MIT Professor Fired over Fabricated Data 285
karvind writes "CNN is running a story where MIT has fired an associate professor of biology for fabricating data in a published scientific paper, in unpublished manuscripts, and in grant applications. Luk Van Parijs, 35, who was considered a rising star in the field of immunology research, admitted to the wrongdoing. The revelations are a serious blow to MIT, which prides itself on its reputation as a scientific powerhouse. The announcement also serves to answer the rumors that have been swirling on the campus since Van Parijs vanished from the campus more than a year ago and had his lab disbanded without any comment from the university. Readers may remember the infamous Jan Hendrik Schön from Bell labs."
What about philosophy professors? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What about philosophy professors? (Score:5, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:4, Funny)
Re:What about philosophy professors? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Sad to see a philosophy major who thinks that he can learn it all in a chain coffee shop. Must be specializing in Continental "You want frys with that" philosophy.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What about philosophy professors? (Score:2)
spoken like a true philosophy major
Re:What about philosophy professors? (Score:5, Interesting)
I spent my time learning to write automata with higher Turing scores than morons like that, and routinely work with logic loops that would make their tiny minds asplode, and I get crap because they think their business degree, or their non-programming I/S degree was more challenging than what I studied?
It just pisses me off. It's not my fault a bunch of wankers in europe decided that their subjective experiences had external validity, and that their crackpot theories happened to fall into the fuzzy area between philosophy and religion, and it really irks me when people who know better draw no distinction between the two...It's like putting the ID people and the Evolution people in the same category.
Re:What about philosophy professors? (Score:2, Interesting)
I kinda thought I wanted to be a writer at the time, but I found the hard satisfaction of coding to be more desirable than the ephemeral nature of "success" in writing, where the quality of your work had no relation to its value.
Re:What about philosophy professors? (Score:3, Insightful)
He also doesn't qualify under the initial caveat of "If you write a good story"...
Re:What about philosophy professors? (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing about philosophy is that it's really about the process...If you want a branch of study that is completely focused on critical thinking, logical analysis, and proofs, philosophy is the best way to go, and the great thing about it is you don't have to go on and study metaphysics or any of the unpractical stuff if you don't want to...All the methods apply well to any other organized branch of study. Hardcore logic training has been invaluable to me in CS, much moreso than the 4 semesters of Calc I had to take.
To me, having someone put down philosophy as a whole like it's only suitable for coffeehouses is the same as someone dismissing physics because it isn't in the bible.
Re:What about philosophy professors? (Score:5, Interesting)
If I follow you, your problem with some varieties of philosophy is that they are "unpractical," as you put it. It isn't exactly clear which sorts of philosophy you are fingering here, so I'm going to consider two possible readings of what you specifically said. Before that though, I need to give everyone else a quick sketch of what doing philosophy in the 21st century means. It's my personal belief that a lot of the frustration that you and I both face when we're talking to people without a philosophy background is the fact that the discipline is shrouded in mystery. More than that, though, I need it to make my response to you make sense.
Now, very roughly speaking, at the very highest level of abstraction there are three ways of "doing philosophy" in academia. You can be a historical scholar, a member of the Anglo-American (aka Analytic) School, or a member of the Continental School. The work of historical scholars are pretty straight forward: they take texts written by (frequently long) dead philosophers and they try to interpret them, or they try to demonstrate the relationships between different thinkers, or things like that. What they do is quite a bit like art historians or literature experts, only in a philosophical mode. Conversely, the Analytic School and the Continental School are concerned with the production of new thought: they are the two sides of what it sometimes refered to as the Split, because, starting around, oh, 1900, they stopped talking to each other. There are many differences between the two sides of the Split, but the ones that concern us here are just these: the Analytics are primarily interested in logic, rationality, and the physical sciences plus psychology and linguistics, while writting in a clear manner akin to scientific journals, and having their power in the UK and most US schools, while the Continentals are primarily interested in art and literary criticism, the social sciences, and what might be called "The Big Questions", while frequently writting in poetic if obscure manners, and having their power in France, Germany, and select schools in the US. Russell is the most commonly known analytic, while Sartre is the most commonly known continental. (And, IMHO, these are both tragedies.)
There were huge generalizations made above I would want to fix in a formal setting (historians tend to either have continetnal or analytic tendencies, for instance), but it's good enough for the purpose at hand. To get back to your comment, then, there are two things you could be saying. Either (A) that history of philosophy, and subjecting colleges students to it is pointless because its unpractical, or (B) you could be taking a very hard analytic position against continental philosophy, that talking about the Being of Being or the Other or Deconstruction is pointless because it never matters in the real world, like, say Cognitive Science or Decision Theory does (One might imagine this argument ending with "Get a job, hippy!").
Against (A) I'd say, okay, if you really want to be that hard-headed about the singular importance of science in human education, there's nothing really I can say, but, you are also saying that the humanities in general are without practical significance. Does learning history _really_ help us avoid repeating it? Maybe occasionally, but not enough to warrent the amount of money we spend on teaching it. And the other humanities, art history, the study of dead languages, literature, even many forms of abstract mathematics: there really can't be a good way to justify them. In my mind, however, learning these things just lead to better, fuller lives, not just because of the skills you get when you do it, but because it demonstrates to you t
Re:What about philosophy professors? (Score:3, Insightful)
But selling it in this environment, you have to push the areas that they'll apreciate. And frankly, just getting people to understand that there is practical philosophy is an accomplishment.
My physics professor (Score:2)
My physics professor said something like that. To very loosely quote (and accordingly, I only use single marks): 'You have to understand the concepts, not memorize them. If you understand them, you do not forget them. It's hard to fudge the results; this is physics, not philosophy.' (After which, I, with 40 or so people in attendance, laughed in agreement.)
(Damn, I almost put a semicolon at the end; I gotta lay off the C# a tad...it's like crack...)
Re:My physics professor (Score:3, Interesting)
Sure there are idiots in Philosophy, but it gave birth to all modern sciences.
Re:My physics professor (Score:4, Interesting)
My philosophy professors said that about philosophy too, and they didn't dismiss physics or mathematics while doing so, because they fully understood how they worked. Philosophy is more about logic than mathematics or physics are. If you don't undertand that, you didn't understood anything about philosophy. In fact, mathematics and physics are a concequence of philosphy, like C and lisp are concequence of computer science, but i won't even try to argue about that because you damn 'scientists' guys are so entranched in your way of thinking that you wouldn't be able to admit it anyway. ...
And that's what's so ironic: you can have a philosophy guy admit anything if you can proove it, even things like "you don't exist". Why ? because if the logic behind the argument is irrefutable, it is by all means true unless you can proove otherwise. But scientists, who believe they have the finest logics that exists, can't be bothered with all this stuff because because you can't measure it, look at it, or quantify it. They're a subset of philosophy which deals whith tangible things, but they forgot it, and believe the science which gave them birth is crap because they don't understand it anymore. Total nonsense
Don't fire them! (Score:2, Informative)
The University of Colorado at Boulder decided to give Professor Ward Churchill [wikipedia.org] a raise, recognizing his creativity in falsely claiming to be a native american, fabricating a special ops military career [mensnewsdaily.com], stealing other people's art [news4colorado.com] and claiming it as his own, "borrowing" others written works [wnd.com] and in general, being an intellectual fraud. Investigations into
Re:What about philosophy professors? (Score:2)
As Einstein once said... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:As Einstein once said... (Score:4, Funny)
Not at all (Score:5, Insightful)
The revelations are a serious blow to MIT, which prides itself on its reputation as a scientific powerhouse.
Revealing a case of fraud strengthens their reputation. If they had let the case die in the darkness after dismissing him--that would lessen their reputation. But admitting that fraud has happened and that the school will not stand for it--that can only gain respect.
Not the greatest timing... (Score:5, Insightful)
What you say is true, however, this isn't really the greatest timing for a story to break on the fact that scientists sometimes fabricate their data. This provides a rather juicy opportunity for the various anti-science forces out there to point to this and say "See, scientists aren't the pristine investigators of truth that they would like us to believe! This one got caught, but how many others are doing the same thing right now? That's why we need to keep an open mind about {intelligent design, alternative medicine, bigfoot, global warming is a myth, etc.}."
You and I may see this story as evidence of the scientific system working the way it is supposed to. I suspect that the public will see this as evidence that science doesn't have a monopoly on the truth and maybe we ought to give those creationists equal time. Like I said, this isn't the greatest time for this story to break.
GMD
Re:Not the greatest timing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is this modded Insightful?!? (Score:5, Insightful)
I think including alternative medicine with the other topics you mention is pretty short sighted. To think that we have all the medical answers, and that there aren't other medications or treatments that western medicine might not know about is ignorant. Take for instance pressure points: no western doctor or treatment explains or addresses them.
This is almost precisely the same argument used by the Intelligent Design folks to get creationism taught in schools! I'm flabergasted that this got modded up. Yes, yes, yes -- neither evolution or western medicine has all the answers. Scientists fully admit this. However, the fact that those fields don't have all the answers doesn't mean that we should start relying on creationism or alternative medicine. You need to provide verifable evidence that sticking needles into people can cure ailments and not rely on "well, you guys don't have all the answers" arguments. Alternative medicine most definitely belongs with the other things I listed. Not because it's all crap. Because all of those things openly (almost pridefully) reject the scientific method.
However, I'll tell you right now that there are a great many instances where accupressure/puncture can make huge differences in a number of maladies.
Oh boy, take a guess what my next question is going to be. Can you provide references to multiple peer-reviewed studies verifying your claim? You "can tell me", huh? And who the hell are you? Some guy on slashdot? I'm going to take medical advice from User 549286?
redfieldp, I think you misunderstood my post. Maybe I should have left UFOs out of the list. My point was that alternative medicine is anti-science. Alternative medicine practitioners apply their techniques to the public at large without scientific evidence that these methods work or are even safe. Having scientists publically outed for falsifing data is only going to provide more ammunition to those who claim they deserve equal status and recognition. Alternative medicine is welcome to use the scientific method to verify their claims. Until that time, it belongs squarely in the "anti-science" camp.
GMD
I don't trust NCCAM (Score:4, Informative)
You're painting with far too wide a brush. Many alternative medicine practitioners and researchers are using the scientific method and expanding our knowledge of medicine. Take a look at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine - part of the U.S. National Institutes of Health. http://nccam.nih.gov/ [nih.gov]
I've already taken a look. I recommend you look at this [csicop.org].
GMD
Re:Not the greatest timing... (Score:2)
Why? Because it casts a little doubt on the credibility of proponents on both sides of the debate? Everyone but an absolute moron knows that scientists occasionally fabricate (or fudge) data, either for personal glory, or to please their sponsors.
If you think this is bad press for scientists, wait till you see what happens to this guy.
Re:Not the greatest timing... (Score:5, Insightful)
I would think that such people are, by definition, not scientists.
Re:Not at all (Score:4, Interesting)
The blow is to MIT's hiring practice and peer review. An instance of fraud indicates that the faculty there is verifiably capable of fraud. It indicates that their hiring practices are not infalliable, as may have previously been thought, and to which there was previously no example to turn to. While it may not produce any overwhelming skepticism of their other results, particularly with their reaction, it does show a falliability in hiring practice, and a lack of internal peer review prior to publication.
It is a blow to their reputation. MIT hired someone capable of lying, who lacks the foresight to expect to be caught in a system of skepticism and peer review, who is more ambitious than smart. Otherwise impecable hiring practices are tarnished by this mistake. Respect that may have been inherent and implicit to authors at MIT now stands next to the possibility fraud such as this. In my mind, this paints everyone who arrived at MIT in the same way with the same brush.
While admirable, I do not think their reaction can actually produce greater respect than would have otherwise been there had they not hired a charlatan. The respect I hold for their reaction is different from, and in no way increases, my faith in their capacity to hire appropriately and produce reliable work. Their reaction was the lesser blow to reputation, and in my mind necessary. Had they let the case die in the darkness, if it ever came to light it would undermine their reputation, not tarnish it.
Re:Not at all (Score:4, Insightful)
I know this is /. and RTFA is not common but I'll ask anyway. Did you RTFA? I suspect not as there's something pertinent at the end of it:
The California Institute of Technology has launched its own investigation into Van Parijs' research, including work with Cal Tech President David Baltimore "on problems in immunology," said school spokeswoman Jill Perry.
Van Parijs, who earned a doctorate in immunology from Harvard in 1997, was a postdoctural student at Cal Tech from 1998 to 2000.
From this it appears this guy has done this before but never been caught. He had a clean record, and apparently had squeaked through peer reviews many times in the past already. On the other hand this may be just a red herring and it will turn out the guy was squeaky-clean before he was hired by MIT. In either case you can't blame MIT's hiring process.
If the guy had been fabricating data in the past and gotten through peer review then he simply appeared to be an honest scientist. If he didn't fabricate data in the past but started after MIT hired him this also isn't the fault of the hiring process. The fault lays squarely at this guy's feet. He tried to cheat the system and he was finally caught. Until a fraudster is caught there's no way to know he's a fraudster so how exactly did you expect MIT's hiring process to magically figure out he was something other than he appeared to be based on his history?
This incident doesn't make me think any less of MIT or their hiring process at all. In fact their handling of this bests most universities. He was put on immediate leave, locked out of his lab and given no opportunity to hide his misdeeds. They spent a YEAR investigating the charges thoroughly and are even turning the results over to the Feds for further action. While they can't magically figure out someone has committed undetected crimes/fabrications they can, and did, make sure that any allegations of such are taken VERY seriously.
possibly deeper problem (Score:2)
In any case, these things do happen, and a single incidence doesn't tell you much about the culture of an institution. However, the recent blatant incidences of scientific fraud are perhaps suggestive of cut-throat competition for funding and publications in science as a whole.
Re:Not at all (Score:2)
Wrong. (Score:2)
the poor grad students (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:the poor grad students (Score:5, Informative)
Re:the poor grad students (Score:2)
Re:the poor grad students (Score:2)
Luk Van Parijs Response (Score:5, Funny)
I need a picture of Van Parijs. (Score:3, Funny)
With my copies of the GIMP and the Impact font [google.com], I'd put a red PWN3D!!1 on his face in no time.
Copyrights and gov funding (Score:2)
To take it on faith that knowledge and sience would never be persued or never be rewarding enough without them is ignorance.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Insightful)
Most great leaps in science have been governments funded/nobility patronaged. Most incremental improvement of exsisting technlogoies come from corprate enviroments. Corprate research goes to where the money soon will be, this leads to near sighted research into only a few fields. We get better cars, but we won't derive new energy sources. This is where academic government funded research is for. They research the things that aren't profitable but are interesting to science. Gov. funding should never be eliminated unless you want science to degenerate into nothing more then incremental improvements of consumer products.
you must be kidding (Score:2)
Government funding mechanisms suck and a market solution would be great; trouble is: there is no market solution. Research is a public good; the attempts at establishing a market in it, like the patent system, have failed miserably.
Most scientific and technological breakthroughs have been government funded; of the remaining ones that were pr
hrm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:hrm... (Score:5, Interesting)
Still, I think it goes to show that if someone is actively trying to dishonest in the scientific community, it's not hard to get past the safeguards. Fabricating data is something that is (I guess) comparatively hard to detect, compared to an entire document that was written without any human intervention and thus shouldn't really make any kind of sense at all, but even the fake document wasn't detected. It sure makes you wonder how many people fabricating data are actually not caught and instead get away with it.
Re:hrm... (Score:3, Informative)
There's a lot of unimportant crap that gets published in scientific journals and/or accepted for conferences (I know; I've written some of this crap). Important papers (published research that actually has implications for anyone other than the authors) tends to get reviewed more thoroughly- the whole "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" principle. That's not to say that fabrication doesn't happen, it's just that eventually it's going to get caught, at least for the stuff that matters. The
Re:hrm... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:hrm... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's true that it's possible to sneak fabricated data past the peer-review process, but I think the damage is self-limiting in a way. If your results are significant, people will be interested in duplicating your results... either as a way of understanding them better or to compare against their own work. If nobody is able to duplicate your results, you are likely to have your fraud caught sooner or later.
If your results are not all that significant, it gets forgotten and nobody builds on your bad work so the scientific process itself isn't subverted although the dishonest researcher may have got an undeserved feather in his cap.
Re:hrm... (Score:2)
The case of false data i
Re:hrm... (Score:2)
In modern years someone wanted to run some DNA tests on Piltdown Man and got permission. While the lab tech was drilling a whole to the marrow to try and find some DNA, they smelt burning bone. Fossilised bone doesn't bur
Re: hrm... (Score:2)
According to an Assistant Dean at my alma mater, a very large fraction of the people who get busted for cheating are pre-meds.
> if someone were to use sufficiently intimidating / esoteric math (especially if it were reasonably plausible math), they could probably fake a paper in some of the top journals and get away with it for several years.
Check out the Bogdanov Affair [wikipedia.org]. A couple of French brothers wr
Not surprising (Score:5, Funny)
slight modifying of data is done all the time (Score:2)
What incentive would a researcher
"Blow" ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? It is a "blow" to their reputation iff they knew about the misconduct and did nothing about it. In this case it is clear that they took swift action. I would give kudos to MIT for reacting swiftly. Recall the conduct of other organizations like NYT in such instances.
Re:"Blow" ? (Score:2)
On the other hand, I'm not sure I would qualify this as acting "swiftly", as the misconduct was discovered in August of 2004....
Intellectual Design (Score:5, Funny)
Welcome to Science!
Re:Intellectual Design (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually that sounds about right, especially from my experience at secondary school (aka High School). If you do a lab experiment, do something wrong and write up the results as you observed then you actually get a bad mark on your write-up. This actually encourages people to fudge the write-up and make it as the teacher expects. This is where I would like to see write-ups marked independently of the experimentation, to give more value to the procedure and observations, no matter how wrong the results mighte be. Maybe also encouraging the students to explain why they think the results differed from the expected results, to help make up for any experiemental errors.
We learn from our mistakes as well as others, but if we chuck them into trash then no one stands to learn from them.
Re:Intellectual Design (Score:3, Interesting)
I won first place in the district science with an experient that FAILED. Yes, it didn't work!
But I did good science, explained WHY it failed, and postulated appropriate requirements for success.
It was also possible in my chemistry and physics classes to achieve a near-perfect score for an experiment that didn't work. You would only lose marks on the do-it-right part of the evaluation, so long as your write up was good and you explained your errors.
Happens all the time (Score:5, Informative)
For going to the trouble of turning in the fraudulent research the tech had their phone tapped (which the lab later denied), was transferred out to a dingy little building in the middle of the desert to do menial tasks and just generally harassed until they eventually got another job.
There's so much pressure for getting grant money that producing the results that will get more grant money is pretty much the norm, espeically in contract research. Everyone likes to think science is pure, but you're deluded if you think that. It's all about making sure you've got enough charge codes to bill your time and supporting that 200% overhead rate.
Re:Happens all the time (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that they say it happens to them, but the stories are ridiculous, with tests designed so they can't fail, or so failures are marked as partial successes, etc, because the project cannot have any black marks against it till acquisition... after which the govt will gladly pay to upgrade baselines to fix the flaws over the next decade. Check fas.org, but the first sparrow missle, the first line of tomahawks, b1 bomber, osprey, bradley's, even the proposed missle shield, all were/are acquired with obvious, mission-comprimising flaws that cost billions-10s of billions per project to fix. The problem is the acquisition system, especially congress's oversight, doesn't have an independent verification mechanism to prove that said equipment works within required parameters, and anyone who tries to say anything generally gets discharged from the military for going outside the chain of command and "comprimising the integrity of a classified project", even if the congressmen have clearance.
So if you were ever curious why so many ex-military officers found surprisingly comfortable jobs in the defense sector, theres an idea.
The corruption in the military-industrial complex goes beyond anything we can imagine in the private sector. Actual results being valued far less than pork per district works great in politics, but tends to hurt 2 politically defenseless groups, the taxpayers who fund these nightmares, and the poor troops who end up wondering why they have to bolt sheet metal onto their hummvees while people are shooting at them.
Rescience (Score:5, Interesting)
Funding. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just try getting a grant for "Doing exactly what this other guy already did, just to make sure."
Yeah, it actually is important, but try explaining that to the bean counters. The best you can do is propose some sort of "continuation" and include the original experiment as a control group, and hope to verify it that way.
Re:Rescience (Score:2)
Academic Structure (Score:2, Insightful)
The unfortuna
This is unusual because.. (Score:2, Interesting)
I love the research that shows a certain food additive killed mice who were predisposed to cancer (the cancer went wild) BUT didn't harm healthy mice.
Simple logic thus tells us it is safe to eat. And we do.
I will remember what the additive is.. I think you can put it with mashed up meat and the meat "gels together" t
His faculty page still available at archive.org (Score:4, Interesting)
funny about this (Score:5, Interesting)
One day, I noticed that the Windows box in their lab wasn't responding and had been reported as haven been taken by the Cancer Center's sysadmin guy. I talked to a buddy of mine who sits across from me and did lab work for the Van Parijs. He called and asked about the machine. A couple of minutes later, the head of the Cancer Center called him and firmly told him to drop all inquries into said machine. He said it felt like the part of The Matrix where Neo gets the 'How are you going to talk without a mouth, Mr Anderson' line.
That's when the shit hit the fan. I was a weekly regular at the Plough and Stars in Cambridge on Wednesdays, and the Van Parijs members made it out there every other week or so. After six weeks or so, the guys who confronted Luk finally started talking about it.
It was quite the news in the department. I don't know about the rest of MIT, but all of Biology, and the CCR, Whitehead, and surrounding buildings knew about it since day one. It worked out well for the members of the lab. Everybody joined up with a different lab, except for one guy. He pretty much started working for himself. He's doing some post-doc work, and in light of what happened, the department just let him start doing his own thing until he finishes up.
What I remember about Luk Van Parijs(other than that he had the most gorgeous Russian administrative assistant. I could write for hours about her. I mean, she was hot and she said things like 'I think my phone just did a core dump' Hi Masha!) was that he was pretty much a jerk. Not that remarkable being that for MIT professors this is the rule and not the exception, but a jerk nonetheless.
Anyways, everybody thinks the New Scientist article was pretty scathing.
Re:funny about this (Score:2)
Here is a more detailed account (Score:5, Informative)
Here is how they noticed a pattern:
Michael Borowitz, at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, Maryland, says: "The shapes of the major clusters are often similar but in any system there is noise, and those noisy dots are in the same place too. That's hard to explain by biology. It is very difficult for me to believe that these were independent experiments." Borowitz is an expert in interpreting flow cytometry graphs, which he regularly uses to identity abnormal populations of cells in the blood and bone marrow of leukaemia patients.
Three other experts contacted, including Paul Robinson, a professor of immunopharmacology and biomedical engineering and Director of the Flow Cytometry Labs at Purdue University in West Lafayette, say that the graphs appear concerningly alike.
What about Dr. Soong? (Score:4, Funny)
hahahahahhahha
Obscure Sci-Fi reference
False results waste a LOT of time and money (Score:5, Interesting)
People who lose sight of that, and who make stuff up to submit, are not only disrespecting their peers, they are stealing time and effort from them. For example, I lost about six months of my life because a senior colleague falsified data that I needed in graduate school. We were in the business of flying a rocket payload to look at the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light. We calibrated the photographic film at a synchrotron facility at Stanford. Our senior colleague (who later went on to become a bigwig at SPIE and in NASA's Astrobiology program) was in charge of developing the film that we exposed, at great effort, to calibrated amounts of ultraviolet light emitted by the synchrotoron. He forgot (or something) to write down which process he used on which piece of film. As a result, a year later when we were analysing our images of the Sun we couldn't make any sense of them. It took a good six months of concentrated effort to eliminate all reasonable hypotheses about what had happened, and to conclude that the film processing notes from that calibration run were simply made up. Once we knew that, we could get reasonable (if not-as-good-as-we-hoped) results from the rocket flight, using earlier calibrations. If my colleague had fessed up immediately we would have lost a few days' work rather than six months.
In the short term, the scientific refereeing process keeps out many honest mistakes or omissions, but anyone determined to deliberately slip fake results into a paper can probably get away with it. In the long term, though, there's no escape: anything made up will either be buried (because it turns out to be uninteresting or because no-one trusts it), or found out (because, if it is interesting, others will try to use or reproduce the result, and will niggle at it until the truth comes out).
Common Stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
We VERY rarely hear of research actually failing, when in fact we should be hearing it ALL THE TIME since taking stabs at new ideas shouldn't be successful all the time. Failure should be a natural part of research, and there really shouldn't be an urge to have to make your research fruitful everytime. Unfortunately, no one would actually do this even if they agreed with the thought - people would only expect other people to follow the rule.
It's not like it matters too much regardless - 90% of research papers are bullshit wrapped in a myriad of technical jargon which makes it seem like they achieved something ridiculously important.
My 2 cents.
Re:Common Stuff (Score:4, Insightful)
Thing is, if you're working on an idea, and the solution you try doesn't seem to work [which happens quite frequently], you just move on, and eventually you'll be able to solve the problem someway. If too much time is spent and no viable solution seems to be found, then it's time to move on, unless you have unlimited time and resources to waste. Havign said that, outsiders don't usually hear about failed ideas because 1). if a solution is found, it is published, the failures are not, 2). a funded project usually doesn't have such explicitely narrow goals that it only would have one and only one solution which means at least some parts will be done/finished/solved/etc and then it's prettier to say it's partially successfull than to say it's mostly a failure.
Re:Common Stuff (Score:2)
And that's where it goes wrong. If you start out with a desire to find a certain outcome, you're already one step down the dark path. The point in doing research is that you find out things you didn't know yet, not that you find what you think you should find. In fact, the most interesting discoveries are often those where the results where different from what was expected.
The
Re:Common Stuff (Score:3, Informative)
Oh, research does fail all the time, believe me. In fact, right before I wrote this, one of my own experimental setups came up with disappointing results.
The reason you don't hear about it is that no one tends to publish the negative results - they're usually not nearly as interesting (or profitable) as the positive ones. I will not get a pa
David Baltimore (Score:3, Interesting)
Baltimore has previously been caught, at a minimum, refusing to take scientific misconduct seriously.
Even if no wrongdoing is found on David Baltimore's part (as I think is likely) this incident will still be taken as further evidence that when strong action is not taken against an environment that is permissive of misconduct, the misconduct is likely to grow.
All college professors fabricate data... (Score:2, Insightful)
In all seriousness the fabrication of data is not as much of a problem in academia as improper use of statistical methods, poor coding procedures, and poor data collection are.
Hah! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hah! (Score:3, Interesting)
He was educated at Caltech by David Baltimore, a long-time MIT professor. So we might also suggest that MIT quit polluting the rest of academia?
Incidentally, this isn't the first time that Baltimore has been tied to academic fraud scandal. One would hope it's coincidence.
Could it be? (Score:2, Funny)
People write books about this (Score:2)
What is new here are the pressures since WWII in the academic world to get results. Some major cases of fraud were so egregious that these people would have to have been writing papers every two or three days on average --for periods of years. Nobody is that productive.
It's sad that MIT had to make such
Fabricating Data? (Score:2)
Double Standard? (Score:3, Interesting)
How many physicists have knowingly published work that they found themselves to be wrong, but just didn't include or played dumb about the parts with blatant mistakes or systematic problems, or used a derivation that just doesn't work?
I've seen papers from nobel prize winning physicists that upon actually trying to apply the theory one finds that it's totally inconsistent--almost as if the writers never actually bothered to try to check their work, or did and decided to hide the problem rather than throw it away, fix it, or qualify it as problematic.
I understand that there's a lot of pressure to publish, but unfortunately I can't publish my own work because it deconstructs work of more prominent people--it would literally shift the foundations of the theory. The problem is that if I've made a mistake, it's my reputation that's shot.
It can be really heartbreaking, too: I went over my friend's doctoral thesis just before he was to send it for publication, and verifying it through computational proof I found a small, seemingly insignficant problem about 130 pages into 900 pages of work compiled over years that propagated across the entire edifice he'd costructed, rendering the much of the theory implausible--and since it was group theory, difficult to salvage. He hasn't talked to me since (probably because he's busy trying to fix it).
My point is, if you're going to persecute people for publishing bad data, how about publishing people for bad proofs? Sorry about the AC: this is the first time I've ever felt the need to use it, but I've already received enough flak for my criticism of some very brilliant people.
Now take the next step. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
And,
And,
Therefore. . .
If this doesn't seem like a big deal, consider. . .
Every assertion that you have ever heard from the sources of authority in our soceity about what is and is not possible in our world has been shaped by those who choose to promote lies as truth and truth as lies.
Consider the pillars of 'fact' which hold up the public perception of reality.
It is reasonable to assume that there are events and forces at work in the world which most people are not willing to recognize.
The things most laughed at by science represent sources of fear; why ridicule something which doesn't bother you on some level?
My personal opinion is that Religion just another arm of this same trap designed to keep people in cages of the mind. With Science and Religion dividing up the masses, Spirituality represents the thin pathway between these two forces of social control and limitation.
Observe those subjects which both Science and Religion unanimously fear, studiously ignore or otherwise distract from, and start there.
-FL
Re:Now take the next step. . . (Score:3, Interesting)
I'll name 10 (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Astrology
3. Acupuncture
4. Alternative energy (Cold Fusion, Zero Point Energy, etc.)
5. Alternative medicine (Homeopathy, Reikki, etc.)
6. Cattle Mutilation
7. Crop Circles
8. Energy awareness (Chi)
9. Human history through true archeolgoy
10. The true nature of space and time.
Of course, Science itself and real scientists aren't afraid to examine such areas, and indeed, they have done with spectacular results. But how often do such studies get funded and how often are the findings allowed to affect the
This MIT guy should move to Australia... (Score:3, Insightful)
scientist, who falsely reported data from "experiments" that
had never been conducted, ie, committed scientific fraud.
An ethical Asian female co-researcher quite rightly
"blew the whistle" on the unethical researcher.
The results:
- He (the "bad guy") is STILL employed by his university / research institute
- She (the "good guy") LOST funding & access to her research facilities & experimental animals
- One of the investigative journalists announced that
HE'LL WILL NEVER REPORT ANOTHER CASE (see below)
He's host of ABC's weekly "Health Report" show:
Norman Swan: "I will never do a case of scientific fraud
ever again.
And the reason for that is just
the failure of institutional responses.
If the University of NSW can get away with
something like this what is the point?
Im not going to do another one because
I just dont think that the institutions in
this country have responded seriously to this."
(Just imagine the kind of world it would be, eg, if ALL
journo's, police, judges, et al. felt like this guy...)
Excerpt from The Science Show:
"What happens to the Whistleblowers?"
The program aired on 3 September 2005.
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ss/stories/s1451
So, I'd say the MIT researcher could do well
in at least ONE Australian research university.
Australia's embarrassing tradition continues...
- After WW 2, AU accepted Nazis from Germany,
apparently forgiving their atrocities [as long as
they brought enough of their spoils to live well here]
- today, at least one Australian research institution
seems to forgive scientific fraud [as long as they
can still attract research grant money]
"Past is Prologue"
Big lies, little lies (Score:3, Interesting)
Not necessarly MIT's fault (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh well... (Score:3, Funny)
Look out! Rogue biologist on the loose! (Score:4, Interesting)
- Probably brilliant biologist with
- a PhD from Harvard, who is now
- Discredited among his peers and unemployed, and who
- Apparently doesn't have much of a grasp of ethics.
I can see it now...Those bastards, we'll see who has the last laugh now... Soon my army of Super Mutants will TAKE OVER THE WORLD! Muahahah!
It sounds like the origins of some kind of cheap comic book super vilain. Except, its not really that funny. This guy might be developing biological weapons for terrorists in the near future. If all he cares about is money and isn't too concerned about right and wrong, he's going to go work for somebody who might overlook his past mistakes as long as he can deliver what they want.
I feel really sorry for this guy and I think that a good part of the blame should be passed on to the universities which granted this guy his academic credentials yet failed to beat enough ethics into his head in the process to prevent him from making this tragic career mistake.
Hopefully he can take this in stride, and find some "good guys" who are willing to give him another chance. You can't get that far along without knowing something about biology, and it would be a shame to loose a valuable scientist of that caliber. This is going to be a painful lesson in professional ethics for Dr. Varijs which he will wish he had learned a lot earlier on.
Re:Credibility of Science / Creationists (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Credibility of Science / Creationists (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Credibility of Science / Creationists (Score:2)
Like it or not, most people will probably feel more secure putting their money in a bank that hasn't been robbed at all, than in one which has been robbed and then caught the robbers over a year later.
I hope the creationists go crazy about this. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I hope the creationists go crazy about this. (Score:2)
I'm just suggesting that their review of scientific material by such creationists is beneficial to all scientists. Their attempts to prove science wrong will weed out the results and data that may be falsified. That in turn will bolster the quality of scientific material.
Indeed, we ideally would see a case where the intelligent design people completely prove themselves wrong, all due to their attempts to prove science wrong (but at the same time strengthening s
Re:I hope the creationists go crazy about this. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm just suggesting that their review of scientific material by such creationists is beneficial to all scientists. Their attempts to prove science wrong will weed out the results and data that may be falsified. That in turn will bolster the quality of scientific material.
Indeed, we ideally would see a case where the intelligent design people completely prove themselves wrong, all due to their attempts to prove science wrong (but at the same time strengthening
Re:Uh huh. (Score:3, Informative)
You have to have you Doctorate before (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Academia is corrupt to the core (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Wait a minute... (Score:2)
It sounds like some A/C really doesn't like Chinese and Iranians.
Possibly because he couldn't compete with them in grad school, but that's just speculation.
Re:This is what you get with F/OSS (Score:2)
Kind of a negative phrasing of it, but yes. That's the idea.
This inevitably encourages people to take the 'path of least resistance', completing their project in less time but only contributing a fraction of the total work.
Yes, we usually refer to it as "standing on the shoulders of giants." But this is in no way limited to FOSS. When I worked at a l
Re:This is what you get with F/OSS (Score:2)