the role (ie. he wasn't caught buying
| Ferraris with university funds).
| aliwrjtliawerj wrote:
| [flagged]
| ke88y wrote:
| _> Doesn 't it seem like this kind of fraud should result in
| prison sentences?_
|
| It depends on the nature of the fraud.
|
| I'm no fan of academia (see my post history), but this has to
| be close to the bottom of my list of priorities. The last car
| salesman I interacted with probably deserves more jail time
| than even the most unscrupulous academic (and the car salesman
| actually did commit a crime, but prosecution would be highly
| surprising). Medical and drug insurance is another case where
| there is systematic, intentional, and legal fraud literally
| killing people every day. The insurance case in particular is
| pernicious and full of literally deadly Catch-22 "tricks". See
| also all the obviously criminal web3 stuff that will definitely
| hit statute of limitations before any LE/prosecutor finds the
| time to investigate and prosecute.
|
| Most fraudsters don't see any legal punishment because LE and
| prosecutor time is so limited relative to the amount of fraud.
| And in the worst cases because the fraudsters have so much
| money and power that even obvious bullshit is at least de facto
| not criminal (see insurance).
|
| So, anyways. Should it be criminal? Yes. Is it criminal? IDK.
| Probably somehow. Is it where finite resources should be spent?
| Not usually; IMO there are far worse types of fraud where the
| people's LE+legal+legislative resources should be spent.
|
| _> Also: "will resign effective August 31"??? Shouldn't this
| guy be locked out of his office, have his laptop confiscated,
| and be banned from campus immediately?_
|
| Conjecture: there is probably a lot of "hand-off" work to be
| done. Excluding my first two jobs, where I was a junior/mid-
| level IC, I have always been asked to stay a least a month
| longer than the typical 2 weeks to handle hand-offs.
|
| I guess the best we can hope for is that the last month of
| employment is living hell as he has to attend a bunch of hand-
| off meetings as a totally disgraced academic/leader.
| EMCymatics wrote:
| >Doesn't it seem like this kind of fraud should result in
| prison sentences?
|
| It should but it probably wont.
| jojobaskins wrote:
| I remember a student who doctored his whole CV to get into
| Harvard (and win awards) was sent to probation:
| https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2010/12/16/harvard-
| wheele... Although his case was more egregious.
| amelius wrote:
| And pay back his salary ...
| Method-X wrote:
| Definitely. And on a broader note, white collar crime
| effectively having zero repercussions is the main reason so
| many of our institutions are failing.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| The prison system wouldn't be able to handle the influx.
| nerdchum wrote:
| He prob had millions in government grants to write those
| papers.
|
| Theres no accountability.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| You know barely any of the money goes to him personally
| right? Grants aren't lottery tickets.
| nerdchum wrote:
| Ive worked in government labs and at universities.
|
| The grant money literally pays their salary.
|
| That aside... the amount of ways to commit corruption are
| endless...
|
| The amount of conferences they had in Italy and Malibu and
| places like that...
|
| The hot research assistant that never showed up to the lab
| but got paid.
|
| The endless tech project that took a decade and millions of
| dollars to write a simple LMS because their buddy ran the
| LMS company.
|
| The showing up at 10Am and leaving at 3 with a long lunch
| and working 20 hour work weeks.
|
| The university creating a team devoted to hacking the grant
| process.
|
| The elite university people in charge of the funding giving
| their other elite university alumni preferential treatment.
|
| Zero diversity labs because scientists hire their buddies.
| You can literally walk through university research
| buildings and see all Indian Labs, all Chinese labs, etc.
|
| The waste is massive and insane with our tax dollars. Its
| literally white collar welfare. And it happens everywhere
| and theres no accountability.
|
| Its a giant scam wrapped in the virtue signaling of
| altruistic science.
|
| It needs to end.
| ke88y wrote:
| _> The showing up at 10Am and leaving at 3 with a long
| lunch and working 20 hour work weeks._
|
| Mostly this.
|
| The conferences honestly aren't that much of a perk,
| relative to the pay differential, at least in STEM
| fields.
|
| The "hot research asst" thing was common in the past but
| died down significantly with #MeToo (still a lot of
| egotistical creeps ofc).
|
| But the amount of general laziness dressed up as busyness
| in academia is astounding. Most professors retire in
| place some time in their early to mid 30s.
|
| The solution is to end higher ed carve-outs in federal
| grant awards. Let anyone qualified apply for and receive
| NSF funds. Stop tying tax dollars to university
| affiliation.
| nerdchum wrote:
| > The solution is to end higher ed carve-outs in federal
| grant awards. Let anyone qualified apply for and receive
| NSF funds. Stop tying tax dollars to university
| affiliation.
|
| I think this is infinitely better than the current system
| of just giving money to scientists.
|
| And it's a step in the right direction towards
| eliminating government funding for science altogether.
| [deleted]
| nradov wrote:
| The entire field of Alzheimer's Disease research has been a mess
| for years. None of it has led to really effective clinical
| treatments. I get the sense that many researchers are feeling
| pressure to show positive results in order to justify continued
| funding, and at the margins some make unethical choices.
| norwalkbear wrote:
| This is why fraud in science especially when funded by taxpayer
| money in important fields deserves PRISON.
|
| Damn my father has Alzheimer's, so this really hurts deep.
| outside415 wrote:
| [flagged]
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > 7 orders of magnitude more effective at crossing the
| blood brain barrier
|
| In rats. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/1210
| 11090653.h...
| outside415 wrote:
| Human trials are underway. I've been taking it for 2
| months. It's very powerful. If it were my relative I
| would try everything (lions mane, fasting, dihexa, etc).
| Neurodegenerative diseases are horrifying. If you're
| waiting for human clinical trials of the peptides that
| are up and coming it will be too late for people already
| starting to decline to benefit.
| outside415 wrote:
| https://www.alzforum.org/therapeutics/fosgonimeton
| a-dub wrote:
| it's a known issue and science in general is improving on the
| reproducibility front.
|
| i think that technological complexity kind of snuck up on
| many fields and it has taken time for the very competitive
| research culture to adapt.
|
| releasing data was a complicated proposition back in the
| 2000s, where today more and more are appreciating the need
| for it.
|
| i think the real solution to all these problems comes from
| adjusting the funding model. there should be more money
| available for those who are willing to do the less exciting
| work of completely reproducing pivotal results from scratch.
| digging wrote:
| > This is why fraud in science especially when funded by
| taxpayer money in important fields deserves PRISON.
|
| Oof, I couldn't disagree more. As a society we should be
| moving away from punitive measures and toward systemic
| reform. I don't think the prospect of prison time is going to
| deter people from playing the game they feel they have to in
| order to get research funding.
| MadcapJake wrote:
| I couldn't _agree_ more with _you_! The problem is in
| either the pressure to remain funded or the pressure to not
| admit defeat. Or a mixture of the two. We need to work on
| removing those roadblocks. This could be only the tip of
| the iceberg and harsher punishment is only going to drive
| people to get better at obfuscation /manipulation.
| Slava_Propanei wrote:
| [dead]
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _fraud in science especially when funded by taxpayer money
| in important fields deserves PRISON_
|
| Yes, but it must meet a strict standard of intent. Jailing
| scientists based on the content of their work is generally
| risky. If you create specific areas where prosecution is
| likely, you're more likely to dissuade research than increase
| quality.
|
| The present problem appears to be the fraud has a low
| probability of being caught. Improving that might have better
| pay-offs than deepening consequences for the minority who get
| found out.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| There's options between jail and nothing, like fines on the
| institution, bans on receiving grants etc.
|
| As for low probability of being caught, nah, academic fraud
| gets caught all the time. There's so much out there it's
| like shooting fish in a barrel. Elizabeth Bik primarily
| goes after biomedical studies that can be spotted via image
| analysis and has said:
|
| _"Science has a huge problem: 100s (1000s?) of science
| papers with obvious photoshops that have been reported, but
| that are all swept under the proverbial rug, with no action
| or only an author-friendly correction ... There are dozens
| of examples where journals rather accept a clean (better
| photoshopped?) figure redo than asking the authors for a
| thorough explanation."_
|
| University vice presidents are almost always reluctant to
| get involved, and is that so surprising when fraud is so
| widespread that the President of Stanford is caught doing
| it? All you do by exposing fraud is make enemies. Theo
| Baker is an undergrad studying CS so has many options
| outside of academia but if he didn't, would he really have
| shot the king like this?
|
| Enforce sanctions against the people who are so lazy about
| fraud they get caught by random volunteers on Twitter,
| _then_ worry about how to find the rest.
| kansface wrote:
| > bans on receiving grants etc
|
| Bans on grants, or the government could claw back the
| money. In either case, the universities would be
| incentivized to never recognize fraud ... which is maybe
| no different actually.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| I disagree entirely. Scientists are highly trained
| professionals.
| wredue wrote:
| There is no connection between punitive actions and reduction
| of the causal behaviour.
|
| Fraud in science is a problem in that the very small minority
| of actors that conduct themselves unethically has had massive
| reach with groups that seek to discredit science.
|
| 20 years ago, being science illiterate was seen as bad for
| you. Today, 50% of us believe that being science illiterate
| is a positive trait in people seeking presidency.
|
| Jail or not, these people are causing significant public
| issues, so I'll have to agree. It's not going to reduce it,
| but still, fuck them for the damage they've wrought.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'm sorry for you and your father, but research fraud didn't
| cause his Alzheimers. It sucks that there is no treatment or
| cure but that is the case with a lot of diseases.
|
| I think something like fines equivalent to the amounts of the
| grants for the institution, and professional censure and a
| ban from working in grant-funded research for the researcher,
| would be more effective and appropriate than prison.
| some_thoughts wrote:
| But research fraud does delay finding treatment. How many
| hours of wasted time chasing dead ends.
| btilly wrote:
| In the last 25 years, tens of billions almost all spent
| chasing the amyloid beta hypothesis, with other theories
| getting the short end of the stick.
|
| It didn't start changing until outside researchers wrote
| a major editorial about how bad it was in _Nature_.
|
| The biggest alternative is the infection hypothesis -
| amyloid beta is left by our immune reaction to diseases
| that manage to get into the brain. If that idea had been
| pursued for 25 years, we might actually know by now what
| the real connections are with HSV1 (warts), gum disease,
| and so on.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That presumes there is a treatment, and the proposal to
| research it would have been funded, and it would have
| been found to be effective. But yes, research dollars are
| somewhat of a fixed pie, and there are always people who
| don't get a slice.
| [deleted]
| jeremyjh wrote:
| That research fraud cost the public billions and set the
| field back more than a decade. Sad, huh?
|
| I think being flayed alive would be more appropriate than
| prison.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Well most of the problems probably come from "Well this
| expirement was inconclusive but surely this mechanism is real
| and is the cause so I will just be a little selective in my
| data so it won't get dropped"
|
| And after six iterations of this it just never pans out. Real
| replication is whether you can reliably build on top of a
| previous study.
| dwrodri wrote:
| I really think there needs to be some deep reexamination of the
| current way we quanitfy the value of research output in the
| academic world. I don't have the time or energy to develop a full
| argument in favor of an alternative replacement, but I'll do my
| best to share a "cut down" version.
|
| Some of the biggest problems with the current system are:
|
| * Peer Review has its share of problems[1][2][3] that create
| horrible second order effects, especially among those pursuing
| PhDs[4]
|
| * Elsevier, Nature, Science/AAAS and others perform rent-seeking
| behavior to the extent where I think it's worth asking whether
| they hinder the funding and dissemination of good science more
| than they help. As a personal aside, I always found it very off-
| putting that DeepMind regularly publishes in Nature in Science,
| despite the fact that outside of AlphaFold, their work often has
| little overlap with the readership that typically frequents these
| journals.
|
| Personally, I am of the opinion that platforms like Semantic
| Scholar, arXiv and OpenReview are doing a better job of promoting
| open and transparent academic research with improved
| accessibility to both the public and the researchers doing good
| work.
|
| Given the power of being mentored by great scientists, it makes
| sense to have filtering processes which concentrate great
| researchers in a small amount of schools. My point is that if
| there is too little oversight, these institutions become
| incentivized to all but encourage bad behavior in order to
| maintain their image. We need systems which encourage MORE
| transparency into the process of creating science and MORE
| accessibility because an important part of scientific research is
| it's uncertainty.
|
| Tools like arXiv, Semantic Scholar, and OpenReview are all steps
| in the right direction, and it would be good to promote the
| useage of these tools outside of their current userbase as I
| think they provide a system for people to observe science more
| easily, and for important parts of the research process to be
| accessed by all.
|
| 1: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/115231/why-
| is-p...
|
| 2: https://blog.neurips.cc/2021/12/08/the-
| neurips-2021-consiste...
|
| 3: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-
| abstract/19498...
|
| 4: https://medium.com/@tnvijayk/potential-organized-fraud-in-
| ac...
| throwawaywww wrote:
| [flagged]
| jl6 wrote:
| Wikipedia discusses the reliability of academic sources here[0],
| advising "extreme caution" when using primary research papers,
| preferring reviews.
|
| This incident is a case in point, and I wish media wouldn't rush
| to publicize papers until they have been through much more
| extensive validation, replication and review. It's especially
| worrying when primary medical research is enthusiastically rushed
| into the hands of doctors many years ahead of the systematic
| reviews that temper them.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Reliable_sources#Som...
| swyx wrote:
| _looks nervously at the arxiv culture in AI..._
| [deleted]
| whimsicalism wrote:
| I think publication of code culture in AI mitigates this
| relatively well compared to other fields, but it is getting
| strained recently.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Hello I work for Hubris Ventures and noticed you had AI in
| your comment. Are you interested in funding?
| klabb3 wrote:
| Hello I work for Hype Bank and noticed you had venture in
| your comment. Are you interested in some cheap loans?
| zeroCalories wrote:
| I don't think there is a lot wrong with doctors, or specialists
| getting hold of individual or preprint papers. Sometimes
| they're the best you have when you need to make decisions.
|
| I think the problems start when you have a layman trying to
| understand a topic. You can find all kinds of papers and
| results with contradicting evidence, so you need foundational
| knowledge to interpret them.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| "doctor" is more lay of a title than many think imo
| zeroCalories wrote:
| Doctors vary but they're still the best at what they do,
| which is deciding on a treatment given limited information.
| tremon wrote:
| In my ideal world, they shouldn't be doing that at all.
| They should be _advising_ on treatments and performing
| said treatments, not deciding on them.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| My understanding is that in the U.S a patient always has
| the right to refuse treatment. The only power a Doctor
| might have is to deny a treatment, but that seems
| reasonable from a positive/negative rights perspective.
| But I get it, you and the other poster are trying to seed
| doubt about vaccines.
| tremon wrote:
| _you and the other poster are trying to seed doubt about
| vaccines_
|
| WTF? How did you get that from what I wrote? Are you
| under the impression that individual doctors decide on
| which vaccines to give to which patient?
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| I think a bigger problem (especially if you think ordinary
| people shouldn't be entitled to their own opinions), is when
| people advocate for science to have the final say on all
| matters of public policy. Especially when so many people
| consider any form of skepticism towards scientific findings
| to be some sort of heresy.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| What else should we depend on, vibes? Even the claim
| "scientific findings aren't reliable" is a claim that can
| only be confirmed through science. Science isn't an
| exclusive institution, everyone is welcome to participate.
| But a preprint + conspiratorial thinking isn't a substitute
| for good arguments.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| > What else should we depend on, vibes?
|
| Well the purpose of public policy is to serve the will
| and preferences of the people, so I'd suggest we should
| rely on our democratic processes to have the final say on
| all matters of public policy.
|
| > Even the claim "scientific findings aren't reliable" is
| a claim that can only be confirmed through science.
|
| This is complete nonsense. Anybody can point out the
| flaws in any claim made by science, or demonstrate a
| reason for why something might be false. Even a freshman
| CompSci student with a side interest in journalism.
| Perhaps scientists will only accept their findings being
| falsified by appropriately qualified people who follow
| whatever formal procedures they deem appropriate, but who
| cares? If I were to read a study that made some wild
| claims that were barely supported at all by the data
| gathered from their clearly flawed experiments, then I'm
| welcome to draw my own opinion that "that study seems
| like bs to me", and it's not necessary for me to have
| that opinion validated by any scientific process or
| institution.
|
| > Science isn't an exclusive institution, everyone is
| welcome to participate.
|
| This is also nonsense. Public discussions on science are
| extensively gatekept to only allowing the views of "the
| experts" and people who agree with "the experts". A non-
| expert challenging the claims made by an expert is
| misinformation, and should be fact-checked and flagged
| with a disclaimer, or removed from the discussion
| entirely.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| > Well the purpose of public policy is to serve the will
| and preferences of the people, so I'd suggest we should
| rely on our democratic processes to have the final say on
| all matters of public policy.
|
| Policy in the U.S is decided through democracy. But that
| begs the question, how should voters decide how to vote?
| Unless your belief is that vibes are valid, then it
| should be science.
|
| > This is complete nonsense...
|
| And it seems like that is your position. If you think
| there is widespread systemic error in science, I got bad
| news for you about vibes.
|
| > This is also nonsense. Public discussions on science
| are extensively gatekept to only allowing the views of
| "the experts" and people who agree with "the experts". A
| non-expert challenging the claims made by an expert is
| misinformation, and should be fact-checked and flagged
| with a disclaimer, or removed from the discussion
| entirely.
|
| Have you considered that people get fact checked because
| they say some wild things without good evidence? Do you
| not care that people can just make things up?
| vorpalhex wrote:
| What are the actual papers?
| entrepy123 wrote:
| TL;DR: References [1-3] further below are the direct answer to
| your question, "What are the actual papers?" (the "3 papers"
| referenced in the submission title; those that it is said that
| Tessier-Lavigne will retract). The PubMed links are as follows:
|
| - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10399920/
|
| - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11239160/
|
| - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15510105/
|
| To elaborate:
|
| From [0], "...To date, all three of these papers (Cell '99,
| Science '01 Binding, Science '01 Silencing) remain
| published....Dr. Tessier-Lavigne has stated to the Panel that
| he intends to retract all three papers."
|
| Also from [0], "As to the five reviewed papers where Dr.
| Tessier-Lavigne was a principal author...Specifically, a group
| of three papers contain images that are the result of
| manipulation of research data (Cell '99, Science '01 Binding,
| Science '01 Silencing)...A fourth primary paper also contains
| images (which Dr. Tessier-Lavigne did not personally prepare)
| that indicate manipulation of research data (Nature '04)....The
| Panel understands that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne now intends to
| retract at least three publications on which he is a principal
| author".
|
| For the four papers named in the quotes above, citations and
| links appear below [1-4]. I'd suggest reading [0] (as linked
| from OP's article) for more details. There are other papers
| discussed in [0], too. [0]
| https://boardoftrustees.stanford.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/sites/5/2023/07/Scientific-Panel-Final-
| Report.pdf [1] Cell '99: Hong K, Hinck L, Nishiyama M,
| Poo MM, Tessier-Lavigne M, Stein E. A ligand-gated association
| between cytoplasmic domains of UNC5 and DCC family receptors
| converts netrin-induced growth cone attraction to repulsion.
| Cell. 1999;97(7):927-941. doi:10.1016/s0092-8674(00)80804-1,
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10399920/ [2] Science '01
| Binding: Stein E, Zou Y, Poo M, Tessier-Lavigne M. Binding of
| DCC by netrin-1 to mediate axon guidance independent of
| adenosine A2B receptor activation. Science.
| 2001;291(5510):1976-1982. doi:10.1126/science.1059391,
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11239160/ [3] Science '01
| Silencing: Stein E, Tessier-Lavigne M. Hierarchical
| organization of guidance receptors: silencing of netrin
| attraction by slit through a Robo/DCC receptor complex.
| Science. 2001;291(5510):1928-1938. doi:10.1126/science.1058445,
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11239147/ [4] Nature '04:
| Lu X, Le Noble F, Yuan L, et al. The netrin receptor UNC5B
| mediates guidance events controlling morphogenesis of the
| vascular system. Nature. 2004;432(7014):179-186.
| doi:10.1038/nature03080,
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15510105/```
| sva_ wrote:
| Here's a list if you scroll down and also the altered images
| with annotations. The photoshopping is pretty brazen.
|
| https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/29/stanford-presidents-res...
| capableweb wrote:
| > Today, the Stanford board's special committee released the
| law firm's and scientific panels' findings, which are based on
| more than 50,000 documents, interviews with over 50 people, and
| input from forensic science experts. Its report finds that for
| seven papers on which Tessier-Lavigne was a middle, or
| secondary, author, he bears no responsibility for any data
| manipulation. The primary authors have taken responsibility and
| in many cases are issuing corrections.
|
| > But the 22-page report (plus appendices) found "serious
| flaws" in all five papers on which Tessier-Lavigne is
| corresponding or senior author: the 1999 Cell paper, the two
| 2001 Science papers, a 2004 Nature paper, and the 2009 Nature
| paper from Genentech. In four of these studies, the
| investigation found "apparent manipulation of research data by
| others." For example, in one case, a single blot from the 2009
| Cell paper was used in three different experiments, and a blot
| from that paper was reused in one of the 2001 Science papers.
|
| > The 2004 Nature paper also contains manipulated images, the
| report found. Although the report says the allegations of fraud
| and a cover-up at Genentech involving the 2009 Nature paper
| were "mistaken"--people likely conflated the fraudulent paper a
| year earlier, and Genentech scientists' problems replicating
| the work, it suggests--that paper showed "a lack of rigor" that
| falls below standards.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/stanford-president-t...
|
| PubPeer alsoshows which papers they've been involved with that
| has "Errata" or "Expression of Concern":
| https://pubpeer.com/search?q=authors%3A+%22tessier-lavigne%2...
| akhayam wrote:
| Not sure which ones, but here is the whole history of Marc's
| research publications:
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Marc...
| drakythe wrote:
| I haven't found a specific list, but did find this article with
| a bunch more details https://www.statnews.com/2023/07/19/marc-
| tessier-lavigne-sta...
| dcsommer wrote:
| [flagged]
| mvdtnz wrote:
| This isn't Reddit. If you have something to say, say it, but
| drive-by content-free comments like this aren't appropriate
| here.
| panarky wrote:
| If you have evidence of scientific misconduct then show what
| you've got. If not, the culture-war bullshit is off-topic.
| gnicholas wrote:
| She repeatedly misquoted research in her papers. This has
| been well documented. Here's a comprehensive critique of her,
| by Stanford math professor Brian Conrad: https://sites.google
| .com/view/publiccommentsonthecmf/?ref=st...
| panarky wrote:
| The investigation into these allegations was terminated
| after finding no wrongdoing.
| gnicholas wrote:
| There was a previous investigation, years ago, which
| failed to dismiss her as a tenured professor (which is
| very difficult to do -- as we've seen with MTL). But the
| document I linked to is from 2023, related specifically
| to her misrepresentations in the CMF. That has not had a
| hearing, AFAIK. If you have more information, please
| share it!
|
| I would be surprised if misstatements in such a document
| (which is not published research) could lead to a tenured
| professor being fired. But I would welcome an
| investigation by the Daily into the issue, which could
| turn up evidence of other misrepresentations in contexts
| that are more likely to receive administrative scrutiny.
| She surely has freedom of speech, as a professor. But
| purposely and persistently misquoting research is
| precisely the sort of thing that professors can be
| punished for.
| eesmith wrote:
| I tried looking at that document. It's pages upon pages
| of nitpicky detail causing my eyes to glaze over.
|
| Better would be something which points out the scientific
| misconduct. Otherwise it comes across like a Gish gallop.
|
| As an example, I picked one of the documents - https://dr
| ive.google.com/file/d/17O123ENTxvZOjXTnOMNRDtHQAOj... -
| and found a comment that intrigued me:
|
| > In some places, the CMF has no research-based evidence,
| as when it gives the advice "Do not include homework . .
| . as any part of grading. Homework is one of the most
| inequitable practices of education." The research on
| homework is complex and mixed, and does not support such
| blanket statements.
|
| I stuck "homework inequitable" in Google Scholar and
| found
| https://scholarworks.calstate.edu/downloads/8910k087s
| saying "Based on the literature, it is apparent that
| homework is not equitable for students from low
| socioeconomic backgrounds. It is important to mention
| that some studies claimed a positive correlation with
| homework and learning outcomes, but those studies don't
| take socioeconomic status into account."
|
| There's a book from 2000 on the topic, "The end of
| homework : how homework disrupts families, overburdens
| children, and limits learning", at https://archive.org/de
| tails/isbn_9780807042182/page/n9/mode/... and "Rethinking
| Homework: Best Practices That Support Diverse Needs" with
| a second edition in 2018.
|
| This all makes me wonder _why_ doesn 't the research-
| based evidence support this statement?
|
| If it isn't "one of the most", what are the most?
|
| Or is the issue that the author doesn't understand the
| topic enough, so think it's too complex for anyone else
| to understand?
|
| > the document I linked to is from 2023
|
| That's an unfair characterization. While parts of it are
| from 2023, https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2022/05
| /05/california... shows the document was there in 2022.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _That 's an unfair characterization. While parts of it
| are from 2023, https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/202
| 2/05/05/california... shows the document was there in
| 2022._
|
| The document was edited over the last year or so, as the
| CMF was released and edited. But the investigation
| referenced by another commenter took place way back in
| 2006, well before the CMF popped up. [1]
|
| 1:
| https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/10/15/stanford-
| prof...
| eesmith wrote:
| Thank you for agreeing with me about that point.
|
| What about my more substantial one - I don't have the
| time to dig through what appear to be a lot of personal
| disagreements about what how to interpret research, so
| would you please highlight the part which you best
| believe constitutes scientific misconduct?
|
| I mean, sure, repeating a false myth about calculus from
| the 1800s may be wrong, but if that counts as misconduct
| then there's a _lot_ of misconduct going on in academia.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I didn't actually agree with you -- I maintain that it is
| not " _an unfair characterization_ ", since the document
| was created a decade and a half after the investigation
| that another commenter referenced. Nice try on claiming
| the W though!
|
| > _Or is the issue that the author doesn 't understand
| the topic enough, so think it's too complex for anyone
| else to understand?_
|
| I would say the same to you, in your attempt to critique
| Professor Conrad's piece. As you say, your eyes glazed
| over so you didn't actually read it. Perhaps you should
| read it before concluding that it doesn't contain
| anything of value.
| eesmith wrote:
| You original wrote "But the document I linked to is from
| 2023, related specifically to her misrepresentations in
| the CMF".
|
| I said it was unfair because it was from 2022, with edits
| in 2023.
|
| You agreed that it was from 2022, with edits in 2023.
|
| > Perhaps you should read it before concluding that it
| doesn't contain anything of value.
|
| Again, Gish Gallop. This has the mark of throwing
| everything on the wall in hopes that something will
| stick. Making a mountain out of every molehill means it's
| hard to see if there are any actual mountains.
|
| You say it's evidence that she "repeatedly misquoted
| research in her papers". My own spot check of literally
| the first topic I looked into makes me suspect the
| author's own ability to interpret the research. I listed
| my analysis - am I wrong?
|
| Otherwise, sure, perhaps that one item I looked at is an
| exception and the rest of the document contains actual
| mountains.
|
| Since _you 've_ read the report, what misquoted research
| stands out to you as the most damning?
| cratermoon wrote:
| For those who don't know this kerfuffle
|
| Dr. Brian Conrad is a very vocal critic of the California
| Math Framework. He definitely has an axe to grind.
|
| Dr. Jo Boaler is a British education author and Nomellini-
| Olivier Professor of Mathematics Education at the Stanford
| Graduate School of Education. Boaler is involved in
| promoting reform mathematics and equitable mathematics
| classrooms. She is the primary author of the California
| Math Framework.
| gnicholas wrote:
| It's probably worth noting that they are both full
| professors at Stanford, not just a guy with a doctorate
| vs a Stanford professor.
|
| I'm unaware of Professor Conrad having an "axe to grind".
| AFAIU, he simply thinks that what Professor Boaler
| advocates is incorrect, and he sees fit to describe the
| myriad mistakes and misrepresentations in her research
| and advocacy.
|
| He shares this outlook with many people, including those
| who believe that despite saying that she advocates for
| "equity", her agenda would actually lead to worse
| outcomes for many students, including low-income students
| who lack family resources to procure advanced
| mathematical education.
| cratermoon wrote:
| That certainly sounds like what someone who agrees with
| Dr. Conrad, and has the same axe to grind, would say.
| gnicholas wrote:
| When I look up "axe to grind" I see this definition:
|
| _have a private reason for doing or being involved in
| something._
|
| I have never met Professor Boaler, nor do I have any
| private/hidden agendas. Do you simply mean "someone who
| disagrees with" when you say "axe to grind"? If so, it's
| somewhat of a meaningless epithet. If you mean the normal
| definition, I'd be curious what evidence you have for
| that (related to Professor Conrad, or me).
| cratermoon wrote:
| Well, let's just agree to disagree, then.
| gnicholas wrote:
| If you won't say what you mean, there's no other choice!
| cratermoon wrote:
| Oh yes, there is another choice. Rather than assume that
| what I mean is the dictionary definition and asserting
| your opinions, why not ask some good questions?
| bitwize wrote:
| Seems to me like she is the victim of right-wing conspiracy
| theorists.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Did they cover her misdeeds before? I'd love to see that
| reporting. Such a shame that the state of CA adopted the math
| framework she was pushing, even though so many of her
| colleagues (STEM professors, not education professors)
| described the negative impact it will have on learning and
| college readiness.
| anoxor wrote:
| The rot goes SUPER deep team
| doh wrote:
| > According to Jerry Yang, chair of the Stanford Board of
| Trustees, Tessier-Lavigne will step down "in light of the report
| and its impact on his ability to lead Stanford."
|
| Jerry Yang, as the same Jerry Yang that co-founded Yahoo. Didn't
| know he is on the board of trustees at Stanford.
| poorbutdebtfree wrote:
| [flagged]
| swyx wrote:
| lol is this a dig at Andrew Yang? why discuss hypotheticals.
| a fraud is a fraud.
| valarauko wrote:
| He's been Chair since July 2021. At Stanford, Yang has served
| twice on the board of trustees, the first time from 2005 to
| 2015. He joined the board again in October 2017 and has served
| as its vice chair.
|
| Yang & his wife have also given over $75 million to Stanford.
| ykonstant wrote:
| It's a small world up there.
| harry8 wrote:
| The whole field of psychology shifts uncomfortably in it's chair.
| Replication crisis.
|
| My prediction is a well rehearsed closing of ranks and naked
| abuse of anyone questioning integrity.
|
| Not all psych research will be unreliable just like not all
| professional cyclists take drugs, maybe, given the apt tour de
| France Armstrong analogy made by rossdavidh here.
| telltruth wrote:
| Below summarizes the epidemic at many labs, especially in AI. If
| you want funding, GPUs and head count then you must prove
| yourself to be in top 5. The result is relentless pressure for
| the results that can create headlines.
|
| _It identified a culture where Tessier-Lavigne "tended to reward
| the 'winners' (that is, postdocs who could generate favorable
| results) and marginalize or diminish the 'losers' (that is,
| postdocs who were unable or struggled to generate such data)."_
| dluan wrote:
| Aside, what do you even do now if you are Tessier-Lavigne? Where
| do crooks go after they are caught but not properly punished?
| Some pharma company?
| chakintosh wrote:
| Academia is rotten to the core.
|
| My wife is doing her PhD and the stories she tells me are
| absolutely scary. It's about how you can easily fake your entire
| research, manipulate the numbers and writing a borderline
| fictional thesis and still earn your PhD. And all that with no
| oversight, and in lots of cases, the little oversight there is
| turns the blind eye because the professors have a lot to gain
| from having their name mentioned in the papers.
| contemporary343 wrote:
| What is concerning is there were even more allegations that
| weren't included because they could not offer anonymity to those
| providing them:
|
| https://stanforddaily.com/2023/07/19/sources-refused-to-part...
| gnicholas wrote:
| The provost has also stepped down, presumably because she knew
| the new president will select a new provost. Given that she
| announced her resignation 10 weeks ago, she must have known that
| this outcome was the likely one. [1]
|
| 1: https://news.stanford.edu/report/2023/05/03/persis-drell-
| ste...
| jxramos wrote:
| wow, I didn't see that one coming. There was something
| underwhelming after the John L Hennessy handoff and the new
| cast of characters I couldn't put my finger on at the time. The
| tone of the alumni magazine changed in a direction I wasn't too
| fond of but too complex to nail and articulate at the time why.
| adamsmith143 wrote:
| Just another result of the terrible Publish or Perish incentives
| in Academia.
| sylware wrote:
| Smart and skills do not rule out malice.
| latenightcoding wrote:
| So what happens next? does Stanford and his past employers sue
| for what he has already been paid? Does he lose his prestigious
| degrees? Because if this ends with his resignation, the fraud was
| totally worth it.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| Lavigne holds board positions at two biotech companies, Denali
| and Regeneron. He has sold over $70 million of shares over the
| past three years and still has Denali shares worth around $63
| million [1]...he can live the rest of his life on a luxury
| beach if he wishes, lol
|
| 1 - https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1437435.htm
| dayvid wrote:
| I personally know two people who quit their PhD programs because
| of fraud. One was given the option to resign and basically not
| speak about it or face repercussions.
| juicybilberry wrote:
| Yes I've personally heard similar stories. Students who were
| prevented from graduating until they produced significant
| results, even though their dissertation studies were approved
| by committees. So they'd eventually resign because they got fed
| up with it.
|
| Or students and postdocs threatened with presenting or
| publishing null findings that run counter to senior scientists'
| previously published theories.
|
| Etc etc etc
| satisfaction wrote:
| I would imagine this is more common that we know or expect. The
| incentives are too great and university administrators exist is
| such large numbers that cheating your way into those positions
| must be a common tactic for 50% of the people in those positions.
| cameldrv wrote:
| Underplayed here is the role of Elisabeth Bik (@microbiomdigest
| on Twitter). She's spent years doggedly finding photoshopped
| images in published research papers, including these ones.
| umeshunni wrote:
| Super fascinating. Do you have any links to this research?
| jashkenas wrote:
| She wrote a guest essay for us at NYT Opinion last fall,
| describing and showing examples of her investigative work:
| https://nyti.ms/43ti6y1
|
| (Gift link, no paywall)
| Phiwise_ wrote:
| Here's one of any archived links; no paywall, can't be
| edited, and chokes out NYT's telemetry and metrics and
| such: https://archive.ph/hytwz
| konschubert wrote:
| The NYT needs to make money to pay its Journalists.
|
| After somebody who presumably works there posts a free
| link, you see the need to do this?
| harry8 wrote:
| You can always justify behavior that causes someone else
| cost. Like the NYT with all their spyware?
|
| Both queries are reasonable ones to make. A spies by
| default without proper consent, B blocks by default
| without consent.
|
| Is this optimal? Can we do better?
| konschubert wrote:
| I recommend you don't read NYT articles if you don't want
| your IP to be logged.
| harry8 wrote:
| I recommend you put up convincing evidence that this is
| all that the NYT log about visitors because I don't
| believe that and it sounds a bit, well, glib to be
| honest. I don't read the nyt fwiw.
|
| Moreover I recommend you have a slightly closer look if
| you are really holding up the nyt as a bastion of ethical
| behavior. But at least they stand up for Assange and
| journalism not being criminalised while doing stenography
| for the powerful (amongst some decent real reporting,
| some now being criminalized, away from the front page),
| right? I'm sure they'll balance their reporting about
| wikileaks by quoting someone who doesn't actively hate
| them any day now.
|
| Anyway it should be noted that saying what you believe as
| you've done is the right thing and I endorse it even when
| defending the revenue a company that had $2.31 Billion on
| the books last year and has been a marker of inter-
| generational wealth and power for 170+ years to the
| family that owns it. I agree that what that looks like
| genuinely doesn't matter with regard to what you think is
| _right_ in any ethical analysis. That goes unsaid too
| often imho.
| Phiwise_ wrote:
| >The NYT needs to make money to pay its Journalists.
|
| Don't threaten me with a good time.
|
| If j*urnos want money, they should choose to start acting
| in a way that deserves it at some point.
| Phiwise_ wrote:
| >The NYT needs to make money to pay its Journalists.
| Don't threaten me with a good time.
|
| If j*urnos want money, they should choose to start acting
| in a way that deserves it at some point. In this case, if
| "The Paper of Record" needs to be regularly recorded from
| outside to be held to account for shoddy jobs and stitch-
| ups, exactly what service is it actually providing?
| konschubert wrote:
| ok then
| noizejoy wrote:
| Thanks for the link and wow! A very worthwile read. And
| this paragraph raised the alarm level even more for me:
|
| > Things could be about to get even worse. Artificial
| intelligence might help detect duplicated data in research,
| but it can also be used to generate fake data. It is easy
| nowadays to produce fabricated photos or videos of events
| that never happened, and A.I.-generated images might have
| already started to poison the scientific literature. As
| A.I. technology develops, it will become significantly
| harder to distinguish fake from real.
| gmd63 wrote:
| Why don't scientists live stream their experiments and
| have more rigorous verification of methodology?
| araes wrote:
| This is actually one of the reasons I believe some
| foreign web commerce sites tend to do so well. There's a
| culture of filming everything. Film the product being
| made. Film the completed product in packaging. Film the
| completed product interacting with its environment and
| humans. Really adds to the "this product is real, and not
| a scam." Much larger barrier for falsification.
| cb504 wrote:
| This would be a great tool for other teams to learn
| new/different methodologies. I guess the reason is
| competition.
|
| But reproducing studies could be live-streamed without a
| problem.
| cb504 wrote:
| One of the things that surprised me was that she was
| identifying manipulated and duplicated images using her own
| eyes.
|
| This could be done via software, and might catch more
| papers than the ~6k out of 100k that she did.
|
| In the software world, there are tools for this, "software
| composition analysis". I worked at a company that got
| busted for violating GPL, and as part of settling the suit,
| all software had to be run through BlackDuck and all
| warning/issues found by the tool had to be resolved before
| the software could be released. (NOTE: the software that
| violated GPL was from an acquisition)
| getoffmycase wrote:
| The image where she found the duplications in the
| microscopy image demonstrates an absolutely unreal pattern
| recognition ability. I knew of her, but I hadn't previously
| seen this essay
| cameldrv wrote:
| Her site is:
|
| https://scienceintegritydigest.com/about/
|
| https://scienceintegritydigest.com/
|
| She wrote an op-ed in the NYT last year: https://www.nytimes.
| com/interactive/2022/10/29/opinion/scien...
|
| She says her work has led to 938 papers being retracted.
|
| One of the interesting parts to me is that most of her work
| seems to be completely manual. She seems to have an eye for
| seeing photoshop on microscopy images or images of gels. The
| biggest method of fraud that she seems to find is researchers
| cutting and pasting from one image to another, for example,
| the scientist runs a gel but the results don't work out the
| way they hoped, so they paste in a line from another gel to
| make the experiment look like it worked.
|
| The uncomfortable part is that this is just one of many ways
| that you could fabricate or alter research results, and Dr.
| Bik is only one person finding it in her spare time. Probably
| a whole lot of fraud goes undetected.
| crtified wrote:
| > One of the interesting parts to me is that most of her
| work seems to be completely manual. She seems to have an
| eye for seeing photoshop [...]
|
| Brings to mind the skills of the 'super recogniser'.
| Perhaps her manual work involves similar aptitude.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_recogniser
|
| --
|
| Later edit: Indeed, the NYT article mentions -
|
| "Since childhood, I've been "blessed" with what I'm told is
| a better-than-average ability to spot repeating patterns.
| It's a questionable blessing when you're focused more on
| the floor tiles than on the person you're supposed to talk
| to. However, this ability, combined with my -- what some
| might call obsessive -- personality, helped me when hunting
| duplications in scientific images by eye." - Elisabeth Bik
| aziaziazi wrote:
| She also use a computer to double check her findings,
| from GP link:
|
| > Most duplications were confirmed by ImageTwin.
| chakintosh wrote:
| What the hell!? This is insanity!
|
| > https://scienceintegritydigest.com/2023/06/27/concerns-
| about...
| nashashmi wrote:
| It is. And should make you double think before you do the
| same photoshopping.
|
| They are watching us.
| lnwlebjel wrote:
| Richard Feynman on the subject:
|
| "researchers must avoid fooling themselves, be willing to
| question and doubt their own theories and their own results, and
| investigate possible flaws in a theory or an experiment. He
| recommended that researchers adopt an unusually high level of
| honesty which is rarely encountered in everyday life, and gave
| examples from advertising, politics, and psychology to illustrate
| the everyday dishonesty which should be unacceptable in science.
| Feynman cautioned,[3]
|
| 'We've learned from experience that the truth will come out.
| Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out
| whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or
| they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain
| some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good
| reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful
| in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind
| of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent
| in much of the research in cargo cult science.'"
|
| from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science
|
| The frauds and bad scientists _will_ be found out, eventually.
| fud101 wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Ok, but can you please not post unsubstantive and/or
| flamebait comments to HN?
|
| You may not owe Richard Feynman better, but you owe this
| community better if you're participating in it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| currymj wrote:
| "eventually" might be a while. these fairly obvious (once
| pointed out) photoshops were just sitting in the open in the
| top scientific journals in the world for 20 years...
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| Eventually you _will_ be found out. Unfortunately that could be
| at 63 (like the Stanford president) after you have had an
| entire career and tens of millions in compensation. Other times
| it may be after your death.
|
| Sadly, this is a hard scam to catch and most top researchers
| may never get enough scrutiny to get caught.
| mathisfun123 wrote:
| > Eventually you will be found out.
|
| this just isn't true. you're assuming because you only see
| this every once in a while that it must be rare and policed
| effectively. it's actually the complete opposite - very
| common and not policed at all. the much more likely thing is
| that your paper with fabricated data will never be read.
| that's as good in the sense that no harm no foul but it still
| has the effect of padding out people's CVs that don't deserve
| it. but hey - don't hate the player hate the game is my
| motto.
| chinchilla2020 wrote:
| Fair enough. I was just quoting the guy above me.
| cryptonector wrote:
| > The frauds and bad scientists will be found out, eventually.
|
| That's nice, but some frauds could potentially be very, _very_
| costly for society. There needs to be some deterrent as well.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| There needs to be heavy deterrent, but there also needs to be
| room for genuine failure. A lot of research, in both
| academic, public, and private domains, is worthless. When you
| spend months, or years on dead end research it can be a
| disaster for your career. The temptation to misrepresent or
| fabricate results is strong in those situations.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| That's the problem. Spending years to fail in research
| shouldn't nuke your career. Finding out it's not worth
| doing is as, if not more, important as finding the way to
| do it
| robwwilliams wrote:
| Biomedical science is not self-correcting on any reasonable
| time scale. Ten to twenty year errors and distractions are
| common, and can have a huge direct and indirect cost.
| Alzheimer's disease research and the APP mania is a case in
| point.
| swyx wrote:
| APP Mania?
| dmoy wrote:
| Amyloid precursor protein
|
| The original study on that from like 2006 turns out to be
| faked
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/potential-
| fabricatio...
| hgomersall wrote:
| As well we are discovering from 40 years of neoclassical
| economics being a dominant force in policy.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Only if we can question experts. That seems to get you in
| trouble.
| hiq wrote:
| > The frauds and bad scientists will be found out, eventually.
|
| The Stanford president mentioned is 63 years old and had a full
| academic career before being found out. It might even be that
| he remains financially well-off (I'm assuming his current role
| paid well for the last few years).
|
| For every big case such as this one, how many more commit fraud
| without being noticed?
|
| These quotes address what a scientist should do to do science,
| not what is practical to have a career in academia. The latter
| is more relevant in practice, because rigor and integrity don't
| get you tenure on their own.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| I've been fascinated by this recently. Could you wind up
| better off, even getting exposed with a fraud scandal.
|
| We always assume it's a tragic tale, and we're seeing someone
| crushed into a rock bottom state. It seems in many cases they
| still end up ahead of where they would be.
|
| I even wondered if that would happen with Theranos. It's
| possible she's even ahead now of where she would be without
| fraud. I tend to think a lengthy prison sentence is never
| worth it, but if she had got off easier that would be a
| different story.
| stonogo wrote:
| The "The frauds and bad scientists will be found out,
| eventually" is still relevant. The point is that the
| priniciples of collaborative peer review should keep the
| field on track, not that it will rain vengeance down on some
| miscreant. The papers being retracted is far more important,
| in the long run, than this person being punshed or not.
| jonhohle wrote:
| But it should also be a reminder to those not in academic
| fields to take preprints and even published research with a
| huge grain of salt. Between political pressure, incentives
| to cheat to get funding and status, and the "infallibility"
| of people in authority, peer reviewed research is not
| looking very good to the average Joe. Hopefully it will
| eventually get straightened out, but it's looking more like
| an entrenched ministry of truth.
| bgirard wrote:
| > It might even be that he remains financially well-off (I'm
| assuming his current role paid well for the last few years).
|
| I would say so. From one of the article:
|
| > Tessier-Lavigne's salary at Regeneron in 2014 was
| $1,764,032, according to a previously-unreported class action
| lawsuit alleging excessive compensation for members of the
| Compensation Committee, which included Tessier-Lavigne. It
| was later settled. He earned $1,555,296 from Stanford in 2021
| with an additional $700,000 annually as a board director for
| Regeneron.
| boondoggle16 wrote:
| > Tessier-Lavigne's salary at Regeneron
|
| Wait, the company that re-sells "medical waste"? e.g.
| foreskins, cord blood, placentas? Body parts that should
| reside with their rightly owner, but doctors butcher and
| steal for self-enrichment?
| aredox wrote:
| Exactly. He stiffled the career of many honest scientists by
| siphoning money and prestige that should rightfully have been
| directed elsewhere. The damage is done.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| This documentary series comes to mind [1], where in the end
| they go over the fallout and all the collective research
| years wasted and budding careers stunted (including people
| outright leaving research) because as students/postdocs
| trying to replicate the work of a scientist who was
| considered to be a potential nobel laureate, they couldn't
| possibly question the work they were trying to replicate.
|
| I feel this aspect of research fraud is even worse than the
| other established scientists who had their research
| impacted. In the mentioned case, the established scientists
| were essentially unharmed with a large body of other work
| to lean on and many having some form of job security, while
| the PhDs and postdocs suddenly found themselves unable to
| list most of their experience on their CV, despite the
| established scientists being the most qualified to verify
| the fraudster's work. Especially for someone in a
| leadership position at a university, I wonder how that
| doesn't eat them up inside.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfDoml-Db64
| alexfromapex wrote:
| I know of some similar misconduct around research at another well
| known university. Hopefully the field can be reformed further to
| protect against manipulated research because it's extremely
| dangerous to the public interest.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Research papers seem to be fundamentally flawed in that the
| person who has most to gain, is essentially the person measuring
| the results - classic conflict of interest problem. The peer
| review is clearly ineffective against a highly motivated
| nefarious individuals.
| jbreckmckye wrote:
| I am not familiar with Tessier-Lavigne's work, except that it
| concerns Alzheimer's disease. Is there a summary of what findings
| / hypotheses are now in question?
| jxding wrote:
| Link to full pdf of the Report issued by Stanford's "special
| committee:" https://boardoftrustees.stanford.edu/wp-
| content/uploads/site...
|
| Some extracts:
|
| "There were repeated instances of manipulation of research data
| and/or subpar scientific practices from different people and in
| labs run by Dr. Tessier-Lavigne at different institutions"
|
| "At various times when concerns with Dr. Tessier-Lavigne's papers
| emerged--in 2001, the early 2010s, 2015-16, and March 2021--
| Dr.Tessier-Lavigne failed to decisively and forthrightly correct
| mistakes in the scientific record."
|
| "However, a second theme emerged among some of the interviewees
| that the same lab culture also tended to reward the "winners"
| (that is, postdocs who could generate favorable results) and
| marginalize or diminish the "losers" (that is, postdocs who were
| unable or struggled to generate such data)"
|
| Considering that Stanford's special committee has every reason to
| protect Tessier-Lavigne and damage control, the findings are
| quite damning.
|
| Good on Theo Baker for continuing to provide a more critical
| perspective compared to the cushy political speak of the report.
| brutusborn wrote:
| Interesting that Stanford found the 2009 paper "lacked vigor"
| and Genentech found no-one "reported observing or knowing of
| any fraud, fabrication, or other intentional wrongdoing in the
| research leading to and reported in the 2009 Nature paper." [0]
|
| So basically the euphemism "lacked vigor" = "wasn't scientific"
| but since it wasn't "intentional" or "known" no-one can be
| blamed for it? Am I the only one who doesn't really care if bad
| science is intentional or fraudulent? They should be judged on
| their science, which was objectively dogshit, not on their
| morality, which is subjectively dogshit, but conveniently can't
| be judged by the relevant parties because everyone involved got
| amnesia.
|
| Maybe I'm being too harsh but shadiness in public health really
| irritates me.
|
| [0]
| https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
| tempsy wrote:
| I don't know what's been going on at Stanford lately but feels
| like there's been numerous scandals piling up one by one.
| pperi11 wrote:
| Another win for berkeley
| p1esk wrote:
| He probably didn't even read those papers.
| capableweb wrote:
| Yet listed as co-author, so good thing we're getting rid of
| him.
| kaptainscarlet wrote:
| Trust the science.
| nvaofdv3332 wrote:
| [flagged]
| panarky wrote:
| The student-run newspaper broke the story and relentlessly
| pursued it.
|
| _Stanford president's research under investigation for
| scientific misconduct, University admits 'mistakes'_
|
| https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/29/stanford-presidents-res...
|
| _Stanford president dodges research misconduct questions_
|
| https://stanforddaily.com/2023/04/25/stanford-president-dodg...
|
| _Internal review found 'falsified data' in Stanford President's
| Alzheimer's research, colleagues allege_
|
| https://stanforddaily.com/2023/02/17/internal-review-found-f...
|
| The reporter, Theo Baker, is a freshman.
|
| https://stanforddaily.com/author/tabaker/
| frankfrank13 wrote:
| Obviously a sad, and kind of disturbing story, but the meta-
| story is incredible
| quailfarmer wrote:
| All written by freshman reporter Theo Baker:
| https://twitter.com/tab_delete/status/ His parents are NYT
| chief White House correspondent Peter Baker, and New Yorker
| staff writer Susan Glasser.
|
| It's an interesting story for sure.
| boeingUH60 wrote:
| I checked his bio, and Baker appears to be a computer science
| student doing journalism as a hobby.
|
| It brings me to wonder how much choice people really have in
| choosing their paths...if both your parents are journalists
| or [insert whatever profession], it's as if you're likely to
| pick it up no matter how hard you try not to...
| glimshe wrote:
| Part of it is that people like what they are good at.
| Having both parents providing years of mentoring and
| experience will invariably give their child an edge in that
| skill set, which leads to a higher chance of embracing it
| in adulthood.
| pmarreck wrote:
| > It brings me to wonder how much choice people really have
| in choosing their paths
|
| I believe the correct answer here is "not a lot," but not
| in the way that you probably think.
|
| I couldn't be more different from my German-immigrant
| parents. Neither of them were college-educated, my father
| was the general manager of a moving company before he
| retired and my mom was a travel agent before she had me.
| They were both very generally hardworking and I (frankly)
| only work hard in very specific circumstances (ADHD brain).
| I excelled academically and was pretty immediately drawn to
| computers (I'm talking like 1982, with the Commodore PET; I
| was 10). Neither of my parents were technical, or even that
| literate, or even that successful (my dad, even as a mere
| "general manager of a small moving company", was
| nevertheless the most successful person in his family).
| Nevertheless they managed to put together enough money to
| send me off to Cornell, where I got a Psych degree with a
| "CS minor" (you don't declare minors at Cornell, but let's
| just say I hounded the CS department for courses I could
| take; I didn't like the inflexibility of being a CS major,
| though, and I had messed up a critical calculus course that
| was a requirement for many of them)
|
| I also did a 4 year stint in the USAF (after a very poor
| first-year showing at Cornell where I bombed academically
| due to no study habits, having coasted through HS) wherein
| I was an aircraft mechanic and pushed computers away as far
| as I could (this was literally just 2-3 years before the
| Internet would explode in 1995, and sentiment about people
| who were really into computers was very much still "big
| nerd"; I was a late-bloomer ::cough:: virgin ::cough:: and
| felt the need to push anything "uncool" away from me as
| much as possible). _Despite this overt conscious effort to
| avoid computers,_ one day the _commander_ calls me into his
| office (my immediate reaction was "oh sh--, what did I
| do?") and proceeds with this spiel:
|
| "Airman Marreck, word has gotten back to me about your
| giftedness with computers." (Wait, _what?_ And then
| suddenly, with some horror and trepidation, I remembered
| flashes of memory: Walking past VT100 terminals that were
| inop to keyboard input until I couldn 't help but set them
| right. Hearing about someone complaining about some Windows
| 3.1 issue and helping them. Fixing a formatting issue with
| printouts of flight records. Helping another person ranked
| above me with an Excel issue. Etc. Etc. Etc.)
|
| He continued. "I am offering you the opportunity to cross-
| train into [whatever the USAF's version of software
| engineer was, I forget]"
|
| My honest thought: _This f---ing thing has boomerang 'ed
| back to me despite every effort I've made to avoid it._
| (Clearly, I let SOME efforts slip through... And truth be
| told, I was ready to accept it, having felt I matured a
| bit. And gotten my V-Card stamped, of course.)
|
| I asked "What's the catch?" He says "Extending your
| enlistment for 2 more years."
|
| I thought "if I'm supposed to do this, then I'm going to do
| it in the civilian world, and benefit from civilian
| salaries."
|
| I said "Thank you, but no thanks."
|
| Anyway, the thing you love (and we could have a very deep
| discussion about where that _comes from_ , because I
| certainly never _consciously chose_ it) is the thing you
| will do. I feel I don 't really have a choice, since you
| can't really choose what you love, you just either do or
| don't.
|
| So... For some at least, there may not be much of a choice.
| But it may also have nothing to do with their parents.
|
| The closest relative that might have had anything to do
| with me being into computers is my mother's father, who was
| an accountant, and could add up a column of numbers just by
| sliding his finger down them (and that quickly). That is
| _literally_ the only "analytical" type of person in my
| entire extended family.
| brightlancer wrote:
| That's a wonderful story (and told well).
|
| > The closest relative that might have had anything to do
| with me being into computers is my mother's father, who
| was an accountant, and could add up a column of numbers
| just by sliding his finger down them (and that quickly).
| That is literally the only "analytical" type of person in
| my entire extended family.
|
| How much of that was because relatively few jobs 50/ 75/
| 100 years ago required "analytics" as we think of it? For
| your parents and others of their generation, how many of
| those jobs were gated behind education (and the English
| language) they didn't have as kids?
|
| Research has shown that environment ("nurture") have huge
| impacts on development, but it's also shown that genetic
| inheritance ("nature") plays a major role and perhaps a
| bigger one that environment. That doesn't mean it's
| easily recognizable when comparing someone born in the
| 1940s versus the 70s versus the 2000s.
| godelski wrote:
| > if both your parents are journalists or [insert whatever
| profession], it's as if you're likely to pick it up no
| matter how hard you try not to...
|
| How likely is it for you to be {Catholic,Muslim,Hindu,etc}
| if your parents are? What about the food you like?
| Interests? Etc
|
| The answer is high, but not 100%. I say this as someone who
| comes from a _very_ religious family (I'm more areligious),
| the only person who does anything even remotely STEM
| related, and has a very different diet than my parents. So
| triple whammy (but probably unsurprising to get both given
| one).
|
| It's just likely that you are going to be more similar to
| your parents than not. Not sure why we should expect
| otherwise. As an example, growing up in my house there was
| a lot of discussion of politics and business. It is
| probably no surprised that almost everyone works in sales.
| But friends who have parents who are professors grew up
| listening to and discussing academic ideas. Essentially
| what is happening is that at an early age we're all being
| trained and this training is heavily influenced by the
| teacher models, I mean parents. Sorry, the ML is creeping
| in ;). I would not be surprised that someone who grew up in
| a house where both parents are journalists that they
| wouldn't be explicitly trained to scrutinize authority,
| gather evidence, and write that down. Lots of learning is
| done by imitation.
|
| Is this a bad thing? Probably not. Does it mean you don't
| have free will? Definitely not, but it does mean heavy
| influence. I think an important aspect is to recognize
| this, especially if we are going to have conversations
| about meritocracy and fairness. Understanding this early
| learning does give credit to claims of quality through
| generational experience. The question is how much this
| matters by the time we reach adults and finish our
| education (wherever that is). I think the longer the
| education, the less this matters. But it definitely means
| there's a bias in prestige of that education (and quality
| if you believe that prestige strongly correlates with
| quality). It probably isn't a surprise that kids from
| academics tend to end up at higher ranked universities than
| kids from non-academics (we see a strong effect when
| looking at race or class, but these are most likely not
| causal variables but confounders). It also means that any
| "meritocratic" system (personal belief is that these are
| fools errands) will be substantially benefited by
| generational experience as children will at a young age
| learn how to optimize for the metrics (which are not
| necessarily aligned to the goals of those metrics though,
| which is why the previous note).
|
| Momentum is one hell of a force. Compounding interest isn't
| just important for money, but nearly any form of resource.
| There are a lot of benefits to momentum, but the problem is
| that we often don't account for this in our models and this
| makes for poor evaluation. I would be very willing to bet
| that a lot of things people make evaluations on are far
| more random than they believe. For example I'd put money on
| that were everything else held equal (making this hard to
| measure) that high school grades would not significantly
| affect student outcomes. We can use the studies on students
| who were admitted through affirmative action to get an
| indication of this, where we generally see similar results
| to students admitted normally. There is some noise, but it
| also isn't unsurprising that if you are doing poorly in
| high school that this might correlate with problems at
| home, which can cause a higher likelihood of dropout. But
| generally, this would suggest that you could shuffle all
| applications, randomly select, and you wouldn't see a large
| difference in your students' performance nor outcomes post
| university (my hypothesis). Some of this is already done,
| given that many top universities have more applicants that
| are nearly impossible to distinguish than they have seats
| for, making selection at least nearly arbitrary for these
| applicants. But where this may matter in the real world is
| that prestige definitely correlates with opportunities like
| internships and work, as companies prioritize recruitment
| from these locations and prioritize building connections
| with these professors (who connect students with
| opportunities). These are probably where we could make
| adjustments to make a more fair system, but is likely
| harder than suggested.
|
| TLDR: heavy influence, but you still got free will. Should
| make you think though...
| [deleted]
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I dunno, I'm nowhere close to doing worker's compensation
| claims adjustment even though my dad did it for 40+ years.
| bavell wrote:
| Meh, both my parents practice law and I went into software
| dev. Had no interest in following in their footsteps.
| morkalork wrote:
| Both are careers with a foundation of reasoning and logic
| so the apple didn't fall too far from the tree.
| memefrog wrote:
| Same, but now I am studying law
| detourdog wrote:
| My experience is very little choice if you follow your
| aptitude.
| dllthomas wrote:
| > a computer science student doing journalism as a hobby
|
| Y'know, sometimes CS gets slow and you gotta go do some
| award winning journalism to keep busy.
| eastbound wrote:
| What if it really takes two generations to be good at
| something?
|
| Since 1789 (in France) we postulate that inheritance in a
| societal curse, and postulate that everyone must be equal
| at birth.
|
| However, there are countless examples where sons of doctors
| make better doctors, sons of journalists make better
| journalists, and sons of presidents make better
| administrators of oil companies in war zones (joke
| intended).
|
| We should still aim so that it is possible to succeed as an
| orphan, of course, but we should also recognize that the
| best tricks ate learnt during teenage years, when you ask
| "Hey dad, how come the board of a company isn't salaried?
| Dad, how did you deal with your last board where you had
| too many naysayers? How does it work when you have to fire
| an employee?"
|
| Of course I've read my share of books by Ben Horowitz, but
| of course being the son of such a person gives tremendous
| advance on how to deal with a lot of situations.
| digging wrote:
| > What if it really takes two generations to be good at
| something?
|
| This really is the recipe for success. The majority of
| success is intergenerational.
|
| Someone can come from nothing and become wildly
| successful, it's true. But it's extremely unlikely. With
| 8 billion people, occasional rags-to-riches stories are
| going to happen; even if it's a 1-in-100,000,000 chance
| that would be about 80 people. These are not the stories
| to aspire to; they're random anomalies. The stories we
| should aspire to are the ones of humans setting up future
| humans for success. Ideally, not even just their
| children...
| brightlancer wrote:
| > This really is the recipe for success. The majority of
| success is intergenerational.
|
| I think it's better said that the majority of success is
| from _iteration_.
|
| In lots of ways, I'm not just a product of my parents'
| (lack of?) success or their parents' (lack of?) success
| and so on, but also a product of my iterated local
| communities and iterated larger society.
|
| > The stories we should aspire to are the ones of humans
| setting up future humans for success. Ideally, not even
| just their children...
|
| Be wary of claimed benevolence, for it justifies corpses
| in the name of the greater good.
|
| History has shown that rising tides lift all boats. We
| are all the product of millennia of selfish pursuits by
| bigots, rapists, war profiteers, etc. And yet, the long-
| term trajectory for the masses is up -- because success
| iterates not just along family lines, but broadly across
| society.
| whinenot wrote:
| It's not just conversations around the dinner table. It's
| also how you get started vis a vis introductions to the
| right people, prized starter jobs and educational
| pathways that may not be widely known (eg, an internship
| at ___ will set you up for a job later at ___).
| dottedmag wrote:
| My father was a school gym coach and then a flight
| attendant. My mother was a sales clerk. Neither of them
| were into computers.
|
| I have no idea about none of their areas either.
|
| So I guess this only applies to a prestigious occupations.
| Guthur wrote:
| Pretty simple to see how this happens.
|
| One can not isolate one's self from cumulation of being
| that is one's life.
|
| During this individuals life in sure he was often exposed
| to talk and thought about journalism. But also maybe form
| additional interests and ambitions.
|
| This is not about choice persay, but rather a life lived.
| sonicshadow wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| We've banned this account for posting abusive and
| flamebait comments. Please don't create accounts to break
| HN's rules with.
|
| If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email
| hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that
| you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| wvenable wrote:
| My daughter went into an entirely different career path
| than me but she's still the one to fix her employer's Wifi
| when it goes down.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Culture is inherited, you'll get the most influence from
| the people you grew up around. Kids tend to be either a lot
| like their parents or try to be nothing like them at all
| (trying to be the opposite is still a huge influence)
| callalex wrote:
| In this case it's probably not so much that the author was
| forced into journalism, and more that the student was
| empowered to cover this story without fear of retaliation
| due to his parents' large megaphone.
|
| With the sheer volume of scandals coming out of Stanford
| these days, it wouldn't shock me if a critical mass of
| former students start feeling empowered to speak out now as
| well.
| godelski wrote:
| "Hey, your parents are journalists right? I think that
| guy's works is fishy. How would I report this or
| investigate further?"
|
| There's definitely an attractive force based on
| generational expertise. I'd guess more people would be
| likely to feed them information as well as they would
| innately have more experience (learned growing up) and
| definitely have more access to expertise. Considering
| someone said the student was in CS I don't think I'd say
| they were forced into journalism, but it does definitely
| relate to the skills and resources at their disposal.
| cbsmith wrote:
| Picking it up doesn't mean it's your career path. You learn
| a lot from your parents, including bits about their
| careers, but I'd say such learnings add to your career
| choices rather than dictate them.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| It's also likely that having grown up surrounded by
| journalists and people working for newspapers, his
| education allows him to properly write articles as a
| freshman. That doesn't prevent him for learning computer
| science if that's what he likes doing.
| tnecniv wrote:
| Yeah if you have insight into why a field is interesting
| from a younger age, you are more likely to be interested
| in it yourself as well.
|
| That also goes the other way. My dad was a lawyer, and I
| know a little more about the law and legal profession
| than the average joe. However that was enough information
| to tell me I had no interest in being a lawyer.
| ghaff wrote:
| It can definitely be an influence. My parents were both in
| the life sciences and I was definitely gently pushed in
| that direction. And I got interested in nascent biomedical
| engineering.
|
| Then I took organic chemistry.
|
| Switched to pure mechanical engineering. Would probably
| have liked EECS more when all is said and done and have had
| more aptitude for it. But, at the end of the day, can't
| really complain about the circuitous path I took which,
| like so many in my cohort, ended up in computers anyway.
| no_wizard wrote:
| I realize this is not the point of the article, however you
| hit on something here I always thought.
|
| I think Journalism is a great dual major choice (or maybe
| just a minor), with whatever it is you want to study,
| particularly if its in conjunction with engineering,
| computer science, physics, biology, finance / accounting
| etc. Why?
|
| Because Journalists are trained to be good communicators
| and summarize ideas (a worthwhile skill in most
| professions) and they are also taught to be ferocious in
| finding and corroborating information for its "truthiness".
| Having these skills would give most people an edge in
| whatever line of work you are in.
| htss2013 wrote:
| >Having these skills would give most people an edge in
| whatever line of work you are in.
|
| Yes, and you can probably learn 80% of those skills
| yourself without having to spend years and a small
| fortune on a formal degree in journalism.
| alistairSH wrote:
| _Having these skills would give most people an edge in
| whatever line of work you are in._
|
| Absolutely. In the last few years I've moved into a role
| with a lot more interaction with non-engineers. At
| minimum, being able to politely re-state somebody else's
| point in a concise manner is massively useful.
| Particularly when two people are talking past each other
| and I'm pretty sure they actually agree.
| aldebran wrote:
| Interesting! I've always thought engineering and
| Philosophy were good for the same reason. Builds logical
| reasoning and ability to communicate.
| hgsgm wrote:
| There's something about the liberal arts and sciences
| that gives a person skills for life. I wonder if anyone's
| studied that phenomenon.
| toomim wrote:
| Vitalik Buterin is another famous example. He was a
| journalist (writing for Bitcoin Magazine) before he
| started Ethereum.
|
| He (or his dad) said that they believed in writing as a
| way to clarify the mind. It seemed to work for Vitalik.
| yunlong0928 wrote:
| [flagged]
| yunlong0928 wrote:
| [flagged]
| btceth wrote:
| [flagged]
| jvanderbot wrote:
| My wife is a journalist by training and the skill of
| expression of information at an engaging level for a
| layman audience has made her a killer marketer,
| fundraiser, philanthropy officer, and now director of
| philanthropy. She works for a pretty major international
| aid org.
| squirtlebonflow wrote:
| Also, a bio+journalism dual degree is going to be much
| better at biology journalism than a straight-up bio
| major.
| samsolomon wrote:
| I'm a product designer and would never have fallen into
| this career if not for working for my college paper, The
| Auburn Plainsman.
|
| A story--My first semester working on the paper I was at
| the bottom of the food chain as an associate news editor.
| So it was my job to sit in Auburn City Council meetings
| and fill my page with a summary of those meetings. I
| don't know how many of you have sat in small town council
| meetings, but all that really happens is they announce
| what restaurants are granted a liquor licenses and table
| interesting topic indefinitely. It's boring. On occasion
| there would be a heated debate about installing a speed
| bump on some neighborhood street, but usually nothing.
|
| I would have an assigned amount of space to fill with
| city council notes and I never--never--was able to fill
| it. So I taught myself photoshop and started creating
| infographics to take up space. I started a weekly gas
| monitor price fluctuations and would add several other
| graphics to fill my section. That's how I got into
| design.
|
| EDIT: Also, breaking a story about a kid stealing a Tiger
| Transit (Drunk Bus) to get home from the bar was a
| crowning journalistic achievement of mine.
| https://www.theplainsman.com/article/2009/09/tiger-
| transit-s...
| idopmstuff wrote:
| I'm a PM, and I spent time as a writer and editor of my
| high school newspaper that was probably more useful to my
| career than anything else I did in high school or
| college. Learning how to ask the right questions,
| understand people's perspectives and biases and to take a
| bunch of related information and turn it into a coherent
| narrative that keeps people engaged are useful skills
| just about everything and certainly in this job.
|
| Did they find out who stole the bus??
| samsolomon wrote:
| They never found out who stole it! The bus story became
| somewhat of an urban legend.
|
| And I'm with ya. I learned so much working for the paper.
| Perhaps one unexpected skill was cold calling. In sales
| getting over that fear is an enormously important barrier
| to cross. Once you do it though, it makes a lot of things
| in life easier.
|
| For stories I'd have to call people or go find them,
| frequently when they screwed up, frequently when they did
| not want to talk to me. Just like the story above--the
| transit manager did not want to talk to me, but I spent a
| day and a half hunting him down. He didn't answer my
| calls, so I went down to where the buses get dispatched
| from in the afternoon and asked a driver where to find
| him. That "Somebody just didn't want to wait" quote came
| from that interaction.
|
| About a year later I started a coupon website. I went
| door-to-door trying to get local business to buy in.
| That's probably not something I could have done, if I
| hadn't worked for the paper first.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| Man, good for you - I hate hate hate hate hate cold
| calling. I think the job I would want least in life is
| outbound cold calling. But I totally agree with you - I
| wouldn't say I ever really developed the skill, but I
| learned just shove the anxiety down deep and go do it,
| because it's gotta be done. That has served me pretty
| well.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Did they ever find the bus burglar?
|
| Also, funny to think there were probably multiple
| reporters in those city council meetings all trying to
| figure out their own way of filling space. While not good
| for people's career prospects, having a single reporter
| [maybe rotating each year] write once and disseminate to
| all (AP style) feels more optimal.
| noizejoy wrote:
| > While not good for people's career prospects, having a
| single reporter [maybe rotating each year] write once and
| disseminate to all (AP style) feels more optimal.
|
| I find that having a single source of information too
| often leads to very sub optimal outcomes.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Now a days we have zero sources of information for these
| city council meetings given newspaper industry can't
| afford to cover local news.
|
| Teaming would be better than that.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure there would even be anyone to team with.
| I've maybe been to a couple of town or selectman meetings
| in the 25 years I've lived in my town. Most are
| incredibly boring and have zero direct impact on me.
| ec109685 wrote:
| Hence how silly it would be to send multiple reporters
| and the point of my original comment.
| ru552 wrote:
| I put a lot of thought into how I would respond to your
| comment, and I'd just like to say Roll Tide.
| Terr_ wrote:
| One might say that debugging is a form of investigative
| journalism, and vice-versa.
|
| Particularly when the error cannot be reproduced/captured
| on-demand, and you need to develop--and test--a story for
| how the final state could have been reached.
| xarope wrote:
| Yes. I also majored in economics and psychology whilst
| during my CS undergrad, and having to write a ton of
| essays and submitting for journals, taught me that
| communications is a key skill to have.
| my_usernam3 wrote:
| My father majored in Journalism, despite having a much
| more mathematical leaning mind, and small business
| career. He swears it was the best decision with similar
| arguments. I'm not 100% convinced it should be the one
| and only major as he did, but a dual major/minor does
| sound great.
| elcritch wrote:
| > Because Journalists are trained to be good
| communicators and summarize ideas (a worthwhile skill in
| most professions) and they are also taught to be
| ferocious in finding and corroborating information for
| its "truthiness".
|
| While that's certainly the ideal of journalism, the field
| routinely falls pretty short on this, IMHO.
| Sensationalism and clickbait isn't anything new. Just
| lookup Yellow journalism.
|
| Unfortunately nowadays it feels like the truthiness
| aspect is just conflated with corporate group think. But
| it's great to see instances like this where a journalist
| doggedly question those in power.
| uoaei wrote:
| There's even more insidious influences on how narratives
| are built and propagated than just lying or not. Saying
| things that are "not even wrong" but redirect the
| discourse so severely that good faith discussion breaks
| down on inflamed, sectarian lines due to the shaping of
| the zeitgeist around this or that topic.
| astrange wrote:
| A lot of "yellow journalism" these days comes from
| editors, who are actually a different profession than
| journalists, though I think people reasonably don't care
| about that.
|
| The NYT editors are the ones who write all the headlines
| like "The economy is great - here's how that's bad news
| for Biden".
| callalex wrote:
| The negative outcomes you describe are fairly independent
| from the training curriculum in school though. An
| equivalent would be saying that computer science degrees
| are worthless because sometimes people become parasites
| who work in adtech or fintech.
| unsui wrote:
| Agreed. Those are all straw men, rather than the the
| natural consequence of a journalism education.
| ethbr0 wrote:
| I'd argue that the "evils" of modern journalism are more
| a consequence of economic failures in their employers
| than journalist themselves.
|
| As came out in the Dominion v Fox News discovery, even
| the most political journalists are still disgusted by the
| things they have financial and management pressure to
| peddle.
| themitigating wrote:
| Not disgusted enough to leave their job even though many
| are wealthy to extremely wealthy. Not disgusted enough to
| stop supporting Republicans.
|
| I can understand someone who works at a newspaper and
| makes 70k a year so they have to report on sensational
| stories but Tucker Carlons net worth is $380~ million.
|
| The key people at Foxnews were shocked and mad at the
| outrageous claims but for them the ends justify the
| means.
| rhapsodic wrote:
| [dead]
| wingspar wrote:
| Yes it's been bad for a long time. I recall the "George
| Bush encounters barcode scanners" story back in the day.
| YEARS later, working in data-capture technology, I
| learned the truth. It wasn't a run-of-the-mill
| supermarket barcode scanning system. But that wouldn't
| have made as 'good' of a story that matched the papers
| pre-conceived notions.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/61f29d10e27140b0b108d8e12b64b8
| 39
| inconceivable wrote:
| (it was a then-uncommon combo scanner/scale with error
| correction)
| jkubicek wrote:
| Here's a (free gift) link to the original NYTimes story
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/05/us/bush-encounters-
| the-su...
|
| It's certainly one of the more misleading stories I've
| read in a national paper.
| themitigating wrote:
| A newspaper is not a single entity. In its life it will
| have hundreds or thousands of employees with a range from
| good to bad. You can claim that there's a management
| structure that should know what's going on but they put
| trust in their employees even if they are ultimately
| responsible. If a reporter claims a government source
| said X but doesn't want to be revealed they need to make
| a decision based on that reporters history. Basically
| it's difficult to prevent rogue employees from putting
| out garbage stories.
|
| ------------------------------
|
| Here a more recent article from the NYT examining the
| original reporting about the Bush scanner story showing
| how it was mostly misleading and the paper's response to
| those claims at the time (that they were misleading)
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/04/us/politics/fact-
| check-pr... (See EDIT at bottom for pastebin link)
|
| For any single news organization over a period of time a
| certain amount of articles will be inaccurate, sometimes
| purposefully. The NYT has been around for 150+ years and
| what matters it is how they manage their reporters and
| sources. We also need to look at the positive
| accomplishments. Shouldn't that be weighed against the
| negative when making a judgement of trust?
|
| The NYT is probably responsible for more breaking news
| and investigations than any other paper in US history.
| Stories we might not have have known about without the
| resources they allocated and their contacts (i.e.
| government or business sources)
|
| I don't think trust is black and white and that people
| who claim it is may have an ulterior motive. If you
| dismiss news organizations based on having a few
| misleading stories without considering what they have
| accomplished you wouldn't trust any news organization.
| This of course would greatly benefit corrupt governments,
| businesses, and people.
|
| EDIT: Here's a pastebin link to the section of the 2018
| article where they examine the original reporting
|
| https://pastebin.com/VKHyGARK
| detourdog wrote:
| I gave up on the NYT with the Judith Miller WMD non-
| sense. The NYT failed the United States during the run up
| to the Iraq war. All they had to do was honestly report
| what they knew.
| detourdog wrote:
| I remember that and thought George H.W. was a busy guy
| and probably only got out to the supermarket in
| Kennebunkport. Where they mail the bill at the end of the
| month.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| People do what they must to live. Like many other
| professions, some people are paid to do things they
| probably would rather not.
| tappederrting wrote:
| [dead]
| deafpolygon wrote:
| > Because Journalists are trained to be good
| communicators and summarize ideas
|
| I don't see how a freshman is 'trained' in this sense.
| Could it be that good communicators and people who can
| summarize ideas naturally gravitate towards journalism?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| 100% agree. All the best engineers I've worked with are
| decent problem solvers, decent coders, but phenomenal
| communicators, both written and verbal.
|
| I think a correlation to this are people who are good
| teachers.
| ghaff wrote:
| One of the most knowledgable security people I know is
| also consistently rated as one of the best presenters in
| the company.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Don't we think this probably applies to any of the
| humanities though? What you described, at least, is the
| practice of careful, critical research followed by
| exegesis.
| zogrodea wrote:
| I think it applies most of the time, but some fields and
| academics (like Judith Butler to pick a famous example)
| seem to rejoice in the opposite, complicating your
| language to make your point more difficult to grasp. So I
| wouldn't be quick to generalise.
|
| Not trying to come across as partisan by bringing up
| Butler's name. Here is another academic, Talal Asad,
| making the same point in an entirely different context
| that the writing style of academia tends towards
| unnecessary complexity:
|
| "For some years I have been exercised by this puzzle. How
| is it that the approach exemplified by Gellner's paper
| remains attractive to so many academics in spite of its
| being demonstrably faulty? Is it perhaps because they are
| intimidated by a style? We know, of course, that
| anthropologists, like other academics, learn not merely
| to use a scholarly language but to fear it, to admire it,
| to be captivated by it."
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| I am not sure I quite understand, is the implication here
| that some disciplines overtly try to stifle understanding
| by making things harder to grasp? Why would they do that?
|
| It's perfectly fine to read Butler and not understand it,
| in the same way as it would be for another to read a
| textbook on quantum mechanics. There seems to be a hidden
| assumption in what you say that holds that the
| domain/area-of-discourse Judith Butler is working in is
| one you _should_ be able to understand without
| difficulty, but you really have no good reason to feel
| that. It 's really not her job to ELI5 to everyone, or at
| least, its not something her peers or publishers care
| about. And why should they?
|
| Yes, like in STEM, there is false positives, paper's and
| researchers that rise to the top that maybe shouldn't,
| but that is different than saying entire disciplines are
| sustained by bad faith.
|
| I can't speak for the Gellner paper, but if you spend
| some time with it, understand a little about _where_ she
| is working, Butler is a very rewarding writer that is
| incredibly influential to many many people. There isn 't
| some conspiracy or shared delusion here. And the fact
| that she can say things that resonate with so many people
| in her domain, shows huge evidence of her general
| abilities around information comprehension, articulation,
| and communication.
| zogrodea wrote:
| I think in retrospect that I was too dismissive and
| hyperbolic about my comment that some fields seem to
| enjoy having an unnecessarily complicated style, but I
| think the characterisation of _some_ academic writing in
| the humanities having an unnecessarily complex style is
| ultimately fair.
|
| I know from my own time with the humanities that some
| adopt that kind of style to make themselves seem more
| profound and out of a desire to impress others because I
| was one of them (although I'm happy to have comparatively
| flattened the ego since then).
|
| There's obviously a diversity of intentions behind why
| people would adopt a complex style (although I have no
| doubt the motivation I had is common) and some would be
| justified but I don't think it's wrong of me to point out
| that Butler's style is _needlessly_ complicated as an
| example. When reading her words in particular, I
| sometimes find myself rephrasing in my head to make her
| point more digestible to myself (and I can 't help
| feeling that random archaic English texts like Francis
| Bacon's Of Simulation and Dissimulation would be more
| readable to most, despite the outdated and unfamiliar
| language).
|
| That's a sign of needless complexity in my opinion.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > is the implication here that some disciplines overtly
| try to stifle understanding by making things harder to
| grasp?
|
| That's how I read it. IME with social science academics,
| it's accurate.
|
| > Why would they do that?
|
| To create a mystique of knowledge or superiority; to
| obfuscate controversial points; to prevent mainstream
| scrutiny; to exclude outsiders from giving criticism.
|
| There are times where a Big Word is more precise than a
| smaller, common one, and the Big Word is preferred to
| writing 20 small words.
|
| Then there are times where a Big Word is not more precise
| than a smaller, common one, and may even be less precise
| -- but it's chosen because it limits who can comprehend
| the work.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Listen, beyond any of the culture war you find yourself
| enlisted within, the sooner you can, as simply a human
| being, separate out "I do not understand this" from "I do
| not understand this, there must be something wrong with
| it," the sooner you will gain deeper understandings of
| things, make better connections, and honestly just be a
| happier individual. Like, it's fine, I guess, if you want
| to spend your life fighting huge swaths of intellectual
| history and human advancement, but you can't just be like
| overtly anti-intellectual about it! It's just not good
| for you, you will be sustained in fear and anger forever.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| The point is that people should right more in _plain
| english_
| abathur wrote:
| I think there's still a difference here with respect to
| writing styles and audiences. In most humanities
| specialties you'll be writing for an academic audience
| (and depending on your focus, potentially one with a very
| narrow band of shared knowledge/terminology).
|
| A lot of what you learn there can get in the way when you
| need to reach a general/lay audience.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| Journalism is the same way though. They write highly
| technical papers for academic audiences. Journalism is
| just distinct in that there are marginally more jobs you
| can get where you practice direct skills/techniques
| around the domains. In the rest you can still get this
| kind of with teaching!
| abathur wrote:
| Sure, but we aren't discussing how everyone should just
| go _teach_ journalism or the humanities.
| tappederrting wrote:
| [dead]
| roughly wrote:
| I had a colleague who's degree was in comparative
| literature - we'd walk out of meetings and the rest of us
| would be talking about the engineering side of what we'd
| just heard while he'd go through and enumerate the
| different things each person had been talking about while
| using the same words as everyone else. The amount of
| latent conflicts that dude caught before the rest of us
| got torched made me really appreciate the value of an art
| degree.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Can you give an example? What you're saying sounds
| interesting, but I don't understand. What kind of
| conflicts did they catch?
| ambicapter wrote:
| I don't have the degree but I often notice (or think I
| notice) people not answering the question that was asked,
| reframing questions to answer the pet peeve they love to
| bring up, and people agreeing with each other while
| sounding like they're arguing with each other such that
| the conversation never ends. It annoys the hell out of me
| and it feels quasi-impossible for me to relay to others
| what is going on.
| roughly wrote:
| Yeah, the violent agreement is usually a big tell. I've
| gotten much better at throwing the flag in meetings to
| have that conversation - "Hey, when you say X, do you
| mean <what I'm hearing>? Can you expand on that?". I
| think people are hesitant to do it out of fear of
| sounding stupid; I think I'm lucky enough to be far
| enough into my career that I don't really worry about
| that anymore.
|
| The "reframe the conversation to the thing I want to talk
| about" - man, that one's frustrating. I don't have a
| polite way to stop that one yet. I think some of it is
| just that we all pick up traumas and trigger words, and
| you've gotta recognize when someone said "banana" that
| doesn't actually mean "the thing I slipped on five years
| ago."
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| I think we could benefit from more directness and
| bluntness of the right kind. To a large degree, what is
| considered "polite" is conditioned. I don't say
| _absolutely_ conditioned (there are absolute limits), but
| cultural conditioning can either blunt perception to the
| impolite, or oversensitive us so that we interpret normal
| things as impolite. Gen Z in the US, for example, seems
| hypersensitive compared to prior generations, though it
| didn 't begin with them. It is not unexpected that
| correcting someone's bad behavior, even in normal speech
| tone, will be seen as "yelling". This is very bad because
| an inability to receive feedback, let alone survive
| impropriety, essential to adulthood. Softness suffocates
| reason and weakens action, and it softens the person who
| wants to avoid perturbing the softness of another.
| Hemming and hawing and hedging, too, is an enemy of clear
| communication.
|
| But more to the point, I find that asking for
| clarification is the best tactic in the aforementioned
| circumstances. That way, you avoid having to make
| accusations. It removes all pretext for getting defensive
| and focuses the discussion on the substance and merit
| rather than the character flaws and lack of speaking
| skills of the other. If the other person starts to get
| unjustifiably angry, this reflects poorly on them, not
| you, so there is no need to feel any guilt. Be honest and
| never lie. Do not pretend to understand someone just
| because you think asking for clarification will make you
| look less competent. Maybe you _are_ less competent, in
| which case pretending to competence you don 't actually
| have is dishonest and unjust. You also close off the
| doors to learning. And if you are competent, then there's
| nothing to worry about. Bullshitters feed off pretense,
| and honest people are dismayed by it.
| squirtlebonflow wrote:
| [dead]
| dekhn wrote:
| One of the best advices I got: "stop acting like you're
| the smartest person in the room, even if you are" so I
| started acting like the stupidest person in the room.
| Often times, by asking the dumbest question in the
| naivest way possible, you can expose a lot of bad ideas.
| specialist wrote:
| The Columbo Method
| mbork_pl wrote:
| Or the Feynman one.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| A thousand times, yes. They're not dumb questions, of
| course. They're pure, simple, and relevant. They're the
| strongest questions one can ask. The best.
| roughly wrote:
| Oh my god yes. It's also So Much more fun and
| interesting! You get to learn from people!
| dekhn wrote:
| Well... it's more like by asking an extremely dumb
| question helps other people in the room know when they're
| being bullshitted.
|
| "So, I see your business model is to make widgets. But
| ... uh... I don't really understand these ideas but
| that's called capital intensive, right? So, you're gonna
| have a factory, with a bunch of workers... in San
| Francisco? Won't that be really expensive, and ... uh, I
| guess that means your profit margin will be small? Could
| you put your factory in Kansas?"
|
| (paraphrased but essentially accurate question I asked
| when being pitched by a hardware startup at a major VC
| that I advised)
| jacquesm wrote:
| > I don't have a polite way to stop that one yet.
|
| Selective doses of being impolite can be _extremely_
| effective, especially when you 're otherwise very polite.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| "A gentleman is one who is never _unintentionally_ rude.
| "
|
| (One of several variants:
| <https://quoteinvestigator.com/2015/01/21/offense/>)
| _jal wrote:
| > The "reframe the conversation to the thing I want to
| talk about" - man, that one's frustrating.
|
| The most effective method I've found is making that
| person responsible for resolving whatever the issue is.
| Not always possible, but especially when it happens in
| group settings, some verbal judo can work even if you
| can't "officially" task them.
|
| (Make sure to memorialize that in an email afterwards, or
| it will probably retroactively never have happened.)
| sophacles wrote:
| It's an extremely valuable observational skill. It's also
| an extremely valuable skill to be able to get everyone in
| alignment, but much much harder to "git gud" at (so to
| speak).
|
| A few suggestions for getting more value out of your
| observations:
|
| * in the moment, particularly if it's heated, you won't
| make a ton of headway unless you really know the parties
| involved and know how to frame "i think you agree with
| each other" well enough to be heard over the
| argumentative mindset. Instead pointing it out to each
| party individually in a later/follow up discussion can
| help a lot!
|
| * If you have a good "people person" mentor or manager,
| just pointing it out to them can often result in positive
| outcomes, because they can take it on themselves to have
| the discussions in the background or if you ask for it,
| mentor you in how to get that across in a well-received
| way.
|
| * sometimes when people are arguing with each other in
| agreement, the issue is usually semantics and someone (or
| everyone) has a different take on some word/phrase/name
| whatever being used. A good tactic is to try and identify
| where that bit of disagreement is and play dumb (it works
| best when you're in a "junior" position but can work in
| any situation) and say something like - "wait, sorry to
| interrupt but I don't quite get the difference between
| foobar and barfoo can you help me understand?" and then
| when they explain to you, the neutral third party,
| they'll come to the realization that they are arguing in
| agreement after all.
|
| I've been in your shoes before and the above advice
| helped me get going so I'm passing it along. For me the
| difficulty in relaying the info came from a couple
| places:
|
| * I was afraid of speaking out of turn, or looking dumb.
| It turns out that the "dumb look" i was afraid of is
| often interpreted as "wow this guy is asking smart
| questions", and at worst it's interpreted as "this guy
| needed a bit of a different explanation to grok it".
|
| * I didn't realize that people don't need to understand
| that I was seeing them argue in agreement or avoid the
| question. I just needed to ask my own clarifying
| questions until everyone got the info/agreement they
| needed. If they get that I was driving at "arguing in
| agreement" or if they think I resolved a conflict, it
| doesn't matter - the goal of "we're all on the same page"
| was successfully reached.
|
| I've still got a lot to learn in this whole area, but
| even trying to address those things often helps smooth
| out the rough bits and is useful. HTH!
| distortedsignal wrote:
| I like to call "not being afraid to look dumb"
| "weaponizing my own stupidity." I'm not the sharpest
| knife in the drawer, but if you aren't worried about
| looking like a dope from time-to-time, you can help the
| actually smart people in the room agree on stuff.
| antod wrote:
| I use dumb questions a lot as a manager - although my
| hiring intentions are to try and make me the actual
| dumbest person on the team anyway.
|
| I don't use it so much for the teasing out agreement or
| highlighting problems angle though - one of my goals is
| setting the accepted threshold for dumb questions low
| enough that junior/newer or less confident team members
| aren't afraid to ask their own "dumb questions". Those
| questions are usually more important than mine, and teams
| that don't have that "no question is too dumb" culture
| are often dysfunctional or heading that way.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Whole heatedly resonate with this. In my experience,
| people love questions (stupid questions, simple
| questions, doesn't matter), it gives them an opportunity
| to feel informed and impactful.
|
| If you ask a question and someone is scornful ("you
| should know that already!"), First time it's on them,
| second time it's on you, third time update your resume.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| I think it's really an indictment of (software?)
| engineer's communication skills. So much of us seem to
| come from a self-taught/introverted background and ignore
| the importance of clear communication required to work in
| a team.
|
| The "pet peeve" thing in particular I catch myself in
| regularly, where I realize I didn't actually answer
| someone's question, instead mapping their meaning to my
| preferred topic. It's interesting how just _listening_ is
| a skill.
|
| The Communications class I attended early in my career
| has been incredibly useful.
| abathur wrote:
| Spending time in meetings with someone who insists on
| near-complete terminological clarity from everyone
| involved ~illuminates just how hard it is to communicate
| precisely and consistently. (In my case, this person is a
| CEO who's had past lives in engineering and finance,
| IIRC.)
|
| Setting aside the communication skills of specific
| engineers, various stakeholders can still have both
| wildly and subtly different senses of what they mean by
| common terms.
|
| For example, I find there's a fair amount of chaos
| surrounding very common terms like "product" and
| "content" that tend to mean different things in different
| systems and to people in different roles/departments.
| TylerE wrote:
| "portal" is a good one. Depending on the speaker it can
| mean an entire website, or a single link, or just about
| anything in between.
| IggleSniggle wrote:
| Or a very specific iframe-like HTML tag!
|
| <portal>
|
| https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/po...
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I've interacted with government and insurance attorneys
| for various work gigs and some of them have impressed me
| with their insistence on clarity, too. I find it
| challenging and fun to communicate that way, albeit I've
| only ever done it in small 'doses'. (I'd guess it follows
| a dose-response relationship that veers off toward
| madness pretty quickly.)
|
| I get a similiar kind of kick from observing people
| communicating technically and precisely to complete a
| task-- launching rockets, doing performing surgery,
| controlling air traffic, etc.
| onlypositive wrote:
| Being precise (not vague) with your language is a learned
| skill. I started practicing is after reading 12 rules for
| life (it's one of them).
|
| It really makes a difference in everyday life. It
| prevents so many arguments with my wife: we agree on most
| things, when we don't it's usually because we disagree on
| the meaning of the words we're using. At work I have far
| less misunderstandings with coworkers, I understand
| expectations better and I don't get caught out by people
| using vague language to hide or gloss over major
| problems. Last month I was evaluating a contract and it
| took me a week to get a clear answer about terms. I
| suspect the people involved subconsciously knew that if
| they gave a clear answer the contract would be deemed
| unecessary and cancelled. It was.
| cosmojg wrote:
| > At work I have far less misunderstandings with
| coworkers [...]
|
| You have fewer* misunderstandings ;)
| gugagore wrote:
| In case your point is that using "less" instead of
| "fewer" for countable nouns is an example of unclear
| communication, let me disagree with the point.
| OJFord wrote:
| Less so (more awkward) here than in other cases, but it's
| as if the misunderstandings were smaller in magnitude
| rather than quantity or frequency.
| jahsome wrote:
| Ugh... I am a very precise communicator, and my wife ---
| Not so much.
|
| I love her dearly, but I cannot count the number of times
| I have enraged her by asking her to elaborate or seeking
| clarification about a pronoun or some other vaguery by
| asking questions she believes "I should know the answer
| to because I'm too smart not to know"
|
| We're getting there, though :)
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Lol my wife is the same and it drives me nuts. She will
| say go get me "x". I'm like where? And then she'll say
| "the closet" or something like that and I'll have to ask
| "which closet" and so on.
| mbork_pl wrote:
| Cannot not think of this quote from C.S. Lewis' "That
| hideous strength":
|
| > "The cardinal difficulty," said MacPhee, "in
| collaboration between the sexes is that women speak a
| language without nouns. If two men are doing a bit of
| work, one will say to the other, 'Put this bowl inside
| the bigger bowl which you'll find on the top shelf of the
| green cupboard.' The female for this is, 'Put that in the
| other one in there.' And then if you ask them, 'in
| where?' they say, 'in _there_ , of course.' There is
| consequently a phatic hiatus."
| sitkack wrote:
| What a sexist comment.
| emaginniss wrote:
| The longer I spend on social media the more I have
| learned that the only differences between men and women
| is that men are terrible and women are awesome. Right?
| mbork_pl wrote:
| > What a sexist comment.
|
| Indeed. The author seems to imply that men are so bad at
| understanding contextual clues that communication with
| them is virtually impossible, almost as if they were
| primitive machines and not full-fledged human beings
| capable of observing and thinking. Even worse, when
| confronted with this uncomfortable truth, instead of
| learning how to communicate properly, they react with
| frustration, almost as if they were primitive animals
| driven by instincts and emotions and not full-fledged
| human beings capable of learning.
|
| Still, I find it hilarious, even though I am a man
| myself!
|
| And on a more serious note - why, when presented with two
| _different_ phenomena (in this case: men and women, but
| there are many more cases, like "SQL" and "NoSQL", or
| "Rust" and "Clojure", or "GUI" and "CLI", etc., etc.), so
| many people automatically assume that one must be somehow
| strictly "better" and the other somehow strictly "worse"?
| Of course, it's sometimes (maybe even _often_ ) the case,
| but neither "sometimes" nor "often" does not mean
| "always"!
| Anthony-G wrote:
| Ironically, given that the discussion is about clarity of
| language, I had to look up the meaning of "phatic
| hiatus"; it refers to a pause in conversation. For more
| on this, see
| https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/592225/is-
| the-fo...
| detourdog wrote:
| I looked up phatic also. Great word. denoting or relating
| to language of a general purposes of social interaction.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| (Taking light-hearted commentary too seriously)
|
| Something that young children have to grow out of is
| assuming that "if they know it, their parents must know
| it too", such as where they put (not hid, because "the
| parents know") the phone or the keys. As a child they
| haven't yet developed the, obvious once developed,
| concept of the individuality of knowledge and experience.
|
| It does feel as if this regresses for long-term partners.
| The volume of shared experience must blur the boundaries
| of individual experience, or something.
|
| My wife will often blurt out something totally
| incomprehensible to anyone but her, but since she's spent
| the previous 5-10 minutes reading / watching all the
| context leading up to it, she expects the rest of us (who
| may have only just strolled into the room) to know it to
| its core.
|
| A punchline without context is nothing!
|
| I do like the sideways glances my kids give me when it
| happens though. That's a shared understanding :)
| brightlancer wrote:
| I've known lots of intelligent adults who assumed their
| particular knowledge was common knowledge. Most were
| polite about it and realized their mistake; a few were
| quite obnoxious and learned nothing.
|
| Anecdotally, I wonder if/ to what degree this has been
| affected by increased job specialization, where a person
| who spends all day working (and perhaps socializing
| after) with folks who share their particular knowledge
| and jargon will then err when interacting with folks
| outside of that bubble.
| jahsome wrote:
| > It does feel as if this regresses for long-term
| partners. The volume of shared experience must blur the
| boundaries of individual experience, or something.
|
| This is so true, and painfully so. I was fortunate to
| have an epiphany a few years ago when I realized I was
| failing regularly to see my wife as a separate individual
| and part of the whole of "us."
|
| More accurately, there were times when I probably viewed
| her merely and extension of myself. It honestly changed
| the way I view the world, and I somehow managed to
| extrapolate that understanding to life itself. It was a
| glorious dose of ego death, and one I sorely needed.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Part of this is sharing of effort. Given a vague request,
| you can demand clarity or you can go try to work it to
| your best ability. Guess the most likely closet and go
| check it. If not there, go check the next one. Etc.
|
| This approach is harder on you... but easier on her. And
| that is a sort of gift that one can choose to give to a
| spouse. Allow them to be quick and vague sometimes, and
| choose to invest effort to pick up some of the slack they
| drop.
|
| Not all the time, but some of the time.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Similarly, how many people in meetings won't actually
| speak up if they aren't familiar with a term or acronym
| in context. I'm often surprised when I ask, and then
| several others mention they weren't sure either.
| slackstation wrote:
| Cannot agree more. Communication shouldn't be a
| specialized skill like writing code or designing bridges.
| It's a universal that is accessible to everyone and
| should be taught to everyone. It's exactly why colleges
| have general education.
|
| If someone finds that their team keeps getting in trouble
| or failing due to mis-communication as a pattern, then
| something deeper is wrong.
| Daub wrote:
| From the other side of the water, as an art teacher, I
| can say that I really appreciate the precision of
| computer/software engineers. Artists/designers can be so
| 'fuzzy', so 'hand wavey' and so prone to mystification
| and grandification.
|
| I will never forget attending an science/art symposium
| where the guest speaker was an artist. I quote them
| verbatim: 'Art can exist without science, but what
| happens if science tries to exist without art?
| Hiroshima!' Never in my life have I felt so ashamed of
| being an artist.
| stevage wrote:
| Listening is a skill, but understanding is the bigger
| one. Actually being able to fit someone else's ideas into
| a bigger framework, finding points of similarity and
| conflict is super challenging, and not really taught in
| engineering.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| We specifically don't educate engineers in writing or
| analysis, and high school preparation varies a lot.
|
| I dual majored CS and History. Computer Science got me in
| the door and provided core skillsets, but reading and
| writing, analysis skills really made me a better and more
| effective person.
| benterix wrote:
| That's very interesting! Would you be able to give an
| example without being too specific?
| detourdog wrote:
| The former guy is pretty simple example. My partner
| refers to as being a squid, spraying ink and making a get
| away.
| roughly wrote:
| It's been a long time and I don't remember specifics, but
| - we'd regularly be meeting with people from multiple
| different departments, and it'd be things like two people
| talking about testing, where it turns out one is talking
| about unit tests & CI and the other is talking about user
| testing, and you can go very far into that conversation
| using all the same words and meaning very different
| things.
| majormajor wrote:
| A fairly simple one I've seen is "when will this be
| done?" - stakeholder means to ask when will it be in
| production; engineer hears "done" as in "my task is done"
| and answers about when the PR will land.
| squirtlebonflow wrote:
| Ideally, merging the PR and having it be in production is
| a 30-60 minute automated CI process.
| hyperthesis wrote:
| "Communicating" is often used to mean "sending"
| information, but for communication to occur that
| information must be received.
|
| Yet, sending is easier than receiving, just as generating
| is easier than parsing.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > Yet, sending is easier than receiving, just as
| generating is easier than parsing.
|
| Generating data is easier than generating useful data or
| easily comprehensible data; time spent generating good
| data can reduce time spent parsing it.
|
| In a communication context, I don't think sending is
| necessarily easier than receiving, I think it's that
| we've ignored the sender's responsibilities and put the
| obligation on the receiver. (This should be expected when
| organizations reward the quantity of sent information
| over the quality of sent information.)
| engineer_22 wrote:
| +1. To riff in this, I play competitive paintball (long
| story happy to elaborate)
|
| The most key skill in this sport of paintball is
| communication. Among the highest circles of ability
| communication is understood to mean: "receiving
| information and repeating it until confirmed by first
| party"
|
| A lot of wasted effort, needless mistakes, can be
| eliminated by confirming your understanding.
| Communication is not speaking, it is not listening, it is
| both at once.
| EsportToys wrote:
| So what you're saying is, TCP is better than UDP?
| cratermoon wrote:
| I majored in journalism. I learned how to write clearly
| and concisely, and do it on short notice, too. I learned
| a process for writing, which is something most people
| don't have. I also learned how to ask good questions, and
| be skeptical about what organizations and people say when
| their job or profits depend on it.
| hgsgm wrote:
| Funny, I quit newspaper club because I couldn't tolerate
| writing articles in that useless newspaper style:
| irrelevant fact, lede, quote, counterquote, irrelevant
| speculation end.
| abathur wrote:
| It's just a tool in the toolkit.
|
| I dropped my entire comp-sci major when I realized I
| couldn't bear even the first of two required technical
| writing courses. It was wringing all of the joy out of
| something I loved.
|
| Later, newswriting was... maybe not quite "fun", but I
| did enjoy the challenge of remaining creative within the
| form while keeping a demanding instructor happy.
|
| Screenwriting was similar. It's not a form I really
| ~enjoy writing in, but I think learning to write from
| that perspective also leaves you with something good for
| the kit.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| That seems like a questionable reason to ditch CS to me.
| Was it really that bad to do the technical writing
| courses?
| abathur wrote:
| Thanks for questioning my reasons (anonymously).
|
| As such things tend to be, it was the last straw. I was
| an angry, shy, lonely young person. I didn't know it at
| the time, but I was 1 year in to 6 years of ~writing-my-
| way-out of the worst two of those.
|
| I came to school thinking I'd study writing or
| programming. I started with the one likely to pay more to
| please my dad, but only found one of the intro CS
| projects remotely engaging.
|
| Yes; we were sitting in technical writing (second
| semester) discussing what we'd done for the first
| assignment and why. Through the lens of the only thing
| that I really found engaging (and catharctic, and joyful)
| in high school, I could see that my heart wasn't in it.
| Any of it.
|
| (I would later return to programming through art
| projects.)
| cratermoon wrote:
| Yes, having done all kinds of styles, I can see wanting
| to avoid technical writing. It's a highly rigid form,
| with lots of rules about how to arrange information.
| Sometimes just the tools are enough to make you want to
| quit: I'm looking at you (La)TeX.
| cratermoon wrote:
| I was taught to aggressively look for and cut irrelevant
| facts. Back in the day newspapers and other printed
| material had space limitations. If your story didn't fit
| in the allotted column inches, the copy desk would cut
| it.
|
| I also worked on a copy desk in college. Ideally a story
| has the most important information up front, in the
| inverted pyramid style, so that if an editor has to cut
| it for space, they can just cut from the bottom and not
| lose the main story. Given the _very_ limited time the
| copy desk has to look at all the stories before deadline,
| writers than failed to lead with the key facts would know
| very quickly that they needed to work on their stories
| more.
| test098 wrote:
| never heard of this style. afaik the "inverted pyramid"
| is the commonly-taught method for reporting in journalism
| schools: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(
| journalism)
|
| the whole point of this style is to remove all irrelevant
| information.
| ghaff wrote:
| Specifically for newspapers. Less so for magazines.
| Certainly it was followed fairly rigidly for historical
| wire service journalism because the newspaper using the
| copy would (literally) cut the article at a more or less
| arbitrary point to fill a space (between ads) in the
| paper. Obviously the constraints don't exist in the same
| way but writing from most important down to least
| important still makes sense for a lot of reasons.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| Any videos or online courses that you would recommend?
| cratermoon wrote:
| Journalism is a very large field with a history going
| back to the 17th century. Your question is roughly
| analogous to asking to recommend something about
| computers.
| ghaff wrote:
| You learn by doing. Find some online pub (or open source
| community) that will give you decent editorial support
| and start writing for them.
| RaoulP wrote:
| That sounds so valuable. Even for other fields, like the
| parent commenter said.
|
| I'm in engineering, but I have a growing interest in
| journalism. I've already graduated and here in Norway we
| don't really do double degrees or minors anyway.
|
| My main interest will remain engineering, but if I want
| to scratch that journalism itch some day, I wonder if I
| should go for a part-time degree, or just try amateur
| journalism. I think I'd favour the former.
| specialist wrote:
| > _Because Journalists are trained to be good
| communicators and summarize ideas..._
|
| Good to remember next time someone whinges about bad
| science journalism.
|
| Blame the editors, publishers, and owners. The
| constraints on journalists are ridiculous. While op-eds
| and columnists are granted soapboxes to blather on.
| abathur wrote:
| At a party, a coworker's partner (who is in law
| enforcement) asked what I thought about how to help
| people upskill to write better reports and such, and
| without hesitation I said they should try taking a
| newswriting class (ideally, IMO, on a condensed schedule
| as in a summer semester).
|
| I'm not sure how common this is, but newswriting (a
| sophomore-level course) was the weed-out class for all
| mass comm degrees at the state university I attended. I
| went into a summer newswriting class with quite a bit of
| writing experience and it still had an impact on me.
|
| (I double-majored in English + public relations and went
| on to get an MFA in creative writing. I doubt any 8-week
| period since elementary school affected my writing as
| much. It was a great counterweight to the kinds of
| academic writing styles you tend to pick up in English
| and philosophy. Caveat: I went into newswriting with a
| full toolchest; I can't speak to how it would go as a
| ~beginner.)
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I'm not sure how common this is, but newswriting (a
| sophomore-level course) was the weed-out class for all
| mass comm degrees at the state university I attended. I
| went into a summer newswriting class with quite a bit of
| writing experience and it still had an impact on me.
|
| Definitey. And _reading_ good writing is also an
| excellent way to improve one 's communication skills.
|
| It doesn't even need to be related to subjects you might
| be writing about either.
|
| Good novels, well written essays/non-fiction books, etc.
| can provide examples of good writing and, if one
| continues to read well written stuff, it will likely rub
| off.
|
| That's not a substitute for your suggestion (which is a
| good one), but another way to improve how one
| communicates in writing.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| I have never been a reader. I've read maybe one book on
| purpose in life. Also, I almost never read the posted
| article.
|
| I think reading is bad.
| jstarfish wrote:
| Journalism is an excellent minor. Criminal justice and
| psychology are excellent complements.
|
| - Journalism will teach you _who_ to ask questions of [to
| achieve the goal of accountability].
|
| - Criminal justice will teach you _what_ questions to ask
| [to achieve the goal of conviction /correction].
|
| - Psychology will teach you _how_ to ask questions [to
| achieve the goal of interrogation]. All interrogation and
| sales techniques are rooted in exploitation of
| psychology, but some people just have a natural knack for
| this. In both, the goal is to groom /break you into
| giving [something] you are inclined to withhold.
|
| Philosophy likely factors in here too but I'm less
| familiar with that field. People appreciate Ethics about
| as much as they appreciate someone pulling the fire alarm
| and yelling racial slurs at evacuees in the parking lot.
| I've never found much use in naming logical fallacies
| (IME it's the domain of pseudointellectual internet
| bullies and pre-law students), but could see it being a
| way for oneself to reason _why_ you 're pursuing
| something. Self-righteousness substitutes well enough.
| fragmede wrote:
| Ad-hominem fallacy comes up pretty frequently, as people
| buy into it a lot. Pointing it out doesn't make someone a
| bully, usually the other person saying those things in
| order to convince others is the one being a bully.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| Yes, I study logical fallacies and how to use them. Ad-
| hominem is a really powerful one.
| jahsome wrote:
| I think you're spot on.
|
| I have a journalism + mass communications bachelor's, but
| only because I dropped out of the CS program -- too much
| math. Once I had mouths to feed, I couldn't make it work
| financially as a journalist, so I started freelance in
| software and my career has grown from there.
|
| The communication skills, and more critically, the
| understanding of how information is gathered and
| disseminated in groups (i.e. mass comms) is by far my
| biggest strength. That foundational understanding has
| served my career far more than any of the programming
| classes I took before switching majors.
| psunavy03 wrote:
| I hope to God any decent journalist (if any are left) is
| looking for the actual truth and not just "truthiness."
|
| You do understand that Stephen Colbert coined that term,
| right? And that he coined it as a deliberate satire of
| politicians and journalists who had what we'll call an
| open relationship with the truth?
| robomartin wrote:
| > they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and
| corroborating information for its "truthiness"
|
| Agree with the rest of what you said, except for this.
| Unless you said "truthiness" in quotes instead of truth
| (without quotes) to indicate this is a failing.
|
| Today's so-called journalists are ideology merchants.
| Their fitness function is guided by such things as their
| ideological alignment (or indoctrination), that of the
| organization they work for (what do I have to say to keep
| my job?) or whatever it takes to get clicks.
|
| Journalism has not been equated with truth-seeking in a
| long time. From my perspective, I see it as a disgraceful
| profession. In other words, if someone says "I am a
| journalist", I will assume they exist to sell lies and
| ideology, not to uncover the truth at all.
|
| This is the only profession that enjoys constitutional
| protection (in the US).
|
| What do they do with that protection? Elevate lies and
| misinformation to a virtue.
|
| Given that our system of education does not produce
| people who are able to think critically, what you have
| are masses who believe what is being repeated by these
| puppet masters. Collectively and through their actions,
| they are damaging society in ways we have yet to
| discover.
|
| I am certain this is not at all what the authors of the
| US constitution had in mind when they offered that
| protection.
|
| Perhaps that's along the lines of what you meant when you
| said "truthiness", which sounds like a way to have a
| chuckle at the idea of them actually seeking truth at
| all.
| SamPatt wrote:
| >Journalism has not been equated with truth-seeking in a
| long time.
|
| Why do you believe it was ever about truth-seeking?
|
| My understanding of journalism specifically - and the
| flow of information generally - is that those in power
| have always sought to control it, and they were just as
| successful in the past, perhaps more so.
| test098 wrote:
| let's apply that extremely broad comment to another
| group: computer scientists!
|
| > Today's so-called journalists are ideology merchants
|
| Today's so-called computer scientists are distraction
| merchants
|
| > Their fitness function is guided by such things as
| their ideological alignment (or indoctrination), that of
| the organization they work for ... or whatever it takes
| to get clicks
|
| Their fitness function is guided by such things as their
| financial incentives (or indoctrination), that of the
| organization they work for ... or whatever it takes to
| make money
|
| > Journalism has not been equated with truth-seeking in a
| long time. From my perspective, I see it as a disgraceful
| profession.
|
| Computer science has not been equated with technological
| advancement in a long time. From my perspective, I see it
| as a disgraceful profession.
|
| > In other words, if someone says "I am a journalist", I
| will assume they exist to sell lies and ideology, not to
| uncover the truth at all.
|
| In other words, if someone says "I am a developer", I
| will assume they exist to sell user data to the highest
| bidder, not to engage in any kind of technological
| pursuit.
|
| > Given that our system of education does not produce
| people who are able to think critically, what you have
| are masses who believe what is being repeated by these
| puppet masters. Collectively and through their actions,
| they are damaging society in ways we have yet to
| discover.
|
| no changes.
| AmericanChopper wrote:
| Those are important skills, but does a journalism major
| really teach you that? Nearly all of my daily
| interactions with journalism involves endless amounts of
| agenda-driven spin, and consistent use of intentionally
| divisive and provocative language. Journalists are
| responsible for some of the least effective communication
| I see on a daily basis. Perhaps it would be more useful
| for teaching you how lie all the time, whilst holding on
| to a few shreds of plausible deniability.
| ghaff wrote:
| >I think Journalism is a great dual major choice (or
| maybe just a minor), with whatever it is you want to
| study, particularly if its in conjunction with
| engineering, computer science, physics, biology, finance
| / accounting etc. Why?
|
| Just working for the college paper isn't a bad
| alternative. Honestly, at this point, having been
| involved with several college papers and having done a
| lot of writing is probably way more valuable than any
| individual engineering class I've ever taken. (Though I
| certainly wouldn't dismiss what I learned with my
| engineering degrees in their totality if not in the
| specifics.)
|
| ADDED: Didn't have a journalism minor per se but there
| was a lecturer (had been a senior editor at Newsweek,
| etc.) in undergrad who ran a Friday morning basically
| seminar where he brought in all sorts of interesting
| journo-related guests. It wasn't (for obvious reasons)
| literally limited to people on campus newspapers. But a
| 9am Friday slot kept most of the riff-raff out :-) (And
| every now and then someone else would wander in and
| wonder how everyone else in the room knew each other.)
| coldtea wrote:
| > _and they are also taught to be ferocious in finding
| and corroborating information for its "truthiness"_
|
| And yet most practice the exact opposite.
| themitigating wrote:
| "And yet most practice the exact opposite"
|
| And yet you just made a sweeping generalization about
| journalists without any corroborating information.
| coldtea wrote:
| When did people lost the ability to experience empirical
| reality, and generalize and draw conclusions from it, as
| opposed to having everything force-fed in the form of
| some statistic?
|
| Finding "corroborating information" should be the
| province of journalists, scientists, the police, etc.
|
| Being able to draw first level conclusions from their
| empirical experience of reality (and, in this case, their
| years of exposure to watching media, reading media,
| reading about media, and seeing media coverage unfold and
| evaluated), is table stakes for being a citizen.
|
| Without that direct experience and the ability to distill
| it into a general understand, you're just someone reading
| statistics and reports, who they can't evaluate or
| corroborate with any of their experience, might as well
| be reading for some fictional land.
| themitigating wrote:
| You said 80% of blah blah then drcry the use of
| statistics. You just forced-fed that to everyone
|
| _When did people lost the ability to experience
| empirical reality, and generalize and draw conclusions
| from it_
|
| No one lost this ability it's just an objectively worse
| way to come to a conclusion. Making generalizations is
| bad, it's weird you would openly propose doing it.
|
| _empirical experience of reality (and, in this case,
| their years of exposure to watching media, reading media,
| reading about media, and seeing media coverage unfold and
| evaluated)_
|
| You're simply describing anecdotal evidence which has
| little value especially if there's alternatives and it's
| being used to make a conclusion. It's fine to offer up
| anecdotes but with supportering information. However what
| the media does and tells you isn't your own personal
| experiences.
|
| Also, watching and observing all media or just your own
| selected media where people tell you something is the way
| it is.
|
| The issue is a persons limited ability to observe as well
| as confirmation bias,and memory lead to faulty
| conclusions.
|
| _as opposed to having everything force-fed in the form
| of some statistic?_
|
| You're claiming statistics have less value than limited
| personal observations?
|
| You also used the phrase "forced-fed" as a manipulation
| tactic to make people think whatever you mentioned after
| it is bad. Like if I said "My mom force fed us hamburgers
| for dinner" instead of "My mom made hamburgers for
| dinner".
| coldtea wrote:
| > _You said 80% of blah blah_
|
| Huh? Did you LLM-like hallucinate that part?
|
| > _No one lost this ability_
|
| You'd be surprised.
|
| > _Making generalizations is bad, it 's weird you would
| openly propose doing it._
|
| Making generalizations is the cornerstone of
| understanding the world, and the basis of science. The
| alternative is taking each element of larger clusters of
| things and behaviors as some unique snowflake, and never
| learning any greater lesson ("missing the forrest for the
| trees").
|
| > _You 're claiming statistics have less value than
| limited personal observations?_
|
| Merely claiming? This is reality 101. Anything you can
| directly observe is more real than some third or fourth-
| hand statistical "knowledge".
|
| > _You also used the phrase "forced-fed" as a
| manipulation tactic to make people think whatever you
| mentioned after it is bad._
|
| Or, you know, I used it to accurately describe the way
| statistics are created, manipulated, promoted, and used
| to paint all kinds of pictures state and private
| interests want to promote. Which is how they got their
| place at the worse end of the scale after "lies" and
| "damned lies".
| themitigating wrote:
| _Or, you know, I used it to accurately describe the way
| statistics are created, manipulated, promoted, and used
| to paint all kind_
|
| Another generalization without evidence?
|
| _Merely claiming? This is reality 101. Anything you can
| directly observe is more real than some third or fourth-
| hand statistical "knowledge"._
|
| No where did I say your observations are false. If you
| use limited observations to reach a conclusion. You're
| not even documenting your observations if you are simply
| relying on your memory.
|
| This is literally how racists think. They observe
| behavior then generalize about a race. However
| confirmation bias, media manipulation, and cultural bias
| muddy your "recorded" observation. I'm not saying you're
| a racist but I'm showing using your own input of the
| world to generlize leads to faulty conclusions.
|
| _Making generalizations is the cornerstone of
| understanding the world, and the basis of science_
|
| No, the scientific method is the cornerstone of science.
| Observations are only the first step to creating a
| hypothesis then attempting to disprove it.
|
| Statistics can be wrong but that doesn't mean you should
| dismiss them.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| I mean, have ya looked around lately?
| 8n4vidtmkvmk wrote:
| I wonder if it works in the opposite direction too. If
| you dual majored biotech and journalism maybe it'd give
| you a leg up on writing about biotech; you'd know what to
| look out for and what's BS.
| ghaff wrote:
| The problem is that you'd probably be a good journalist
| writing about biotech but journalism is a pretty awful
| way to pay the bills these days, not that it was ever all
| that great.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Yes, but you'd make 3x as much in biotech.
| theK wrote:
| Not only the truth finding part but also the
| understanding nuance part. Great journalists excel at
| identifying important nuance to complex situations and
| bringing it to light. A very good skill to have as an
| engineer, especially when moving up the ranks.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > they are also taught to be ferocious in finding and
| corroborating information for its "truthiness".
|
| If they are actually trained in that, there's no evidence
| of it. Journalists shape their articles to fit their
| narrative.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Both of my parents are journalists and I'm a big tech ML
| engineer... so there are alternative paths available :)
| dmoy wrote:
| Well I managed to not get into law at all.
|
| I do know more about patent law than is probably relevant
| for a layperson though lol
| throwawaylinux wrote:
| You can tell he's not a _real_ journalist because he wasn
| 't digging dirt and attacking anybody who questioned The
| Science(tm) or carrying water for the ruling class.
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| Genetics certainly plays a heavy hand in terms of what we
| end up doing occupationally. It's not the whole story,
| obviously, but it's one of the chief protagonists. There's
| also the matter of constant reinforcement and exposure to
| your parents' careers as you grow up. So it's mostly genes
| (nature) and parenting (nurture). Extrafamilial social
| interactions provide a lesser, but not insignificant,
| influence.
| underlipton wrote:
| Yes, genetic variability, which was largely set in
| prehistory, definitely "plays a heavy hand" in
| determining whether someone will enter the workforce in
| one of several occupations that cluster closely in terms
| of skill set, yet vary widely in terms of pay and
| prestige. This guy will probably be a journalist instead
| of, say, a private investigator, or a novelist, or a
| technical writer, or a marketer, because it's in his
| _genes_. /s
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| Different occupations require different temperaments,
| personalities, and so forth. These things are largely
| determined by genetics. How is any of that controversial,
| or worthy of your scorn?
| underlipton wrote:
| >Different occupations require different temperaments,
| personalities, and so forth.
|
| No, I don't think I agree with that. Widely varying
| workplace cultures across businesses in the same field or
| market are driven by widely-varying temperaments,
| personalities, etc. in each business's labor force. (This
| is the saving grace of, say, police officers, where many
| decorated vets have been shown to be bullies and
| sociopaths; I would hope that there is some variance
| there.) There isn't just variance in how different
| companies and even teams do things, but across time; the
| job of a journalist today is quite different from the job
| of one at the occupation's inception, and even of one who
| is now retiring as this young man is beginning his
| career. In fact, assuming that in-built assets truly vary
| non-trivially, many retire BECAUSE theirs are
| incompatible with the shifting needs of a modern worker.
| That a job's responsibilities change over time would
| alone seem to falsify the notion that one can be born
| with a proclivity for it, the same as one's parents.
|
| >How is any of that controversial, or worthy of your
| scorn?
|
| It's unscientific, Panglossian garbage.
| WalterBright wrote:
| There's no inevitability about picking up a career you're
| familiar with. My dad was a pilot and a professor - yet I'm
| a computer nerd.
| sharadov wrote:
| Not necessary - both parents were doctors but I became an
| engineer. And no - They were not in it for the money.
|
| Although they worked really hard they were always
| passionate about their work and truly loved helping people
| getting better.
|
| But I realized early enough that I did not have the same
| level of commitment.
| bmmayer1 wrote:
| Theo Baker also became the youngest person to win a Polk
| Award because of this story, at 18. Very cool!
| brightlancer wrote:
| Despite the lack of name recognition, the Polk Award is a
| serious award which is well respected among journalists.
| tristor wrote:
| And because of this, The Stanford Daily became the first
| independent student newspaper to ever win a Polk Award.
| jxramos wrote:
| oh wow that's useful context. Congratulations to the
| Daily.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Wow! You can't make this up.
|
| It's like one side of the "legacy elite" came around and
| smacked down a whole different side of the "legacy elite."
| LastTrain wrote:
| Why would you consider two moderately paid journalists part
| of the "legacy elite", how are what they do comparable - at
| all - to the president of Stanford University?
| johntiger1 wrote:
| Exactly, don't know why they are trying to frame the kid
| as part of some legacy elite. We should judge Theo for
| his actions (commendable), not who his parents are.
| xvector wrote:
| Theo's achievements wouldn't be possible without his
| parent's legacy to protect him. The average student
| journalist absolutely could not do the same thing Theo
| did here.
| brightlancer wrote:
| > two moderately paid journalists
|
| "Peter Eleftherios Baker (born July 2, 1967) is an
| American journalist and author. He is the chief White
| House correspondent for The New York Times and a
| political analyst for MSNBC, and was previously a
| reporter for The Washington Post for 20 years."
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Baker_(journalist)
|
| I don't know what he's paid, but I doubt it's anywhere
| near the median for journalists, for US workers, or for
| the NYTimes.
| michaelt wrote:
| There are many yardsticks by which you can measure elite
| status, other than salary. I respect Dennis Ritchie, but
| not for his salary.
|
| If you measure status by the yardstick "Number of people
| in the white house you're on a first name basis with"
| then I am reasonably confident that NYT chief White House
| correspondent Peter Baker scores higher than the
| president of Stanford University.
|
| None of this detracts from what Theo Baker has achieved,
| of course.
| LastTrain wrote:
| Interesting. So, by that yardstick, a cook in the
| Whitehouse basement is legacy elite. So is my 20 year old
| niece. Sorry, but a more successful than average
| journalist is not part of the "legacy elite", whatever
| the fuck that means anyway.
| michaelt wrote:
| The term 'legacy elite' is indeed ambiguous, so let me
| state things in a different way.
|
| Imagine you're the President of Stanford, and some kid on
| the student newspaper is bothering you about some decade-
| old nonsense. You can barely even remember fudging the
| numbers and besides, everyone was doing it. Student
| newspapers have been railing against the university since
| time immemorial, but this guy seems determined to harass
| you personally. It bothers you and you want it to stop.
|
| You could probably make it stop; almost everyone is
| guilty of something, and society has seen fit to give you
| your own police force. And even if you can't find any
| evidence of pot or drinking or piracy, why shouldn't
| rules about harassment, bullying and creating a hostile
| workplace be on your side? Even if that wouldn't hold up
| in court, probably someone can convince the kid that
| 'voluntarily' stopping would be in everyone's best
| interests.
|
| Then you find out the kid's parents both write for major
| national periodicals. And not occasional contract work or
| writing the sunday style magazine, they're serious
| journalists.
|
| You realise this kid has probably already received advice
| on the lines between journalism and harassment. Probably
| very well informed advice. And even if his parents don't
| _personally_ write about rising censorship on college
| campuses, they undoubtedly know people who do.
|
| You're going to have to do this one by the book.
| KirillPanov wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_overproduction
| arcticfox wrote:
| That's an odd framing of what happened here, I don't really
| get what it has to do with "legacy elites". I guess maybe
| in the sense that his parents were exceptional, but when I
| think of "legacy elites" I think of multi-generational
| wealth and power that often has little to do with
| individual merit (and is probably correlated _against_
| merit, in my experience).
|
| It certainly is fascinating though. Like it will be
| interesting to see what happens if the kid of Ashton Eaton
| (gold medalist, decathlon) and Brianne Theisen-Eaton (world
| champion / bronze medalist, heptathlon) decides to dabble
| in athletics in 10-15 years.
|
| This is pretty much a journalistic version of that
| scenario; if there was ever someone born to lay waste to a
| fraudulent Stanford president, surely it was this kid.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| It's always interesting to watch the semi-elites & elites
| of HN discuss and rationalize the merits of class
| society.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| Yeah this is exactly what I'm describing
|
| His parents are "elite" and he's following in their
| footsteps - hence the "legacy."
|
| It's one of the few generational advantages that I'm
| generally ok with ethically (passing down a trade), so
| long as it's not abused.
|
| In this case that advantage seems to be being used for
| the greater good which is great!
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Why would you classify Baker's family as "legacy elite"?
| drBonkers wrote:
| Are you serious?
|
| > His parents are NYT chief White House correspondent
| Peter Baker, and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser.
| yreg wrote:
| Your opinion that the people working at those position
| are 'legacy elite' is clearly not universal.
|
| I'm not even sure what's 'legacy elite' supposed to mean,
| other than that it is I suppose negative?
| bentlegen wrote:
| Basically folks have bought into conservative propaganda
| that white collar journalists are somehow equally "elite"
| as the ruling owner class.
| DirkH wrote:
| You're unaware there are people who more easily get into
| elite schools because of their parents?
|
| Educate yourself. It is a widespread systemic problem
| often called affirmative action for Whites:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legacy_preferences
|
| "Nepobaby" (as in nepotism baby) or simply "Legacy" is
| more commonly used.
|
| This skips what is supposed to be a meritocracy and can
| quite straightforwardly be argued to be perpetuating an
| oligarchy and plutocracy
|
| So yes, it's negative.
| yreg wrote:
| Legacy elite is not mentioned on that site, not sure how
| I was supposed to know what the poster means.
|
| Anyway sounds pretty rude to claim that a specific
| student was admitted thanks to his parents without any
| evidence.
|
| Thank you for your recommendation regarding the topics I
| need to educate myself on.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| I too cannot believe it. Even the most diehard
| nonparticipating 20-year-old League-of-Legends-addicted
| coding-bootcamped hustlebro HN reader could fathom how
| being a senior journalist in the country's maybe #1 and
| #3 news institutions is like, a big deal.
|
| Since it sounds like the other commenters are really
| confused about why it matters whose kid he is: like if
| you were just a regular person, you might be ejected from
| Stanford for pursuing something like this against a far
| lesser faculty member. It has nothing to do with
| admissions, which is such a hustlebro 20 year old POV
| anyway: to think that the privileges of nepotism are
| limited to getting admitted to fancy universities and
| money in a bank account. If only!
|
| Imagine having first hand evidence of your PI doing
| fraud, which lots of people do by definition, and that is
| rightly seen as career suicide. Like even the postdoc in
| the story, who has the evidence, hasn't come clean! He
| can't just like, stop living the way this student can.
|
| The students who relayed Marc Hauser's fraud to Harvard
| never went public with their identities. They don't get
| to win Polk Awards at all. They're not regarded as
| investigative journalists. This also prevents us from
| seeing what happened. I can tell you from my experience
| at least some of those students joined Hauser's
| prestigious lab for a medical school recommendation,
| which obviously didn't happen. In fact they may have only
| exposed him because, he was such an asshole, he refused
| to write them recs at all, for whatever reason.
|
| Do you know what all those people at Genentech get for
| exposing this fraud publicly? Nothing. I mean, they
| certainly don't become eligible for journalism awards.
| They could very well have provided the first hand
| evidence, and maybe posted to a PR newswire that has more
| circulation than the Stanford Daily or whatever, and
| cause the Stanford president to resign, and they still
| will absolutely, positively, never win a Polk award. They
| will just have a blown up career at the end, either way.
| They have a 100% chance of exposing the truth, and yet a
| pretty, pretty low chance of ending up better off than
| they were before they started.
|
| Nevermind research. Think about all the kids at e.g.
| private schools, younger kids, directly harmed by
| teachers molesting them, and you know, the kids are the
| ones who leave, not the teachers, for many decades and
| many institutions.
|
| So it definitely mattered to be the son of some big deal
| journalists in New York. Jerry Yang is beholden to
| journalists in New York. It made this happen.
|
| That said, of all the things to deploy your nepobabiness
| on, this is a pretty good one, isn't it? Investigative
| journalism of the finest degree. I don't personally think
| that a Polk award determines the merit of the
| investigation; nor does even the publication, clearly.
| Anyone, everywhere, can be not only be an investigative
| journalist, but indeed a _great_ investigative
| journalist. It is a legitimately great story of bringing
| this guy, who has clearly dodged bullets for a decade, to
| task.
| tremon wrote:
| _how being a senior journalist in the country 's maybe #1
| and #3 news institutions is like, a big deal._
|
| Ok, so you've established how his parents may be
| considered elite. You haven't explained the legacy part
| though. Did his parents get their jobs based on his
| grandparents merits? Can they trace their lineage back to
| the Mayflower? If that is irrelevant, can you perhaps
| explain your conception of "legacy elite" and how it
| differs from regular elite?
|
| _[they] never went public with their identities[..] They
| 're not regarded as investigative journalists_
|
| That's true. In order to be considered a journalist you
| have to go public with your findings. Otherwise, you may
| be an investigator but not a journalist.
| voz_ wrote:
| I like how, you write, and I agree. You have panache.
| sgustard wrote:
| Point is, his dad probably didn't write to the university
| president (which would be ironic at this point) asking
| him to admit his deadbeat son as a favor. The student
| earned his admission the same way anyone does: essays,
| grades, luck. I'm sure he was helped by the gift from his
| parents of good writing skills and some doggedness.
| "Legacy elite" tends to imply there's someone more
| deserving of his spot.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| It's not about admission. Without his parents, he would
| be removed from school for harassing a lesser faculty
| member. Like imagine making the same accusations, as a
| normal person, against your PI. Like he could have
| direct, first hand evidence of fraud, and it would be
| career suicide, if it weren't for his parents. Do you
| see?
| brightlancer wrote:
| > Without his parents, he would be removed from school
| for harassing a lesser faculty member.
|
| That's conjecture, not fact.
|
| When I was at Georgia Tech (THWG), the administration,
| via the Diversity Task Force, wanted to quietly change
| the school fight song (better to ask forgiveness than
| permission). So, the Technique student paper got the
| story together and published it before the admin could
| sink it.
|
| I don't know if anyone at the Technique ever suffered for
| it; my recollection was that the Diversity Task Force,
| and the Director of Diversity Stephanie Ray, were pretty
| hostile to anyone and everyone who opposed their re-
| education ideas, so I presume there was retribution.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20090726171257/http://techniq
| ue....
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _His parents are NYT chief White House correspondent Peter
| Baker, and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser_
|
| wow, his parents maybe can learn from this! How to doggedly
| pursue allegations against the occupant of the Whitehouse,
| _without fear or favor_ , with a healty dose of Grabthar's
| Hammer (never give up, never surrender)
| JJMcJ wrote:
| Go Cardinal.
|
| The Daily can be considered a real newspaper.
| malux85 wrote:
| Good, this kind of thing in academia is far too common. Cherry
| picking results all the way to outright falsifying data. It's a
| problem at Auckland university here in NZ too, my friends who
| are studying there say that their results are ignored if they
| are inconvenient. It's disgusting, and they should make an
| example of them (they are I guess)
| f6v wrote:
| I don't think it has to do with academia. It's just that
| manipulating data is common if it benefits people. Think of
| Facebook ad efficiency scandal, it's just one example.
| deepspace wrote:
| I was just reading an article from a HN story yesterday,
| where it was found that around 1/4 of data published in
| studies in anesthesiology were found to be faked. You know,
| anesthesiology, the field where giving you the wrong drug or
| the wrong amount can kill you.
|
| I strongly suspect that a driving factor is guys like this -
| leaders who reward "positive" results and punish "negative"
| ones.
| [deleted]
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| Good for Theo for writing this up, but it was Elizabeth Bik who
| got the ball rolling in discovering and investigating the
| fraud.
| tda wrote:
| Some links: https://scienceintegritydigest.com/
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elisabeth_Bik
| jhbadger wrote:
| Bik is a wonderful resource in science in general. She also
| runs the Microbiome Digest https://microbiomedigest.com that
| probably the majority of scientists working on the microbiome
| use to keep current in our field.
| danso wrote:
| "Writing this up"? It's likely true that Dr. Bik got the ball
| running (I believe she had posted about the anomalous figures
| months/years in the past), but there's a big difference
| between noticing fraudulent signs in published research,
| versus pursuing that lead into an investigation that attempts
| to identify the actual decision makers.
|
| Marc Tessier-Lavigne said all along that the bad/faked data
| was the work of other sloppy/bad actors. It was only through
| the reporting from Theo Baker and his colleagues that the
| public learned of MTL's negligence and culpability.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| I don't want to take away from Theo Baker's work here. The
| articles are well written and well researched. But
| ultimately they are simply _reporting_ on other people 's
| actions and formal investigations. I don't see any evidence
| that these articles were a driving force in this set of
| events.
| danso wrote:
| Well, technically, nearly _all_ news reporting is
| "reporting on other people's actions" -- e.g. Seymour
| Hersh didn't witness My Lai nor did he even find out
| about it on his own: Lt. Calley Jr. had already been
| investigated by the military and charged with mass murder
| of civilians; Hersh got interested after an anti-war
| lawyer tipped him off [0].
|
| > _I don 't see any evidence that these articles were a
| driving force in this set of events._
|
| One day after Baker published his investigation in the
| Daily [1], Stanford announced an investigation into MTL's
| research. You think that's a coincidence, or that the
| university was pressured to act that quickly b/c of the
| Daily simply reporting that The EMBO Journal was looking
| into allegations about a 2008 paper that MTL was third
| author on? No need to speculate; the university
| explicitly credits the Daily's story [2]:
|
| > _According to spokesperson Dee Mostofi, the University
| will "assess the allegations presented in the Stanford
| Daily, consistent with its normal rigorous approach by
| which allegations of research misconduct are reviewed and
| investigated."_
|
| It is true that Baker's first story led with the news
| that "A prominent research journal [EMBO] has confirmed
| to The Daily that it is reviewing a paper co-authored by
| [MTL]". But that's not the meat of the story, and most
| definitely not a catalyst for the university to announce
| an investigation. EMBO itself told the Daily that the
| review was still too early to comment:
|
| > _When asked about the specific allegations and the
| timeframe of the investigation, Batista wrote, "We
| currently cannot comment more substantively before we
| have a better assessment of the full situation."_
|
| > _It is unclear how long the review will take, and
| allegations can go without a response from the journal or
| authors for years. But an investigation could carry
| serious consequences for Tessier-Lavigne even if he is
| absolved of the alleged manipulation or other direct
| wrongdoing._
|
| [0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/30/the-
| scene-of-t...
|
| [1] https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/29/stanford-
| presidents-res...
|
| [2] https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/30/stanford-opens-
| investig...
| [deleted]
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| Don't you understand it's the IDEA that matters?
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| In this case the execution and follow-through matters
| more.
|
| I could be the one to identify that my metropolitan city
| has a massive homelessness problem. But it's another,
| much more impressive, achievement to be the one who does
| the hard work of pursuing and resolving that problem.
| danso wrote:
| You are correct but I think the comment was tongue in
| cheek.
| Slow_Hand wrote:
| Could be. Chalk it up to Poe's Law, then.
| [deleted]
| OldGuyInTheClub wrote:
| He would have gotten away with it except for those meddling
| kids.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Give him a Scooby snack.
| helloworld wrote:
| Here's more about Baker:
|
| https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ellievhall/theo-baker-s...
| marcosfelt wrote:
| He was interviewed by one of the local TV stations today:
| https://abc7news.com/stanford-theo-baker-university-presiden...
| tppiotrowski wrote:
| "The EMBO Journal wrote in a public post last week that it is
| reviewing the allegations regarding a 2008 paper about receptors
| within the brain for which Tessier-Lavigne is listed as the
| *third author of 11*"
|
| 11 authors? I thought the kickbacks of "I'll publish your name on
| my paper if you publish my name on yours" in Computer Science
| were bad...
| jklinger410 wrote:
| All of these comments and articles and no mention of what the
| studies were about, and why he manipulated them.
| DanAtC wrote:
| Putting the scam in Scamford
| akhayam wrote:
| I hear the calls for blood here, but will offer a contrarian
| point of view. The pressures academic researchers have to face
| today are unparalleled, even in 95% of industry jobs. The
| pressure to publish continuously, pressure to win grants,
| pressure to be a great teacher, pressure to be a role model for
| students and younger faculty, pressure to balance all this with
| families that really need you too.
|
| So we basically take the brightest minds and have them compete in
| a gladiatorial rate race. This system is so broken that something
| fundamental has to change here.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I agree. I'm a physicist and if everyone I knew who lied in
| their research got fired, there would be no one left.
| edgyquant wrote:
| What the actual fuck. There should be none of you left if
| that's the case.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Not sure why you're surprised, it's basically required at
| this point. Part of becoming a physicist is learning which
| 20% of a given paper is a vast overexaggeration of the
| impact or significance of the results. The exaggeration and
| deception is required for career progression
| edgyquant wrote:
| Probably because anyone mentioning such a thing is met
| with outrage at suggestion that "scientists" are anything
| but humble truth seekers.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Scientists are careerists first. I'm sure you've been
| told this many times
| edgyquant wrote:
| No the public discourse around this has been, for years
| at this point, that this isn't true. Stating anything
| else gets one labeled as an anti-science conspiracy
| theorist at best or a fascist at worst. Surely you know
| this.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I'm from a reasonably poor background so my experience
| has been almost the opposite, that experts are derided
| and seen as weirdos who are missing some aspect of
| reality.
|
| I get that there is a portion of the population for which
| what you say is true, but I'm sceptical that you aren't
| aware of what I'm talking about, but if you've genuinely
| managed to avoid it up until now, then you're welcome I
| guess
| wolpoli wrote:
| If I understand you correctly, you are saying we shouldn't be
| punishing individuals for a system problem. Is it time to
| reform the system then?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| It was time to reform the system several decades ago. But
| Americans are terrible at understanding "not every dollar
| spent on research will have a big outcome", or even
| understanding how research works in general.
| voytec wrote:
| It's interesting to see that software engineering (and IT
| overall) is not the major quality downgrade introduced by VC-
| like funding and push for Continuous Development.
| jkaptur wrote:
| This person is in trouble for intensifying exactly the issues
| you're describing:
|
| "The report ... identified a culture where Tessier-Lavigne
| "tended to reward the 'winners' (that is, postdocs who could
| generate favorable results) and marginalize or diminish the
| 'losers' (that is, postdocs who were unable or struggled to
| generate such data).""
| BeetleB wrote:
| I think GPs point is that there is little here to deter
| _other_ academics who behave the same way. From my time in
| academia, there are _plenty_ of professors I knew who behaved
| this way (not direct falsification, but rewarding the
| winners).
|
| This is a particularly egregious case of a high profile
| person. In most other cases, if misconduct is detected, the
| buck is passed on to the individual researcher/grad student.
| I personally know a fellow student who falsified data,
| published papers, and was caught. Only he, not the coauthors,
| got in trouble.
| okintheory wrote:
| I didn't read your comment as a defense, only as an
| explanation. And as an explanation, you're right: The pressure
| is getting to way too many people. But how can you fix it? I'm
| afraid good answers need very deep change. Society lets a few
| 'winners' (whether by cheating, effort, good luck, or anything
| else) reap too much of our collective rewards.
| the_only_law wrote:
| > But how can you fix it? I'm afraid good answers need very
| deep change
|
| How the hell do you manage to bring deep change to large
| entrenched bureaucracies like universities though? Honestly,
| I'm surprised there wasn't a crackdown or any supression on
| the guy who exposed this person.
| callalex wrote:
| The guy who exposed this person is the child of two
| prominent New York Times journalists.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| "When you're in a hole, stop digging". Yes, academia is
| terribly broken at the moment, the incentives are fucked, and
| fraud is rampant. But the solution there is not to just look
| the other way at misdeeds, that just makes the incentives even
| worse. Highly-visible career executions for misconduct aren't
| the entire solution, but they are part of the solution.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I didn't realize academic research was a mandatory life
| sentence.
| stefan_ wrote:
| The guy went on to become Stanford president, it's not the
| system that broke him, it's that he was a cheater all along and
| flourished in it.
|
| There are a lot of good honest hard working people losing out,
| but you won't find them at an administrator luncheon because
| they are spending 70h in the lab every week on a temp contract.
| darkclouds wrote:
| The problem with these people is, they are allowed to resign and
| say sorry, they dont get treated as potential murder suspects or
| criminal assaulters by proxy, if such a law exists, because we
| dont know if their work is being cited and used for drug
| treatments. Here in the UK, the part of NHS that decided what
| drugs can be prescribed by GP's called National Institute of
| Clinical Excellence (NICE), hide behind secrecy when choosing
| what drugs GP should prescribe.
|
| There just isnt enough accountability of the people at the top.
| nerdchum wrote:
| This is modern science. This is our tax dollars. And this is at
| the highest levels.
| JohnMakin wrote:
| This is a private university.
| nimih wrote:
| The webpages for most of the graduate studies/research
| departments seem to indicate that some level of public
| funding is expected/necessary for at least some students and
| researchers at Stanford. An example[1]:
|
| The department has limited funding available for MS and PhD
| students, which is awarded at the time of admissions by the
| program coordinator. Prospective students are encouraged to
| seek funding from external sources such as the NSF GFRP or
| AHRQ Dissertation Awards, and/or for Stanford-based funding
| such as fellowships available through the VPGE Office.
|
| [1] https://med.stanford.edu/epidemiology-
| dept/education/graduat...
| dboreham wrote:
| Not spending _any_ public funds?
| panarky wrote:
| And the alleged misconduct happened before he joined the
| university.
| thrawa8387336 wrote:
| And? It's still an epic failure
| mattwest wrote:
| Your statement means nothing. Look up how much money Stanford
| receives through NSF, NIH, DoD, etc.
| BeetleB wrote:
| Which likely gets most of its research funds from government
| grants.
|
| Concretely - over 70% come from the federal government:
|
| https://facts.stanford.edu/research/
| tptacek wrote:
| Thousands of them at any given time, of which we've had
| news reporting on single digit numbers from years ago. You
| should now update your priors.
| localhost wrote:
| Many of the research grants are funded from public tax
| dollars
| phone8675309 wrote:
| Private university doesn't mean that public grant money isn't
| used in research grants.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| So, what is the solution? Fire all scientists? Close down all
| university research labs?
|
| And then when will that "saved" money go? A high-speed rail? I
| don't think so. A tax cut for private jet owners? Probably:
| https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/feb/18/melanie-da...
|
| With zero spending, there will be zero waste and corruption. I
| will create zero bugs if I write zero code.
|
| Just like VCs expect a tremendous amount of waste when going
| for wealth appreciation, so should countries expect waste when
| investing in science, research, and innovation. There will be
| waste, there will be fraud, but the options are either play the
| game or be left in the Middle Ages.
|
| In the same fashion, let's have innocent children go hungry
| because some adults abuse social programs. Let's stop all
| military R&D because some contractors are overcharging.
| thereddaikon wrote:
| There is definitely room for reform in the "business" of
| academia. IE: in how research is published, checked, verified
| and funded. And how Universities interact with it. There is a
| clear problem in how things are incentivized and it is
| encouraging misconduct.
| renegade-otter wrote:
| Sure, but to what point?
|
| "We spent 1 million dollars on oversight, and the 100
| thousand dollar project is now completely free of fraud"
| nerdchum wrote:
| Nope. I think this is better: We spent zero citizens tax
| dollars on science grants and all scientists had to get
| venture capitalist funding like the rest of the world.
| nerdchum wrote:
| 99% of modern scientists would not make it out of series A
| funding from VCs yet the government keeps throwing millions
| at them because they keep publishing papers even if the
| papers provide no value to society. And the people in charge
| of giving the funding went to the same elite universities as
| most of the people that are getting the funding.
|
| Theres zero accountability.
|
| Modern science industry is a massive scam. Its literally
| theft. And hasn't produced much applicable to the actual
| world in decades.
|
| The solution is to eliminate white collar welfare and make
| the scientists get their own funding like an entrepreneur or
| an artist or literally any other field.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| That will not advance science much because of completely
| wrong incentives. Scientific knowledge does not always have
| to be monetized and often is impossible to monetize, yet it
| is extremely valuable. Just a few examples:
|
| 1. Verification of prior research that produced negative
| results (e.g. proved some hypothesis wrong). VCs may want
| to take the risk and fund the original research, but what's
| the risk model in verifying the negative results?
|
| 2. Theoretical research that will yield practical results
| only in 50+ years. No VC would wait that long (what share
| of fusion research was funded by VCs in the last 50 years?)
|
| 3. Research that undermines capitalist model, e.g. by
| demonstrating the necessity to increase taxes or altering
| redistribution to reduce inequality. The society will
| clearly benefit from it, but what could a VC gain from
| that?
| nerdchum wrote:
| Science is not advancing much now!
|
| What is it produced in the past decade?? Past 30 years??
|
| I've been on this earth for many decades and (other than
| the internet developed by the military)...the TRILLIONS
| of tax dollars that have gone into science have yielded
| nothing to minimal application to my life.
|
| I completely understand your idealistic version of blue
| sky science needing disinterested non-results-based
| funding.... but that just turns to corruption and using
| our tax dollars wastefully with no results with the
| perpetual excuse of: "it's blue sky research I don't have
| to prove anything to you just give me more money"
|
| and I've worked in labs and universities and I can 100%
| tell you scientific corruption with tax dollars is more
| the rule than the exception.
| dekhn wrote:
| What is produced in the past 30 years? Lots of stuff. For
| example the LIGO project produced sufficient evidence to
| conclude that gravity waves exist and we can measure
| them, as well as identifying sources of such waves. No
| real application is anticipated- but it's damned nice to
| know that the prediction was borne out by reality.
|
| CRISPR- an extraordinary tool for genetic manipulation.
| Could potentially have a huge impact in medical
| treatments; has already revolutionized experimental
| research.
|
| AlphaFold demonstrated that protein structure prediction
| with experimental-level accuracy is possible. This could
| also have huge implications in medical research and
| treatments.
|
| Probably, we don't see advancements occurring in real
| time because we learn about things that happened over
| decades or centuries, but collapse them to short
| intervals.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| If you missed the progress of the last 30 years, it shows
| only how much are you uninterested in this topic.
|
| There happened A LOT practically in every field. Several
| major mathematical problems were solved, big progress in
| theoretical and applied physics, astronomy, biology,
| medicine etc etc. All modern electronics, electric cars,
| medical treatments are based on recent research. AI,
| solar energy, green tech... shall I continue or you just
| subscribe to phys.org?
|
| The problems with corruption are direct consequence of
| applying capitalist model with the wrong incentives. It
| is pretty dumb for modern scientists to value published
| papers over verified results and to pursue medieval
| titles.
| nerdchum wrote:
| > modern electronics, electric cars, medical treatments
| are based on recent research. AI, solar energy, green
| tech
|
| Every single thing you mentioned is a result of private
| industry.
|
| I've read phys.org....cold fusion has been righttttt
| around the corner for a century now according to them. So
| has all of the promising miraculous cancer cures that
| never materialize.
|
| Even if some research comes from academia, I bet you that
| private industry would make the same breakthroughs and
| for far far far less money.
| cycomanic wrote:
| So you are just demonstrating your ignorance. All of
| these are based on years of government funded research,
| private funding really only got involved once things
| looked promising.
| nerdchum wrote:
| electric cars: invented by private industry, refined by
| private industry
|
| lithium ion batteries: invented at Exxon and Asahi Kasai
| corp
|
| AI: refined at IBM culminating in deep blue, refined by
| Google with BERT, recently refined by Open AI
|
| solar panel: invented by bell labs private industry
|
| modern electronics, medical technology, and green tech??
|
| all so vague, but probably all invented by private
| industry.
|
| It's actually the reverse with you showing your
| ignorance.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Solar panels were invented even before Alexander Bell was
| born, by Edmond Becquerel. His work was funded by France.
|
| Lithium ion batteries of Whittingham were based on
| decades of research in academia, including his own work
| at Standford and work of other scientists in many other
| institutions. See
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_lithium-
| ion_bat... how many research institutions are mentioned
| in the article.
|
| Profit-oriented research rarely produces interesting
| fundamental results.
| nerdchum wrote:
| Electricity, radio waves, flight, antibiotics.. it seems
| to me that private industry and individuals produce the
| MOST interesting fundamental results.
|
| It might be good to check your confidence in your
| knowledge.
|
| > His work was funded by France. Citation needed.
|
| Everything I've read he was a private citizen
| experimenting in his father's laboratory and not part of
| any academic institution or receiving any government
| funding.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| Electricity - not a single result, but a big topic, to
| which contributed Faraday, Galvani, Volta, Thomson among
| others. You can check where they worked. Ben Franklin
| funded research himself, but his contribution to modern
| theory of electricity is not the biggest.
|
| Radio waves - Maxwell, of course. Radio
| receiver/transmitter invented both by Popov and Marconi
| independently of each other, so it's 50/50 academic vs
| commercial research.
|
| Flight - impossible to attribute to a single person or
| team of inventors. There are balloons, gliders,
| airplanes, space flight etc. Wright brothers built a
| machine, but there was prior research in academia. Theory
| of flight was developed with heavy influence of military
| (i.e. state funding) and I can name a number of state-
| funded institutions in different countries which advanced
| the science significantly. Commercialization did help,
| but not as the only driver and probably not the main one.
|
| Antibiotics - what fundamental result do you mean
| exactly? It's a broad term with a rich history, a lot of
| initial research done in non-commercial institutions.
|
| I will stop here. I have an impression that your views
| have something to do with your personal grievances. If
| you want to construct some unorthodox theory of how
| science works, good luck with that.
| nerdchum wrote:
| So much rationalization. Anytime someone has to
| rationalize to this great of an extent... I know they
| have an agenda.
|
| It's extremely simple.
|
| The wright brothers discovered/ invented flight.
|
| Ben Franklin discovered/ invented electricity.
|
| Marconi: radio waves
|
| Flemming: antibiotics
|
| This is settled history agreed upon worldwide, this is
| not controversial or complicated.
|
| why do you have to rationalize so much!?
| roywiggins wrote:
| His father was a professor at the French National Museum
| of Natural History, that's presumably where the lab was.
| roywiggins wrote:
| > What is it produced in the past decade?? Past 30
| years??
|
| MRNA vaccines?
| nerdchum wrote:
| Thats an entirely different discussion as to whether
| those are legitimate or not.
| cycomanic wrote:
| And now you have completely disqualified yourself.
| nerdchum wrote:
| just to people who thought masks were a good idea but
| when the waiter brings the breadsticks it's okay to
| remove the mask to eat at a crowded public restaurant for
| some reason
| renegade-otter wrote:
| Aaaand there we have it.
| Clubber wrote:
| That's a lot of straw men you put up there to knock down.
|
| Maybe have a whistleblower hotline for academic fraud. I'll
| bet some of the grad students knew what was going on.
|
| That one guy's selfishness tarnished the schools reputation
| for probably a generation.
| mattwest wrote:
| Sometimes they are the ones doing it if their visa is on
| the line.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| They don't want the whistle blown.
| axus wrote:
| Reward boring and interesting results equally? Finance more
| independent attempts to reproduce interesting results?
| elcritch wrote:
| Stop trying to "business-fy" research. The demand and drive
| to make research more efficient and business like hurts the
| point of academic research. It's similar to how the theory
| in business itself that the singular goal of public
| companies is to "increase shareholder value". Academic
| success can't be linked to just the number of papers
| produced or cited.
|
| Western cultures needs to go back to embracing plain old
| hard work and that business, research, etc all require
| difficult work and reflection at the top levels to function
| best.
| nerdchum wrote:
| I'm completely fine with academic success not being
| linked to any sort of outcome or result or increase in
| value to society.
|
| I just don't want them use my tax dollars to do it.
| cauch wrote:
| You can see it in another way: science is directly
| improving your life. Your tax money is not a "gift" that
| you make, or even a "salary" that you pay, it's you
| buying the right to profit from it.
|
| Why should the result of the scientists work be given to
| you for free, when you have contributed nothing as
| important in exchange? I don't understand why some people
| think tax money is some kind of favor that they are
| doing: are they so full of themselves to think they can
| profit from modern life for free like a parasite?
|
| The choice is there and was always there: you don't like
| paying taxes, you can always go live on your own
| somewhere in the wild. But as soon as you profit from the
| modern life that is 100% built upon the work of the
| scientists, you have to pay them to live here.
| ke88y wrote:
| As someone who worked on publicly funded grants, I find
| this attitude repulsive.
|
| Everyone who receives money from public coffers owes that
| public a service mindset. The arrogant self-importance in
| academic science is inexcusable and reason IN ITSELF for
| de-funding the entire enterprise.
|
| _> are they so full of themselves to think they can
| profit from modern life for free like a parasite?_
|
| How ironic.
| cauch wrote:
| You are reaching conclusions that are not implied by what
| I've said.
|
| You are somehow inventing that being grateful to someone
| means that the other person is not being grateful to you.
|
| Nothing in my text implies anything on how the person who
| receive the money should act. I do not think that
| scientists are one bit more important than other members
| of the society, and I think they should act with the
| upmost care and respect for the trust the society has
| given them. Why would I think differently than that? I'm
| criticizing people who thinks everything is own to them.
| These people can be tax-payers that don't even think one
| second that their taxes are not some kind of generous
| gift, AND these people can also be scientists who thinks
| the society owns them money automatically for their work
| without any conditions.
|
| What a strange view of the world, where everything is a
| competition where if someone is not considering
| themselves as the "owner", it means the other person is.
| What about no one acts like the other owns them
| something, what if everyone recognizes that that we are
| in a win-win situation?
|
| It is really telling about our society that when someone
| reads my text, they are so shaped by their competitive
| "money = power" vision of the world that they are totally
| oblivious that considering that A being grateful to A
| does not imply that B is be arrogant and full of self-
| importance.
| jimkoen wrote:
| > You can see it in another way: science is directly
| improving your life.
|
| You can argue about spending mentality though. Some
| institutions consciously ignore important signals from
| the research community to keep departments going. And in
| the field of IT especially, there's a trend to push
| novelty in publications alone, producing results that
| aren't even interesting outside the research community.
|
| I'm happy paying taxes to fund research, but I want that
| research to be accessible all the way through - that
| includes access to collected data. Which isn't the status
| quo.
| elcritch wrote:
| That's self defeating though and precisely my point. The
| mindset that tax dollars should only be used to fund
| "valuable" research degrades the actual value of the
| research for society.
|
| Academic research should be funded because it's an
| important aspect of the human experience. The fact that
| it also leads to material benefits should be a knock on
| effect that's encouraged but not the core goal.
|
| It's a perfect example of Goodhart's law: "When a measure
| becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law
|
| IMHO, accountability is great. It just requires difficult
| work at the top leadership to do so well. Just boiling it
| down to a single number like "economic value of research"
| doesn't work.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| You can simply assume that your tax dollars do not fund
| science directly, it's all other's money and other people
| are fine with that. The budget pie is big and your
| contribution to it is going elsewhere, e.g. funding
| military or subsidizing some big corporations which in
| turn fund some private science.
| nerdchum wrote:
| It is because every dollar I spend is inflated by the
| government debt.
|
| https://www.worldometers.info/us-debt-clock/
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| I don't think there exists a conspiracy to dilute your
| contribution to US budget with more debt (if it did
| exist, it would be a very VC style conspiracy, so what
| not to like?).
| nerdchum wrote:
| I don't think you understand how the debt works.
| stubybubs wrote:
| https://news.wisc.edu/decades-on-bacteriums-discovery-
| feted-...
|
| Taq polymerase is about my favorite thing discovered
| through basic research. Just some scientists looking at
| interesting stuff in a Yellowstone geyser, who happened
| to discover the molecule that enabled DNA replication in
| a lab and essentially exploded the field.
|
| No corporation these days is going to pay somebody to do
| that. I think it's worth the risks to get something like
| that.
| dekhn wrote:
| Polymerase was already known (isolated ,purified, and
| characterized in '56); the interesting part of Taq was
| its thermostability which permits thermal cycling to
| implement PCR (and other neat techniques).
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| There's plenty of opportunities to reform the scientific
| organization and science in general.
|
| 1. Get rid of scientific journals, replace them with
| databases of scientific results and raw data. A paper may
| explain the result, but looking at the database must be
| enough. Assign credibility score based on independent
| verifications/confirmation of trustworthiness by other
| leading experts in the field. Negative results, verifications
| of known facts should have equal significance there. Theories
| must be peer-reviewed first. In some scientific field this
| may significantly change how the research is made, probably
| for good (it's fun to read papers in certain fields where
| authors disagree with another scientist because of some gut
| feeling).
|
| 2. Get rid of degrees and titles - they do not age well
| without continuous learning and participation in research.
| Bachelors and doctors should have had an expiration date.
| Credibility of a person must be based on exams,
| certifications and scientific results accepted by others and
| as such always has certain age. A scientist who became an
| expert by verifying a lot of other's works may be more
| credible expert than someone who made one new discovery. The
| weight that this scientist puts behind each verified result
| must boost its credibility significantly, but if the
| reputation is damaged it must cascade to everything
| downstream.
|
| 3. Management career track must be separated from
| professional track: head of a lab must not be the best expert
| and should not be the first name on a published result.
| Leadership skills, ethical code and ability to assemble a
| great team must be more important. Choice of the direction of
| research must be a team decision.
| mepian wrote:
| Scientific misconduct is not a particularly "modern"
| phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piltdown_Man
| tptacek wrote:
| The optimal amount of scientific misconduct is not zero.
| carpet_wheel wrote:
| What kind of weak cop out is this? It's the president of the
| school, not some miscreant child. Pathetic.
| btheshoe wrote:
| so based. But I do have to say that when the president of one
| of your top institutions resigns over misconduct, the level
| of misconduct is probably a fair amount over optimal. And
| speaking with my friends in, eg, alzheimer's research, the
| fraud and inability to trust the veracity of unreplicated
| results does really slow down work in the field.
| its_ethan wrote:
| Care to elaborate on why you think it's optimal to have a
| non-zero amount of fake data supporting scientific claims?
| tptacek wrote:
| Because the only way to get zero misconduct is to
| drastically reduce the amount of science that is done,
| probably by orders of magnitude. This is an old saw when
| talking about government waste: the optimal amount of waste
| isn't zero, because there are diminishing returns to
| pursuing waste, and at some point the losses you avoid by
| eliminating waste are swamped by the costs of eliminating
| it.
|
| It doesn't follow that waste and misconduct are good, only
| that when we talk about policy responses to scandals, we
| should consider the costs involved in avoiding those
| scandals, and whether it's rational to pay those costs.
| Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| I am somewhat mind-blown by that government waste adage.
| While I supposed that in some technical sense it could be
| true, I would like to have a blunt conversation with
| anyone who believes government waste is anywhere near
| parity with the costs of trying to eliminate government
| waste
| nerdchum wrote:
| Completely agreed. The best solution to eliminate
| government waste is to eliminate the part of the
| government creating the waste.
| tptacek wrote:
| The logic of the statement, which is pretty hard to
| dispute, doesn't establish that the current amount of
| waste in any given program is or isn't optimal, only that
| the optimal level isn't zero.
| pgodzin wrote:
| No one is saying the current level of government waste is
| optimal and not worth the cost to eliminate. Just that if
| you have eliminated 99%, the extra 1% may not be worth
| it.
| Brusco_RF wrote:
| I'd like to cross that bridge when we get there :)
| taeric wrote:
| The usual framing is that the optimal amount of X is the
| point where it is just below the cost of preventing X.
|
| So, if it costs millions of dollars to pursue fraud, you
| would still be better with allowing thousands of dollars to
| go.
| nerdchum wrote:
| The optimal amount of my tax dollars going into government
| funded science is zero.
|
| Scientists need to earn their money like the rest of the
| world.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm sure there's a country you could immigrate to where the
| political consensus is that no basic research of any sort
| should happen, but the country we're talking about has the
| opposite consensus. Put differently: is there an argument
| you could make here that would be persuasive to someone
| other than an ancap?
| nerdchum wrote:
| I don't think that America has a consensus on this at
| all. Numerous people I talk to think science should be
| privatized.
|
| And if more people were aware of the corruption that goes
| on in science the pendulum would quickly swing.
| gilbetron wrote:
| Are you implying that private agencies have less
| corruption than public ones? It's fascinating how jarring
| that is with my life experience.
|
| Before you answer, remember, Stanford is a private
| institution.
| tptacek wrote:
| What Tobias said about the NeverNudes applies.
| nerdchum wrote:
| Reality has a way of asserting itself.
|
| https://www.usdebtclock.org/
| medvezhenok wrote:
| Sure. Then please refrain from using anything that was
| invented/developed from government funding. Including the
| internet.
| nerdchum wrote:
| That happened to more than 30 years ago, like I said in
| my original statement.
|
| If I refrain from using anything invented and developed
| from government funding in the last 30 years, what would
| I have to give up?
| tptacek wrote:
| Every medication developed in the last 30 years, for
| starters. I mean, you're basically asking for a list of
| every invention derived from government-funded basic
| research (also known as "all basic research"). It might
| make more sense to ask what you _could_ use.
| nerdchum wrote:
| I find it telling you can't name one.
| tptacek wrote:
| I find it telling that you think it's challenging to name
| an invention that depends on any of the last 30 years of
| basic research, so we're at an impasse.
| nerdchum wrote:
| You're the one you said to stop using technology invented
| by the government.
|
| Then I said I would be happy to if you could name a
| single one in the past 30 years.
|
| And you can't.
| dadrian wrote:
| Off the top of my head...
|
| - Soft-white LEDs
|
| - Data-over-headphone-jack
|
| - ZK-SNARKs
|
| - Tor
|
| - Energy-harvesting power monitors
|
| - TCP congestion control
|
| These all had government funding or were invented in
| government labs.
| zx10rse wrote:
| A good reminder about Aaron Swartz and his story -
| https://youtu.be/gpvcc9C8SbM?t=3238
| itsoktocry wrote:
| Remember that these are exactly the "type" of person the media
| will trot out on front of the public to make wild claims about
| "the science". Questioning their claims can have consequences.
| Atatator wrote:
| Mekhmat otzyvaet 500 000 svoikh vypusknikov. Prichina otzyva: vo
| vtorom tome Fikhtengol'tsa na stranitse 187 v formule XVIII.56
| otsutstvuet normiruiushchii operator.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| > Tessier-Lavigne defended his reputation but acknowledged that
| issues with his research, first raised in a Daily investigation
| last autumn, meant that Stanford requires a president "whose
| leadership is not hampered by such discussions."
|
| This speaks volumes about his character. Any organization led by
| someone with questionable ethics poisons the trust and confidence
| of the entire organization. So good for him!
|
| Those kinds of ethics questions have a real impact on everyone
| else in the organization trying to do the right thing - as they
| bear the reputational harm with much less ability to just choose
| to go elsewhere.
|
| Knowingly, or even just negligently, putting your colleagues and
| employees in such a situation is a tragedy of leadership.
|
| It's important to recognize that this would be a different story
| had he been ousted and protested or attempted a cover up. People
| mess up, but sometimes that means you don't get to be a leader
| anymore. That's what's happening here and it seems like the right
| way we should treat these things.
| 8f2ab37a-ed6c wrote:
| [flagged]
| jxramos wrote:
| He's no John L. Hennessy that's for sure.
| [deleted]
| prepend wrote:
| > This speaks volumes about his character.
|
| I suppose it reveals that he resigned under pressure that
| forced him to after allegedly writing numerous falsified papers
| that led to his current credentials.
|
| Not sure that's an ethics gold star or anything. I guess it's
| better than "they'll take me out of my office in a casket" and
| digging in, but still shows massive ethical failures and since
| ethics are usually not compartmentalized means that there's
| probably other bad news that's not revealed yet.
|
| I think the right way would have not to falsified research. Or
| to come clean on your own and resign before it's a stink.
|
| As it is now, it's bad for Stanford. And means the hiring
| committee didn't do sufficient due diligence to even ask people
| on his field if his work was valid.
| scottlamb wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > The report concluded that the fudging of results under
| Tessier-Lavigne's purview "spanned labs at three separate
| institutions." It identified a culture where Tessier-Lavigne
| "tended to reward the 'winners' (that is, postdocs who could
| generate favorable results) and marginalize or diminish the
| 'losers' (that is, postdocs who were unable or struggled to
| generate such data)."
|
| > There was no evidence that Tessier-Lavigne himself
| manipulated data in the papers reviewed, the report
| concluded, nor that he knew about manipulation at the time,
| but he "has not been able to provide an adequate explanation"
| for why he did not correct the scientific record when
| presented the opportunity on multiple occasions. In his
| statement, Tessier-Lavigne wrote that he was "gratified that
| the Panel concluded I did not engage in any fraud or
| falsification of scientific data."
|
| In other words, he created a culture in which fraud could be
| expected, and he didn't address it properly when it was
| brought to his attention. I'm not giving him any gold stars
| for ethics. But as far as I know, he didn't personally
| falsify research.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| How is creating a culture that incentivized and rewards
| fraud any better?
|
| I guess you can technically claim plausible deniability but
| I don't think he gets a pass here at all.
| scottlamb wrote:
| I don't think it is any better. But let's describe what
| (we know) he did correctly.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _How is creating a culture that incentivized and
| rewards fraud any better?_
|
| You're asking why accidentally creating ripe conditions
| for fraud isn't as bad as willfully committing fraud?
| ambicapter wrote:
| The word "accidentally" is doing a lot of work here.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Precisely, that of the benefit of doubt.
| hnfong wrote:
| So, the doubt "speaks volumes about his character"?
| (quoting the original comment)
|
| I don't think it speaks of anything at all, in the best
| case.
| hgsgm wrote:
| It shows ability to scale as a leader and be a force
| multiplier.
| prepend wrote:
| Obviously, we wait for the investigation to complete. But I
| don't know of any valid reason someone would "not be able
| to provide an adequate explanation" for something so basic.
|
| Occam's razor would make me think that if no one has ever
| seen the data and it made him famous, it's probably fraud.
| scottlamb wrote:
| The investigation has already found there was fraud. And
| from his failure to issue retractions for years after he
| was told, one can conclude he was at best indifferent to
| it.
|
| What it hasn't found is evidence he got his own hands
| dirty or that he explicitly ordered fraud, and I'm not
| sure it will. raincom's comment [1] was dead on.
|
| I'm unsure if this distinction holds any significance for
| him personally. One reason I call it out is that it's
| worth considering how to deter this kind of "leadership"
| when drafting scientific ethical standards or even laws.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36792536
| raincom wrote:
| That's the same culture c-level executives inculcate: (a)
| don't put anything in writing (b) don't explicitly ask to
| do unethical things (c) use layers of lawyers or of other
| executives to evade culpability (d) since voice calls can
| be recorded, hire yes-men from one's own network to use
| code-language or para-linguistic cues to execute illegal
| and/or illegal stuff
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| I think it's more valuable to praise good ethical decisions
| than it is to deride bad ones, and we have more than enough
| bad ones bombarding us constantly.
|
| >Or to come clean on your own and resign before it's a stink.
|
| I feel like this is what is happening, so we must be thinking
| on different timelines.
|
| As it is now, it's bad for Stanford. And means the hiring
| committee didn't do sufficient due diligence to even ask
| people on his field if his work was valid.
|
| To be clear, there's no net-positive here, it's still net-
| negative and I agree that everyone is worse overall. The
| thing I'm pointing to though is that this was the best
| outcome from an already bad situation and is done in a way
| that is transparent and is actually addressing harms and
| preventing further harm by changing the power structures.
| prepend wrote:
| > I think it's more valuable to praise good ethical
| decisions than it is to deride bad ones,
|
| I agree. But I don't think this is a good ethical decision.
| It's not a decision at all. He was fired and Stanford PR
| made a statement for him. I don't think that's
| praiseworthy.
|
| Or I suppose we could praise him for not murdering people.
| And lots of other things that are extremely common and I
| don't think noteworthy.
|
| I think it's also worth reflecting on terrible decisions
| and people who make them and use mistakes of others to
| learn.
| elihu wrote:
| I generally agree, but:
|
| > And means the hiring committee didn't do sufficient due
| diligence to even ask people on his field if his work was
| valid.
|
| Detecting fraudulent results isn't always easy. If there was
| already a public controversy about his papers and they didn't
| pick up on that, that was a failing. In the worst case, faked
| results can only be detected by running a study over again
| and getting a different result -- and even then, it's hard to
| rule out some difference that wasn't properly controlled for,
| an honest mistake somewhere, or just bad luck.
|
| The standard of truth in science isn't peer review, it's
| having results that are consistently reproducible.
| prepend wrote:
| It's certainly not easy, that's why I said they failed at
| due diligence. I assume they tried.
|
| This is the president of a $28B endowment and $720M annual
| revenue. They have the resources to validate candidates
| like any other massive organization.
|
| This doesn't seem like an honest mistake or bad luck.
| koheripbal wrote:
| Given the rampant nepotism in Stanford admissions, the whole
| school needs to shut down.
| gnicholas wrote:
| When you say nepotism, do you mean legacy admissions, or
| something else?
|
| I know a prominent alum who was able to get her kids into
| undergrad at Stanford, but not into their professional
| schools. Considering where they went after being rejected
| from Stanford, they were not remotely in the ballpark. It's
| good to know that there are limits to legacy admissions, even
| for rich/famous alums.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Sounds like she didn't pay someone enough.
| jxramos wrote:
| I think he's hinting at the John Vandemoer, Lori Loughlin
| and Rick Singer debacle. Sad bit of history for the
| university as well.
| [deleted]
| jherico wrote:
| I feel like with the skyrocketing costs of education in the
| US, fixing the problem is probably a better path than "burn
| it all down"
| [deleted]
| jdwithit wrote:
| > Stanford requires a president "whose leadership is not
| hampered by such discussions."
|
| You'll notice he doesn't say "I regret my actions and the harm
| I caused". Just a vague allusion to "such discussions". As if
| the people discussing _him falsifying research_ are somehow the
| problem. When someone goes down for a scandal, they rarely
| express true remorse or take responsibility. It 's always "I'm
| sorry... that I got caught".
|
| His response speaks to his character, but I'm not sure it says
| what you think it does.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| kevinventullo wrote:
| You know what would speak even more highly of his character?
| Not publishing fraudulent research in the first place!
| UberFly wrote:
| This exactly. Quitting after you've been caught doesn't
| require much character.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| What? This is just standard resignation PR statement about not
| wanting to be a distraction for the rest of the organization
| while not admitting culpability. It's basically a form-letter.
| peteradio wrote:
| If he knows he is at fault he should admit it as well as
| resign. Conversely, people should not be ousted based on false
| allegations.
| feoren wrote:
| Yes, this speaks volumes about his character:
|
| > Tessier-Lavigne defended his reputation ... "issues with his
| research" ... "discussions"
|
| Meaning he believes he did nothing wrong and he's the target of
| "character assassination" by the Daily but he's being forced
| out by colleagues who want Harvard to come out of this scandal
| with half a shred of dignity. This is not him saying "aww, you
| got me, aight I'm out". This is him continuing to be a
| narcissistic, shitty human being refusing to admit that he
| could possibly be in the wrong in any way.
| danso wrote:
| > _It's important to recognize that this would be a different
| story had he been ousted and protested or attempted a cover
| up._
|
| I think it's very early to give a positive judgment for MTL's
| decision to resign. First of all, the most serious allegation
| by the Stanford Daily -- that MTL knew of fraud at his
| Genentech lab and made an effort to cover it up -- is still
| denied by MTL, Stanford, and Genentech.
|
| Either MTL & Genentech are lying, or the Daily made a mistake
| in its reporting. As of now, the Daily still stands by its
| reporting and Theo Baker published a follow-up about how
| Stanford's investigation may have been fundamentally flawed [0]
|
| But let's assume that the Daily is wrong, MTL's resignation
| statement omitted any accountability for the lesser but still
| damning charge: negligent leadership that fostered a research
| culture optimized (inadvertently or not) for fraud. As the
| Daily puts it:
|
| > _The report concluded that the fudging of results under
| Tessier-Lavigne's purview "spanned labs at three separate
| institutions." It identified a culture where Tessier-Lavigne
| "tended to reward the 'winners' (that is, postdocs who could
| generate favorable results) and marginalize or diminish the
| 'losers'_
|
| In MTL's letter to Stanford [1], he limits his culpability to
| not being diligent enough in correcting the errors and alleged
| fraud, all of which were the fault of his subordinates:
|
| > _I agree that in some instances I should have been more
| diligent when seeking corrections, and I regret that I was not.
| The Panel's review also identified instances of manipulation of
| research data by others in my lab. Although I was unaware of
| these issues, I want to be clear that I take responsibility for
| the work of my lab members._
|
| > _...These findings have also caused me to further reassess
| the processes and controls I have in place. While I continually
| maintain a critical eye on all the science in my lab, I have
| also always operated my lab on trust - trust in my students and
| postdocs, and trust that the data they were presenting to me
| was real and accurate._
|
| I get that there's a limit to how much self-flagellation he can
| do right now, but he's basically limited his culpability to:
| "my biggest weakness is that I respect and trust my colleagues
| and students too much!" In this era of Stanford-associated
| stories like Theranos and FTX, the prospect and danger of a
| leader who fosters fraudulent "winners" is something that
| should be addressed explicitly.
|
| [0] https://stanforddaily.com/2023/07/19/sources-refused-to-
| part...
|
| [1] https://tessier-lavigne-lab.stanford.edu/news/message-
| stanfo...
| jxramos wrote:
| > Stanford is greater than any one of us. It needs a president
| whose leadership is not hampered by such discussions. I
| therefore concluded that I should step down before the start of
| classes. This decision is rooted in my respect for the
| University and its community and my unwavering commitment to
| doing what I believe is in the best interests of Stanford.
| https://tessier-lavigne-lab.stanford.edu/news/message-
| stanfo....
|
| I agree, good for him to humbly resign and not drag the
| reputation of the bigger institution into questionable
| territory. The news came as a shock this morning but it's a
| well written letter he publicly posted.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Have to say. Pretty surprised that on HN there is such a strong
| emotional desire to tear down 'Academia', or even science really.
|
| For several months I've noticed that any story about Academia
| that hints at a problem, or a misstatement, or something over-
| stated, anything dealing with science, there is just a mad rush
| to grab torches and scythes, pikes, etc... "Crucify", these
| people are all con-men.
|
| But, if it's a tech company, then all good, just lie all you
| want, that's just salesmanship, 'selling hype' to promote a
| product.
|
| I fear it is part of the 'post-truth' America where nothing is
| trusted.
| exac wrote:
| > The report, at 95 pages in length, contained a number of
| unflattering details about Tessier-Lavigne's lab, including the
| conclusion that at least four papers with Tessier-Lavigne as
| principal author contained significant manipulation of research
| data
|
| I am surprised that Marc didn't retract a fourth paper, based on:
| https://stanforddaily.com/2023/07/19/sources-refused-to-part...
| BS_Alarm wrote:
| Like president, like new hire!
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36501194
| https://profiles.stanford.edu/azalia-mirhoseini
| drakythe wrote:
| Additional info available from
| https://www.statnews.com/2023/07/19/marc-tessier-lavigne-sta...
|
| I'm glad to see someone take some personal responsibility that
| isn't forced on them (that we know of). I realize that I don't
| know enough about the circumstances to know if this is "enough",
| and I am curious about his staying on as faculty, but from purely
| appearances this is a pleasant surprise given most recent public
| figure screw-ups have just posted through it.
| btheshoe wrote:
| On the whole, all these scandals in manipulated research have
| deeply shaken my trust in many of our scientific institutions.
| It's clear by now this isn't the case of a few bad apples - our
| scientific institutions are systemically broken in ways that
| promote spreading fraudulent results as established scientific
| truth.
| edgyquant wrote:
| Yep. After years of pushing back against claims that
| researchers skewed scientific results to fit their agenda this
| is a huge, demoralizing blow. Even if it isn't widespread, how
| can you honestly blame anyone for being skeptical anymore.
| strangattractor wrote:
| Wide spread? PI's are required to publish. It is impossible
| to maintain quality of papers via peer review at scale so bad
| papers usually get through simply because of the volume.
| Throw in a profit motive and people get creative about hiding
| it.
|
| See this recently published article
| https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02299-w.
|
| One would think that clinical trials would be documented and
| scrutinized out the yin-yang but they are not.
| callalex wrote:
| It should be noted that the volume of corruption coming out of
| state-run schools is much smaller than that from private
| institutions.
| piuantiderp wrote:
| I'd wager it is just better covered up
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| If you implement a strategy such as publish or perish
| exceedingly smart people will game the system to win. Any
| metric gets gamed.
|
| Look at papers that have real impact they get cited. Look at
| ones that don't ...
| akhayam wrote:
| And you have some of the smartest brains gaming it too...
| Such a sad use of good neurons :(
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| I wouldn't presume that the smartest brains are gaming the
| system. Most likely, it's mediocre hucksters who have
| bullied and networked their way into a position of
| authority. Being good at social engineering != to being the
| best researcher.
| NeuroCoder wrote:
| I've seen some situations where smart people did bad
| research because of deadlines related to work visas.
| Science doesn't care how smart you are or if you could
| end up without a home. It will take as many logical
| iterations over an experiment design before being
| fruitful.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| Being smarter doesn't make you more moral either.
| waterhouse wrote:
| It may enable you to do sufficiently well without
| resorting to immoral methods. Interesting how these
| things can go.
| hobomatic wrote:
| It may, but it doesn't provide the motivation to bother,
| especially if you only ever get caught at the end of your
| career.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| I've seen this more often go in the other direction, but
| I think it can be either way.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| I would. Lots of "the smartest brains" are mediocre
| hucksters who have bullied and networked their way into a
| position of authority. This doesn't mean they aren't "the
| smartest brains".
|
| IME some of the more effective engineers I've worked with
| have gravitated towards politics, not "raw technical
| skill". It's not because they prefer it. They use their
| "smartness" to win.
|
| The problem is that being good at social engineering >>
| anything else. Intelligent people often look at the
| system and say: "What's the point in naively following
| this when no one successful unless they game the system?"
|
| What's the point of putting one of your great, well
| considered idea into the fold. It's far more effective
| the be a mediocre huckster. You don't have to deal with
| the uncertainty, giving your idea to someone else, etc.
| Better to work the social game and phone in the rest.
|
| It works better and you don't have to deal with the
| crushing disappointment that goes with fighting for an
| idea in a horrifying bureaucracy.
| thelittlenag wrote:
| And not just that, but rewarding outsized effect sizes so
| that you reward folks who create the biggest lies with
| fraudulent stats.
| jeudisjenenee wrote:
| [flagged]
| cycomanic wrote:
| Is that the correct conclusion to draw? I mean there are
| definitely big problems on how we conduct and fund scientific
| research (which might also contribute to fraud), but the number
| of research scandals is a tiny fraction to the amount of
| research being done.
|
| Considering that we get fraud every time we have humans and
| prestige money, I would really like to see some statistics
| against other things human activities. I suspect science still
| has some of the lowest fraud rates and the strongest mechanisms
| to detect and deal with it.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| The problem is a tiny percentage gets any attention
| whatsoever. It's the same with police and doctoral abuse.
| These things are hugely prevalent with 30-80% of
| professionals engaging in some form of abuse... same with
| fraud.
|
| People know about police abuse. We don't talk about doctor
| abuse. I'm honestly not confident that there's any
| police/doctors that don't engage in abusive practices (or
| it's a tiny percentage of the population).
| dadrian wrote:
| The peer review system is not designed to catch fraud, it's
| designed to catch scientific or experimental errors.
|
| Giving up on science is such a vast overgeneralization. You
| could take your statement and replace "manipulated research",
| "scientific institutions" and "established scientific truth"
| with just about any negative article in any domain. You could
| just as easily make this statement about startups (Theranos,
| Juicero), or government, or religion, or suburbs, or cities...
| btheshoe wrote:
| > The peer review system is not designed to catch fraud, it's
| designed to catch scientific or experimental errors.
|
| Yes.
|
| > Giving up on science is such a vast overgeneralization. You
| could take your statement and replace "manipulated research",
| "scientific institutions" and "established scientific truth"
| with just about any negative article in any domain. You could
| just as easily make this statement about startups (Theranos,
| Juicero), or government, or religion, or suburbs, or
| cities...
|
| Institutions go through similar cycles of breaking and
| systemic reform. Not surprised that you can see patterns in
| other domains.
| strangattractor wrote:
| It often does neither:( The only real protection from fraud,
| mistakes and poor science is replication. If results can't be
| replicated by others it is not science.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| >our scientific institutions are systemically broken in ways
| that promote spreading fraudulent results as established
| scientific truth
|
| Scientific consensus is still very reliable and if 95% of
| accredited scientists in a field say something is true it is in
| society's best interest to consider that to be the truth.
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| It's the same everywhere not just science. The fake-it-till-
| you-make-it type-A charismatic bullshitters rise up the ranks
| in all organizations.
| akhayam wrote:
| I feel this trend taking root in academia is still a new-ish
| thing. The boundaries of academia and research, especially
| for computer science, really started blending 15-20 years ago
| as Big Tech took over Oil for the best paying job / grant.
|
| The decay has been super fast though. Maybe some academics
| will find the courage to do a longitudinal study of this
| decay. Now that'll be an interesting paper to read.
| bugglebeetle wrote:
| It's most certainly not a new trend, but is perhaps a
| quintessentially American disease. But one need only look
| at the so-called "luminaries" in many fields during the
| mid-20th century to see that this is not in anyway a novel
| phenomenon. Once you get slightly afield from the hard
| sciences, it's charlatans all the way down, especially in
| fields like psychology and economics.
| huijzer wrote:
| I've come to believe that science is mostly about popularity
| and not about truth-finding. As long as peers like what you
| write, then you will get through the reviews and get cited.
| Feynman called this Cargo Cult Science. I think much of science
| is like this, see also Why Most Published Scientific Findings
| are False. Not much has changed since the publication of that
| paper. A few Open Science checks are not gonna solve the
| fundamental misalignment of incentives.
| strikelaserclaw wrote:
| it is impossible for most scientists to understand /
| critically think about all the research coming out from so
| many institutions, so most of these academics mainly focus on
| research coming from someone they respect / institutions they
| respect, so yes it is kind of like a popularity contest but i
| would argue that most things in life are due to the limited
| nature of the human brain we cannot think independently about
| everything for ourselves and rely on external judgements to
| what is important / true etc...
| rustymonday wrote:
| It is absolutely a popularity contest. The biggest problem
| is that many academics are reluctant to deviate too far
| from current consensus in fear of damaging their
| reputation.
|
| The result is that research in many fields tends to
| stagnate and reinforce old ideas, regardless of whether
| they are right or wrong.
| arvinsim wrote:
| "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when
| his salary depends on his not understanding it." -- Upton
| Sinclair
| asynchronous wrote:
| Wholeheartedly agree, really a shame to see what it's become.
| Wish I could still see research the way I dreamed it was as a
| child.
| jonhohle wrote:
| You mean we can't just Trust the Science(tm)?!
|
| I completely agree. Seeing slack chats and emails regarding
| Proximal Origin and how researchers were disagreeing with it
| all the way until they published a paper that served what
| purpose are really disheartening. Instead of guiding future
| research toward preventing similar outcomes, countless
| scientists spent untold years of combined effort on a theory
| the authors didn't even believe.
| tptacek wrote:
| A vast amount of "science" is being done at all times. You can
| likely count the scandals cognitively available to you on one
| hand; even if it took dozens of hands, you'd still be talking
| about an infinitesimal sliver of science on the whole. What's
| actually happening here is an availability bias: you remember
| scandals, because they're scandalous and thus memorable. You
| don't know anything about the overwhelming majority of
| scientific work that is being done, so you have no way of
| weighting it against the impression those scandals create in
| your mind.
| carpet_wheel wrote:
| No one is shocked by the concept of misconduct occurring, the
| issue here is that it is no longer surprising when those
| committing the misconduct end up running the organization.
| You can pretend that the conversation is about whether
| scientific misconduct is endemic, but that conversation being
| had is about the failure of these hierarchies to actually
| succeed in promoting the best from among their ranks.
|
| Of course misconduct is unavoidable, that doesn't mean you
| should become president. The politics aren't working.
| tptacek wrote:
| Are you commenting on the wrong subthread? I do that all
| the time. This subthread is about whether the foundations
| of science itself are stable.
| carpet_wheel wrote:
| You just did it again, trying to steer the conversation
| to something that not at the heart of the discussion.
| This is the parent:
|
| _It 's clear by now this isn't the case of a few bad
| apples - our scientific institutions are systemically
| broken in ways that promote spreading fraudulent results
| as established scientific truth_
|
| This is a concern about the corrupted institutions, with
| the downstream concern that science itself may be under
| threat. The primary concern is the systemically broken
| institutions who promote the fraudulent to the top of
| their hierarchies. Not sure why you insist on straw
| manning this thing, but clearly you have some person
| reason for doing so, and I wish you luck in that
| endeavor.
| tptacek wrote:
| We disagree about what the implications of a single
| university president surrendering their post are to the
| whole of science. You're asked not to write comments
| imputing personal motives:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| If you want to argue this further, you should probably
| snipe the swipes off the end of your comment.
| carpet_wheel wrote:
| [flagged]
| [deleted]
| kansface wrote:
| Via HN yesterday [1]- an editor of _Anaesthesia_ did a meta
| study of the papers he handled that conducted RCTs. He had
| data from 150 of them and concluded:
|
| > ...26% of the papers had problems that were so widespread
| that the trial was impossible to trust, he judged -- either
| because the authors were incompetent, or because they had
| faked the data.
|
| This is not a one off.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02299-w
| tptacek wrote:
| I didn't say it was a one-off. But 150 papers is, to a
| first approximation, a one-off of all the science done in a
| given year. We produce _millions_ of journal articles every
| year.
| esyir wrote:
| There's something to be said about a defense of this that
| doesn't account for random sampling.
|
| Assuming that they did a proper sample of said papers,
| that implies that for whatever domain they sampled, 26%
| is likely a decent estimate of actual issues. Increasing
| the scale doesn't make a proportional estimate any
| better.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Maybe we shouldn't. What's the point of all of that data
| if a good portion of it can't be trusted?
| tptacek wrote:
| Here we're talking about a proportion significantly less
| than 1%.
| chasing wrote:
| "A database of retractions shows that only four in every 10,000
| papers are retracted."
|
| Every time a plane crashes it's international news. But just
| because you regularly hear about plane crashes doesn't mean
| flying is unsafe.
| btheshoe wrote:
| do me a favor and look up all the papers in thinking fast and
| slow that failed to replicate
| blackbear_ wrote:
| I would like to point out that "scientific truth" does not
| really exist, or at least is far from straightforward to define
| and establish. Basically, you should see each piece of research
| as evidence for a certain hypothesis, and the more evidence is
| available, the more that hypothesis is believable.
|
| But the larger issue here is that all public institutions are,
| by that definition, broken. For example, businesses also won't
| hesitate to spread falsehoods to sell their stuff, governments
| will try to convince their people that they are needed through
| propaganda and policing, and so on.
|
| How do we solve these problems? We have laws to regulate what
| businesses can't do (nevermind lobbying), and we split
| governments' responsibility so that no single branch becomes
| too powerful. In general, we have several independent
| institutions that keep an eye on each other.
|
| In case of science, we trust other scientists to replicate and
| confirm previous findings. It is a self-correcting mechanism,
| whereby sloppy or fraudulent research is eventually singled-
| out, as it happened in this and many other cases.
|
| So I guess the gist of what I want to say is that you're right
| in not trusting a piece of research just because it was made by
| a reputable institute, but look for solid results that were
| replicated by independent researchers (and the gold standard
| here is replication, not peer review)
| sonicshadow wrote:
| [flagged]
| mike_hearn wrote:
| _> businesses also won 't hesitate to spread falsehoods to
| sell their stuff_
|
| They do hesitate. It's quite hard to catch businesses openly
| lying about their own products because, as you observe, there
| are so many systems and institutions out there trying to get
| them. Regulators but also lawyers (class action + ambulance-
| chasers), politicians, journalists, activists, consumer
| research people. Also you can criticize companies all day and
| not get banned from social media.
|
| A good example of what happens when someone forgets this is
| Elizabeth Holmes. Exposed by a journalist, prosecuted,
| jailed.
|
| Public institutions are quite well insulated in comparison.
| Journalists virtually never investigate them, preferring to
| take their word as gospel. There are few crimes on the book
| that can jail them regardless of what they say or do, they
| are often allowed to investigate themselves, criticism is
| often branded misinformation and then banned, and _many_
| people automatically discard any accusation of malfeasance on
| the assumption that as the institutions claim to be non-
| profit, corruption is nearly impossible.
|
| _> It is a self-correcting mechanism, whereby sloppy or
| fraudulent research is eventually singled-out, as it happened
| in this and many other cases._
|
| It's not self correcting sadly, far from it. If it were self-
| correcting then the Stanford President's fraud would have
| been exposed by other scientists years ago, it wouldn't be so
| easy to find examples of it and we wouldn't see editors of
| famous journals estimate that half or more of their research
| is bad. In practice cases where there are consequences are
| the exception rather than the norm, it's usually found by
| highly patient outsiders and it almost always takes years of
| effort by them to get anywhere. Even then the default
| expected outcome is nothing. Bear in mind that there had been
| many attempts to flag fraud at the MTL labs before and he had
| simply ignored them without consequence.
| nopeNopeNooope wrote:
| [dead]
| alfalfasprout wrote:
| A combination of "publish or perish" and papers not accepting
| "negative results" (which results in a ton of repeated
| research) has led to this.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Alternatively there is a baseline of fraudulent behavior in any
| human organization of 1-5% and since there are tens of
| thousands of high-profile researchers this sort of thing is
| inevitable. The question you should be asking is whether the
| field is able to correct and address its mistakes. Ironically
| cases like this one are the _success stories_ : we don't have
| enough data to know how many cases we're missing.
| panarky wrote:
| The very fact that the fraud is discovered, that reporters
| amplify it, and that it can bring down the president of the
| university, is evidence to me that the system still works.
| wpietri wrote:
| Maybe? I'd want to see a clear model of flows and selection
| biases before I concluded that.
|
| Another way to look at it: perhaps Tessier-Lavigne only got
| this scrutiny _because_ he was president of the university.
| And the fact that they didn 't guarantee anonymity when
| "not guaranteeing anonymity in an investigation of this
| importance is an 'extremely unusual move'" might be a sign
| that the scrutiny was politically diminished.
|
| So it could be that most of the equally dubious researchers
| don't get caught because not enough attention is paid to
| patterns like this except when it's somebody especially
| prominent. Or it could be that this one was not as well
| covered up, perhaps because of the sheer number of issues.
| Or that the cross-institution issues made Stanford more
| willing to note the wrongdoing. Or that Stanford is less
| likely to sweep things under the rug because of its
| prominence. Or just that there was some ongoing tension
| between the trustees and the president and that this was an
| opportunity to win a political fight.
| nequo wrote:
| These are good points and hard to know. But the
| Retraction Watch is tracking stories of both mistakes and
| fraud in published research, across universities:
|
| https://retractionwatch.com/
| quickcheque wrote:
| Sure, any system with a false negative and false positive
| rate 'works'.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| A tenacious undergrad doing journalism as a hobby is not a
| system.
| panarky wrote:
| The fate of the world lies in the hands of the young and
| inexperienced.
|
| Grad students, Supreme Court clerks, 19-year-old
| soldiers.
| vintermann wrote:
| I don't think the baseline is the same. The more competition,
| the more temptation to cheat. When the margins to win are
| small enough, cheaters are disproportionately rewarded.
|
| Think of Tour de France. Famously doping-riddled. There are a
| lot of clean cyclists, but they are much less likely to be
| able to compete in the tour.
|
| You can fight cheating with policing: doping controls, etc.
| But as the competition gets more extreme, the more resources
| you need to spend on policing. There's a breaking point,
| where what you need to spend on policing exceeds what you get
| from competition.
|
| This is why almost no municipalities have a free-for-all
| policy for taxis. There are too many people technically able
| to drive people for money. All that competition drives prices
| lower, sure, but asymptotically. You get less and less lower
| prices the more competition you pile on - but the incentives
| for taxi drivers to cheat (by evading taxes, doing money
| laundering as a side gig etc.) keep growing. London did an
| interesting thing - with their gruelling geography knowledge
| exam, they tried to use all that competitive energy to buy
| something other than marginally lower prices. Still incentive
| to cheat, of course, but catching cheaters on an exam is
| probably cheaper and easier than catching cheaters in the
| economy.
|
| (Municipalities that auction taxi permits get to keep most of
| the bad incentives, without the advantage of competition on
| price.)
| karaterobot wrote:
| The problem is that we don't know what the baseline really
| is. We know that between a third and a half of results from
| peer reviewed papers in many domains cannot be replicated.
| Looking closer, we see what look like irregularities in some
| of them, but it's harder to say which of them are fraud,
| which are honest mistakes, and which of them just can't be
| replicated due to some other factors. But because so many of
| these studies just don't pay off for one reason or another, I
| would agree that it is getting really hard to rely on a
| process which is, if nothing else, supposed to result in
| reliable and trustworthy information.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Where is that number of 1/3-1/2 coming from? And which
| fields? I find that very hard to believe (at least if we
| exclude the obvious fraudulent journals, where no actual
| research gets published)
| zeroCalories wrote:
| I think he's referencing the replication crisis that was
| a big deal a few years ago. Psychology was hit
| hard(unsurprising), but a few other fields in the biology
| area were also hit.
| karaterobot wrote:
| It's worst in Psychology and the Social Sciences, but
| it's not limited to them. Per Wikipedia:
|
| > A 2016 survey by Nature on 1,576 researchers who took a
| brief online questionnaire on reproducibility found that
| more than 70% of researchers have tried and failed to
| reproduce another scientist's experiment results
| (including 87% of chemists, 77% of biologists, 69% of
| physicists and engineers, 67% of medical researchers, 64%
| of earth and environmental scientists, and 62% of all
| others), and more than half have failed to reproduce
| their own experiments. But fewer than 20% had been
| contacted by another researcher unable to reproduce their
| work. The survey found that fewer than 31% of researchers
| believe that failure to reproduce results means that the
| original result is probably wrong, although 52% agree
| that a significant replication crisis exists. Most
| researchers said they still trust the published
| literature
|
| Not sure if the results of that online study have (or
| can) themselves be reproduced, however. It's turtles all
| the way down.
| zeroCalories wrote:
| Skimmed the wiki on the replication crisis, and people
| have actually tried to systemically replicate popular
| studies and found similar results. You could say there
| has been a successful replication of failure to
| replicate.
| hayd wrote:
| It's only a story because he's president, if he were only a
| researcher/professor this would not even be a story. This is
| NOT a success story, it shows that this fraudulent behavior
| is endemic and an effective strategy for climbing the
| academic ladder.
|
| A success story would be this is exposed at large... we work
| out some kind of effective peer-reproduced tests... and the
| hundreds/thousands of cheating professors are fired.
| moab wrote:
| So just because one person is cheating, it means all
| academics are cheating?
|
| FWIW, most top-ranked CS conferences have an artifact
| evaluation track, and it doesn't look good if you submit an
| experimental paper and don't go through the artifact
| evaluation process. Things are certainly changing in CS, at
| least on the experimental side.
|
| It's also possible that theorems are incorrect, but
| subsequent work that figures this out will comment on it
| and fix it.
|
| The scientific record is self-correcting, and fraud /
| bullshit does get caught out.
| hayd wrote:
| It's not just "one person", there is wide-spread fraud
| across many disciplines of academia. The situation, of
| course, is vastly different across subjects/disciplines,
| e.g. math and CS are not really much affected and I would
| agree they're self-correcting.
|
| I might agree they're self-correcting in the (very) long-
| term, but we're seeing fictitious results fund entire
| careers. We don't know the damage that having 20+ years
| of incorrect results being built upon will have... And
| that's not to speak of those who were overlooked, and
| left academia, because their opportunities were taken by
| these cheaters (who knows what cost that has for
| society).
| [deleted]
| tptacek wrote:
| Endemic means "regularly occurring". How many examples of
| this kind of misconduct are you aware of? Ok, now, what's
| the denominator? How much research is actually conducted?
| I'm personally familiar with 3 fields (CS, bio, and
| geology) and what I've learned is that the number of labs
| --- let alone projects --- is mind-boggling. If your
| examples constitute 1% of all research conducted --- which
| would represent _a cosmic-scale fuckload_ of research
| projects --- how much should I care about it?
| bhk wrote:
| BMJ: Time to assume fraud?
| https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/07/05/time-to-assume-that-
| hea...
|
| Study claims 1 in 4 cancer research papers contains faked
| data https://arstechnica.com/science/2015/06/study-
| claims-1-in-4-...
| zzzeek wrote:
| devil's advocate - '1 in 4 studies are fake, says
| "study"'
| cycomanic wrote:
| So let's talk about misleading headlines and citations in
| journal articles. I would argue that arstechnica is one
| of the better news sources. Despite that, if we go to the
| article there is a link to that there has been "a real
| uptick in misconduct". Now if we click through that link,
| it does claim that there has been an increase in fraud as
| a lead in (this time without a link) but the article is
| about something completely different (i.e. that almost
| half the retracted papers are retracted due to fraud).
|
| As an aside, the article cites that there have been a
| total of 2000 retracted papers in the NIH database.
| Considering that there are 9 Million papers in the
| database overall, that is a tiny percentage.
| bhk wrote:
| > ... if we click through ...
|
| So you deflect from the entire content of the article
| with that distraction? And then an additional
| misdirection regarding retraction? Why?
| cycomanic wrote:
| > > ... if we click through ...
|
| > So you deflect from the entire content of the article
| with that distraction? And then an additional
| misdirection regarding retraction? Why?
|
| What do you mean? I take issue with the headlines and
| reporting. And I believe if one claims lack of evidence,
| sloppy evidence or fraudulent evidence one should be
| pretty diligent about ones one evidence.
|
| Regarding the claims in the article. If you look at the 1
| in 4 article you find that the reality is actually much
| more nuanced, which is exactly my point. The reporting
| does not necessarily reflect the reality.
|
| If you call that deflection...
| bhk wrote:
| The ArsTechnica article was about a paper by Morten
| Oksvold that claimed that 25% of cancer biology papers
| contain duplicated data.
|
| One nuance is that his approach only focused on one
| easily identifiable form of fraud: Western blot images
| that can be shown to be fraudulent because they were
| copies of images use in different papers. Of all the
| potential opportunities for fraud, one must think that
| this must represent just a small portion.
|
| If there are other nuances you care to mention, I'm all
| ears.
|
| Instead, you refer to an entirely different article, as
| if the article I cited has no relevant content, which
| misleads casual readers of this comment stream. To
| paraphrase your comment in a less misleading way: "Inside
| this article you can find a link to an entirely different
| article whose content does not support the headline of
| the original article."
| tptacek wrote:
| Well, one thing you might want to do before doubling down
| on the Oksvold study is work out the percentage of those
| papers that were likely to have misused western blot
| images (it's the bulk of the paper, impossible to miss),
| and then read the part of the Ars article (again: the
| bulk of the article) that discusses reasons why different
| experiments might have identical western blot images (one
| obvious one being that multiple experiments might get run
| in the same assay).
|
| Instead, you're repeatedly citing this 25% number as if
| it was something the paper established. Even the author
| of the paper disagrees with you.
| bhk wrote:
| Double down? Repeatedly? I posted a link to an article
| with its headline, and only later, when rebutting a
| comment that implied the article was about something
| "completely different", I mention that the article is
| about the Oskvold study and its finding of _duplication_
| in 25% of papers. The paper did in fact establish that
| number (unless you want to quibble about 24% vs. 25%).
|
| Yes, the ArsTechnica headline is poorly written, and
| _not_ supported by the content of the article, because
| not all instances of duplication are fraud, but we can
| clarify that issue by quoting the article itself: "...
| the fact that it's closer to one in eight should still be
| troubling."
| jlawson wrote:
| Any human organization?
|
| I don't expect 1-5% fraud in airline pilots, bank tellers,
| grocery store clerks, judges, structural engineers,
| restaurant chefs, or even cops (they can be assholes but you
| don't have to bribe them in functional countries).
|
| I think academics can do better than 1-5% fraudulent.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| I expect far higher levels of fraud in these professions.
| cycomanic wrote:
| What? In all of the ones you mentioned there is a known
| significant amount of fraudulent behaviour.
|
| Store clerks, theft is about 1-2% of sales typically. It
| has been said for years that the majority of that theft is
| from employees. Airline pilots have been known to drink
| during their flights (or go away from there seat for other
| reasons that are not in the rules).
|
| Cops, I mean don't get me started, just the protection of a
| cop who has done something wrong by the other cops would
| count as fraudulent, but I don't see many cops going after
| their own black sheep.
|
| Judges, in Germany deals (i.e. the accused pleads guilty to
| lesser charges so the bigger ones get dropped) are only
| legal under very limited circumstances (almost never and
| need to be properly documented). Nevertheless, in studies
| >80% of lawyers reported that they had encountered these
| deals).
|
| I think you seriously underestimate the amount of
| fraudulent behaviour.
| cycomanic wrote:
| Also coming back to judges. The behaviour by Thomas and
| Alito regarding presents etc. Would count as serious
| scientific misconduct in academia. So there's a
| significant percentage just there already.
| whydoyoucare wrote:
| If a field takes two decades to "correct" its mistakes, then
| there are several things wrong with it. And if we have top
| positions held by unethical people, who have got away with
| it, and possibly climbed to the top because of it, then I do
| not know what to feel or say about this.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| It's taken String Theory a few decades to correct itself.
| michael1999 wrote:
| No. This level of scrutiny and diligence is rare, and was
| selectively applied based on the targets profile. The "field"
| did nothing about this over 20 years. A computer science
| freshman did this as a hobby, not as a participant in
| neuroscience.
|
| Perhaps "nothing" is too harsh. Various people in the field
| raised concerns on several occasions. But the journals did
| nothing. The "field" still honoured him. And _Stanford_ did
| nothing (except enable him and pay him well) until public
| embarrassment revealed the ugliness.
| dmvdoug wrote:
| This is the important and troubling point. Everyone
| trumpets science as a model of a rational, self-correcting
| social enterprise. But we see time and time again that it
| takes non-scientists to blow the whistle and call foul and
| gin up enough outside attention before something gets done
| to make the correction. That puts the lie to the notion of
| self-correction.
| moab wrote:
| This is an issue at the department politics level. For
| the scientific field, once someone starts retracting
| papers (and arguably, even before this), everybody knows
| that you should take person X's papers with a huge grain
| of salt.
|
| E.g., in math / theory, if someone has a history of
| making big blunders that invalidate their results, you
| will be very hesitant to accept results from a new paper
| they put on arXiv until your community has vetted the
| result.
|
| So yes, I do trumpet science as a model of a rational,
| self-correcting social enterprise, at least in CS.
|
| Other sciences like biology and psychology have some way
| to go.
| chasd00 wrote:
| > you will be very hesitant to accept results from a new
| paper they put on arXiv until your community has vetted
| the result.
|
| Forgive my ignorance but I thought that was SOP for all
| papers. Is it not?
| moab wrote:
| Well not really, right? Let's suppose some well known,
| well respected author that has a history of correct
| results puts up a new paper. I (and I think most people)
| will assume that the result is correct. We start to apply
| more doubt once the claimed result is a solution to a
| longstanding open problem, or importantly, if the
| researcher has a spotty track record for correctness (in
| math/TCS) or falsifying results (in experimental fields).
|
| But really we shouldn't be talking about math errors and
| falsification in the same category.
| VHRanger wrote:
| The thing is that replication is inherently easy in CS.
| Especially now that people are expected to post code
| online.
|
| Forcing authors to share raw data and code in all papers
| would already be a start. I don't know why top impact
| factor papers don't do this already.
| moab wrote:
| I completely agree. It's a pity that this isn't becoming
| standard in fields affected by the replication crisis. I
| would be happy to be corrected if someone has heard /
| experienced otherwise.
| Apofis wrote:
| I truly hope they toss every single paper and citations to them
| that ever crossed this assholes desk. This misconduct literally
| should be treated the same as a dirty detectives cases being
| reviewed and tossed out since they are no longer trustworthy.
| robocat wrote:
| I hope you are forced to live in an authoritarian situation:
| so you may truly learn what it is like to be punished for the
| mistakes of others.
|
| The point here is to save the good apples - not throw out the
| whole barrel for zero gain.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Scientific institutions aren't perfect. They're made up of
| people like anywhere else. And where there are people there
| will be politics and gamesmanship. That doesn't mean science
| isn't our best shot at figuring out how the world works.
|
| The fact that a Stanford president can be pushed out for bad
| research conducted before he was even there? It tells me
| there's still some integrity left.
| partomniscient wrote:
| One has to ask what there is left to trust at all?
| stillbourne wrote:
| But they got caught, they retracted, the system works. It's not
| a perfect system, in a perfect system people wouldn't be
| incentivized to publish publish publish or be damned to the
| back waters. The institution is broken, but the safety nets
| work.
| Veserv wrote:
| As a aside, the phrase "a few bad apples" is actually
| originally "a few bad apples spoil the barrel" referencing the
| fact that a bad/overripe apple causes nearby apples to quickly
| ripen and go bad which is now known to be due to ripe apples
| producing ethylene gas which accelerates the ripening of other
| nearby apples. The phrase originally meant that one bad thing
| corrupts and destroys all associated. The discovery of a bad
| apple actually means everything is already irrevocably
| destroyed and thus reason for not tolerating even a single bad
| apple.
|
| A modern metaphor with a somewhat similar meaning to the
| original is: "A fish rots from the head down." Pointing out
| that organizational failures are usually the result of bad
| leadership. A rotten leadership will quickly result in a rotten
| organization. Therefore, it is important to make sure the
| leadership is not rotten in a organization. It also points out
| that low-level failures indicate there are deeper high-level
| failures. If the line-level is screwed up, the leadership is
| almost certainly just as screwed up. The fix being replacing
| the rotten leadership with a new one as lower-level fixes will
| not fix the rotten head.
|
| Another, more direct equivalent metaphor is a Chinese saying
| translated as: "One piece of rat poop spoils the pot of soup."
| That is hopefully self-explanatory. We should probably use it
| instead of "a few bad apples" as nobody will reverse the
| meaning of that one.
| stubybubs wrote:
| I think there's a transition phase between the two that
| people miss out on. I recall hearing "let's not let a few bad
| apples spoil the bunch" which is an acknowledgement of the
| original phrase, reworked to implore listeners not to throw
| it all away. You could say "let's not throw the baby out with
| the bathwater" but I guess some people are apple enthusiasts?
| dataflow wrote:
| I don't think the phrase has changed meaning?
|
| > The phrase originally meant that one bad thing corrupts and
| destroys all associated.
|
| It's saying if you don't remove the bad apple, you will get a
| lot of bad apples _in the future_. The presence of a bad
| apple doesn 't imply all of them are already spoiled right
| now. If you're seeing other apples that still haven't
| spoiled, it suggests you still have time to do damage
| control. That seems consistent with how the metaphor is used
| nowadays.
| capableweb wrote:
| As an aside to your aside, it's also the case that
| phrases/words change meaning over time, as usage in one grows
| above the usage in a different way.
|
| In this case, the "a few bad apples are not representative of
| a group" meaning have grown above the "One bad apple spoils
| the barrel" meaning, and so the phrase as changed, for better
| or worse.
|
| Maybe it would be best if everyone used the long version
| instead of the short one. When you say/write "A few bad
| apples", the meaning is ambiguous, but if you use the long
| version, it's not. Problem solved :)
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| > the "a few bad apples are not representative of a group"
|
| I have never heard that phrase, it has always been that the
| few spoils the whole.
|
| I have heard people say "the proof is in the pudding",
| which means nothing at all, when the real phrase is "The
| proof of the pudding is in the tasting".
|
| I'm from England and I speak English, so maybe it hasn't
| translated well to Americlish.
| AmpsterMan wrote:
| I think the larger "issue" is that the phrase
| colloquially means the exact opposite of the original
| observation, that a bad apple MEANS the bunch is spoiled.
| It's worse because this changing of the meaning is
| perpetuated by those same bad apples themselves.
|
| "the proof is in the pudding" is a much more benign
| change. It's literally just a shortening, but no meaning
| is lost... if you want the proof, you'll find it in the
| pudding (implying you should try the pudding to verify
| your assumptions)
| capableweb wrote:
| "Literally" is another word where the meaning changed
| from being the literal opposite of what it was "meant" to
| originally mean, not sure one is "worse" than the other.
| It's just change, which will continue to happen.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I would argue that the meaning has never changed. There
| is just an additional slang variation used by a subset of
| English speakers. Much like "wicked" was once slang for
| "good" and how Londers don't literally ring people using
| the bones of dogs ("dog an bone" Cockney rhyming slang,
| in case the reference doesn't translate).
| Aeolun wrote:
| > the original observation, that a bad apple MEANS the
| bunch is spoiled
|
| Too few people have enough apple trees in their lives to
| preserve the meaning.
| saghm wrote:
| > I have heard people say "the proof is in the pudding",
| which means nothing at all, when the real phrase is "The
| proof of the pudding is in the tasting".
|
| To be fair, the "real" phrase you give here doesn't make
| much more sense to me. Even assuming the use of the term
| "pudding" across the pond to be more than just a fairly
| niche dessert like it is in America, what does it mean
| for pudding to have "proof"? Is is some sort of
| philosophical thing where you don't accept that the
| pudding exists unless you taste it (which I feel isn't
| super convincing, since if we're going to have a
| discussion, we kind of have to accept that each other
| exists without having similar first-hand "proof", so we
| might as well accept that pudding exists as well)? I know
| there's a concept of something called "proofing" in
| baking, but I'm pretty sure that happens long before
| people taste the final product.
|
| In general, I don't find most cliches to be particularly
| profound. "It is what it is" is just a weird way to state
| an obvious tautology, but somehow it's supposed to
| convince me that I should just passively accept whatever
| bad thing is happening? "You can't teach an old dog new
| tricks" isn't universally true, but it apparently also is
| supposed to be a convincing argument in favor of
| inaction. "You can't have your cake and eat it too" is
| probably the most annoying to me, because the only way
| anyone ever wants to "have" cake is by eating it; no one
| actually struggles to decide between eating their cake or
| keeping it around as a decoration or whatever.
|
| There's something about stating something vaguely or
| ambiguously that seems to make it resonate with people as
| profound, and I've never been able to understand it. In
| my experience, thought-terminating cliches are by far the
| most common kind.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| It's "proof" as in to test. Like "proof reading". The
| point being, the real test of how good something is, is
| to use it (for its intended purpose).
|
| A vaguely similar sentiment to when people say "eating
| your own dog food" (or words to that effect) to mean
| testing something by using it themselves. Albeit the
| pudding proverb doesn't necessitate the prover to be
| one's self like "dog fooding" does.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| "It's just a few bad apples" is a common response to
| police misconduct here in the States, with the attitude
| of "why are you making such a big deal out of this?"
|
| The original saying, of course, is all about why you
| _have_ to make a big deal out of this, for reasons that
| apply to both apples and cops.
| autoexec wrote:
| > In this case, the "a few bad apples are not
| representative of a group" meaning have grown above the
| "One bad apple spoils the barrel" meaning
|
| Most of the time when I hear the "only a few bad apples,
| the rest of us are fine" meaning it's coming right from the
| mouths of badly spoiled apples twisting the meaning of
| those words and popularizing that usage to suit their
| agendas.
|
| Generally, I think that there's nothing wrong with pushing
| back against words and phrases used incorrectly. We get to
| decide how words are used, and a large part of that
| decision making process involves social pressure and
| education. I think it's particularly useful to defend the
| meaning of words and phrases when they're being deceptively
| misused and promoted.
| jallen_dot_dev wrote:
| This is just an excuse for ignorance and the annoying habit
| people have of repeating something they heard but don't
| understand.
|
| I think it's right to correct it because when people misuse
| this phrase, it isn't gaining a new meaning--it's making it
| meaningless. Why apples? The comparison to apples adds no
| information or nuance.
|
| Like when there's a story about police corruption, and
| someone says "they're just a few bad apples, not all cops
| are bad." Again, why compare them to apples? Why not just
| say a few bad cops?
|
| This isn't words/phrases changing meaning, it's losing
| meaning.
| capableweb wrote:
| > This isn't words/phrases changing meaning, it's losing
| meaning.
|
| It is literally not, it still means _something_ , just
| not the same as it originally meant. This happens all the
| time, with "literally" being one of the best examples of
| something that literally means the opposite of what it
| used to mean.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| The problem with this is that it creates ambiguity in
| communication. Both the old meaning and the new one will
| circulate together, especially among different
| demographics, and cause potentially severe
| misunderstandings.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Even, and especially fields that should be reproducable, like
| Machine Learning, are FULL of garbage:
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/12/1011944/artifici...
|
| https://reproducible.cs.princeton.edu/
|
| https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018Sci...359..725H/abstra...
| wesleywt wrote:
| The problem is not with science, it is your science illiteracy.
| You never accept scientific research as "true" until it has
| been verify and repeated by independent sources. It has become
| the culture to glorify unexpected and "interesting" results in
| the media and society at large. But you should find these
| "interesting" but not necessary believe it to be true.
|
| We do get unbelievable findings such as CRISPR, but beware
| these will be very few and far between.
| mistermann wrote:
| But it was caught, demonstrating that what we're constantly
| assured is true is actually true: science may not be perfect,
| but it catches all of its mistakes, therefore we should trust
| it above all(!) other disciplines.
| [deleted]
| iancmceachern wrote:
| Especially that the folks that are committing the fraud are
| raising to high places. It goes to show that we have systemic
| problems. This isn't a failure of a few individuals but a
| failure of our institutions. Clearly our incentive structure is
| messed up if people like this are in positions like this.
| Clearly we need to not only address this individuals actions,
| but the systemic issues that led to his ability to do what he
| did and still rise to the position he did.
| throwaway4837 wrote:
| How? Peer-review, re-review, journalism, and reproduction of
| results are the systems the scientific community is built upon.
| The system does its job of finding the bad apples, as it did
| here.
|
| Bad things are gonna happen in every single institution ever
| created. A better measure is how long those things persist.
|
| Science is about getting closer to "the truth". Sometimes
| science goes further away from the truth, sometimes it gets
| closer. Sometimes bad actors get us further away from the
| truth. It gets reconciled eventually.
| lynx23 wrote:
| Agreed. The system is flawed. And as a result, many scientific
| "findings" simply can't be trusted. And there is no solution in
| sight.
| NeuroCoder wrote:
| I can't speak for other fields but in Neuro there's plenty of
| this but often one learns how to catch it before using it in
| your own research, even if it never becomes a matter of public
| scrutiny. Unfortunately, I can't reassure you that bad research
| gets caught all the time. However, there's usually at least a
| couple of experts in a given sub field of Neuro that quickly
| call BS before something goes too far.
| rgmerk wrote:
| This is an excellent point. A lot of crappy research goes on,
| and nobody pays it any attention (except, occasionally, when
| cranks outside the field want to prove that "peer-reviewed
| research proves the Earth is flat).
|
| It's frankly not worth the effort to debunk a shitty piece of
| researchin a low-profile journal that's never been cited in a
| decade.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| > in Neuro there's plenty of this but often one learns how to
| catch it before using it in your own research, even if it
| never becomes a matter of public scrutiny.
|
| And what happens when it is caught, it is just quietly
| ignored by the field, right? How often are there retractions?
| NeuroCoder wrote:
| Depends on the situation. If no one cites it then it drifts
| into obscurity quickly. If it was actually cited frequently
| it leads to an investigation of work by all authors on the
| paper along with a retraction.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| To the contrary, it increases my trust.
|
| Just the fact that Stanford managed to conduct an independent
| investigation against its OWN PRESIDENT, tells very positive
| things about the University.
|
| After this episode, I might trust Stanford research even a bit
| more than any University that never caught fraudsters.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| It strengthens mine. Science is self correcting in a way the
| religion and politics never can be, they keep making the same
| faith based mistakes over and over, while science continues to
| progress. Evidence of that is everywhere you look, whereas
| politics and religion have barely made any progress in hundreds
| of years.
| kansface wrote:
| The article from Nature yesterday came up with 26% of the peer
| reviewed published papers they examined (all RCT) were
| untrustworthy based on close examination of their data. They
| could only invalidate 2% without data.
|
| I personally believe this is an underestimate.
| [deleted]
| moralestapia wrote:
| The issue with academia is much broader and larger than people
| know of, but I'm happy that (slowly) some of these things are
| starting to come out to light.
|
| Broader, because fraudulent research is only _one_ of the
| multiple crappy things that a person with no ethics will do to
| grab a place and keep it. But another common thing is academic
| abuse towards students, which is another HUGE problem that needs
| to be addressed. There 's a lot of real crimes happening here,
| extortion, sexual abuse, you name it. Guess who's talking about
| it? Almost nobody.
|
| Larger, because people tend to believe that these are just a few
| bad apples while in reality this is pretty much how many large
| academic institutions operate _de facto_. If I 'd put an estimate
| of how many of these "bad apples" are actually there, I would say
| it is as high as 7 out of 10 people involved in academia.
|
| I love science, I've been doing it for about 15 years. That is
| the reason why I'm very vocal around this subject. This is a
| swamp that needs to be drained.
| P_I_Staker wrote:
| I hope you get a chance to respond, just want to clarify the
| point: "7 out of 10 people in academia are either engaging in
| highly unethical, borderline and actual criminal acts, or
| complicit in enabling and/or hiding these acts"
|
| Quite a claim if that's what you meant. Is this team members
| that are considered untouchable, due to being brilliant
| jerks/creeps, too important/connected, or otherwise
| inconvenient to go after?
|
| The most I've personally heard of is lecturing professors
| berating the demo team (and students)... he was brilliant
| lecturer. Perhaps others hide it better.
|
| I've heard it can work the opposite way, but I imagine it's not
| evenly applied. People get randomly fired from academia for the
| smallest of things.
| moralestapia wrote:
| I think the reason for this is that this behavior is self-
| perpetuating, in the sense that "a gang of crooks" is much
| more likely to assemble than "a gang of good people".
|
| Whenever "a gang of crooks" takes hold of a Uni, it is
| extremely difficult to take them out, and people who don't
| want to comply with their modus operandi get pushed away and
| removed.
|
| The only time "a gang of crooks" is dethroned is when someone
| (usually, worse) seizes their power to instill their own.
|
| >People get randomly fired from academia for the smallest of
| things.
|
| Only those on the outgroup, :^).
| voakbasda wrote:
| It goes even deeper than all that. Schools basically give away
| undergraduate degrees now, as those who should fail will
| magically receive passing grades. They cannot afford to fail
| too many students (relative to other institutions), as that
| ultimately would damage either their finances or reputation.
|
| Absolutely everyone involved in teaching (professors,
| instructors, grad students) are complicit in this scam. This
| endemic condition demonstrates the complete lack of integrity
| present in these institutions. If they are willing to lie and
| cheat the system that grants the very entry level credentials
| required to get into the upper echelons of academia, it becomes
| a very safe bet that they are lying and cheating in countless
| other ways from the comfort of their ivory towers.
| mathisfun123 wrote:
| >It goes even deeper than all that. Schools basically give
| away undergraduate degrees now, as those who should fail will
| magically receive passing grades.
|
| how exactly did you make the leap to undergrads?
| squarepizza wrote:
| > There's a lot of real crimes happening here, extortion,
| sexual abuse, you name it. Guess who's talking about it? Almost
| nobody.
|
| And institutions are very good and very fast at sweeping these
| under the rug, often if not always at the expense of the
| students.
| hanlec wrote:
| > It identified a culture where Tessier-Lavigne "tended to reward
| the 'winners' (that is, postdocs who could generate favorable
| results) and marginalize or diminish the 'losers' (that is,
| postdocs who were unable or struggled to generate such data)."
|
| I am honestly very curious who hasn't observed the same behavior
| in large corporations too. (And to be clear, I'm not defending
| this behavior; rather curious if it's not an unfortunate
| generalized situation that occurs not only in academia).
| tomlockwood wrote:
| And yet people think the sokal hoax contains some revelations
| about an entire field.
| bufordtwain wrote:
| Unfortunately scientists are often rewarded/celebrated for
| research that finds groundbreaking or new results as opposed to
| results which are actually true but less interesting. This
| incentive is very difficult to resist.
| wly_cdgr wrote:
| Why is bro not also getting fired from his biology prof job
| there? They're letting the old boy down way too easy.
| fredgrott wrote:
| I have a stupid question. What should we think of Stanford ethics
| when said individual still retains a board position?
|
| If his excuse of not enough detail investigation of lab reported
| data before sub mitting research report than should not same lack
| of skillset be a requirement for his firing form Stanford board?
| gkanai wrote:
| Theo Baker was interviewed on the Longform Podcast recently:
|
| https://longform.org/player/polk-award-winners-theo-baker
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