Request to Falsify Data Published In Chemistry Journal 163
New submitter Jim_Austin writes "A note inadvertently left in the 'supplemental information' of a journal article appears to instruct a subordinate scientist to fabricate data. Quoting: 'The first author of the article, "Synthesis, Structure, and Catalytic Studies of Palladium and Platinum Bis-Sulfoxide Complexes," published online ahead of print in the American Chemical Society (ACS) journal Organometallics, is Emma E. Drinkel of the University of Zurich in Switzerland. The online version of the article includes a link to this supporting information file. The bottom of page 12 of the document contains this instruction: "Emma, please insert NMR data here! where are they? and for this compound, just make up an elemental analysis ..." We are making no judgments here. We don't know who wrote this, and some commenters have noted that "just make up" could be an awkward choice of words by a non-native speaker of English who intended to instruct his student to make up a sample and then conduct the elemental analysis. Other commenters aren't buying it.'"
Why bother with the panic? (Score:4, Insightful)
The beauty of (natural) science is that you can replicate the results. Why spark a debate (which is more in social sciences ballpark) when you can just run the experiments and validate the statement that way? The paper would only omit important analysis steps if a patent is involved, something that the title of the paper does not imply.
Re:Why bother with the panic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why spark a debate (which is more in social sciences ballpark) when you can just run the experiments and validate the statement that way?
Err, "just"?
I'm no chemist, but I don't imagine cutting-edge chemical experiments are something you just do.
Also, you're completely missing the point. Falsification of science absolutely should be a big deal. The person responsible should face serious consequences, and hopefully it remains rare enough that it's big news.
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There's no proof they did falsify anything...
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Re:Why bother with the panic? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why bother with the panic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Falsification of science absolutely should be a big deal. The person responsible should face serious consequences, and hopefully it remains rare enough that it's big news.
I agree with the sentiment, but I am inclined to believe the "awkward choice of words by a non-native speaker of English" argument. It's not like that particular choice of words is even unambiguous to native speakers; if I said "I'm going to make up a batch of beer", friends will be calling around looking for a drink.
Re:Why bother with the panic? (Score:5, Insightful)
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It was far more than a "trick on the data" the entire batch of FOIA emails known as climategate shown systemic manipulation of the peer review system, data manipulation and croneyism.
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Obvious troll is obvious.
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Modded Troll? Oh dear. One of the mysteries in life is just how hard it is to tell people something that's fairly true.
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Re:Why bother with the panic? (Score:5, Insightful)
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You know, one thing you can't blame the old communist block for was being overly concerned for environment. But nice boogeyman-flavored word salad anyway.
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You know, one thing you can't blame the old communist block for was being overly concerned for environment. But nice boogeyman-flavored word salad anyway.
That does not stop a lot of people who believe that Marxism is the economic system of the future from using environmentalism to advance their cause.
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It was an environmentalist who told me frankly that it did not matter if CO2 didn't turn out ot be a big problem, because by forcing a cut in CO2 you force a cut in production and consumption. She said, "it is about reducing GREED".
If people would just stop and listen to what environmentalists actually want, we could all discuss it on its own merits. Instead the PR is often about which message will advance this or that cause. Facts be damned.
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Fair point. My intent was mainly to question this message that big money is behind denialism, when it takes big money to build any big energy alternative. We can add big gas because as some point out, every wind farm is a gas plant (needed for quick response backup, which onl gas can provide).
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When you make up a batch of beer, you're making a physical thing. Unless you're buying beer and then passing it off as your own, it will be obvious if you're being untruthful.
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So, exactly or simply "make it up."
I'll submit that a person not fluent in English might say "make it up" when they mean "work it up," but using "just" shows a greater familiarity with English.
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Indeed. In French, for example, the word for "do" and "make" are the same.
http://translate.google.com/#en/fr/What%20are%20you%20doing%3F%20What%20are%20you%20making%3F [google.com]
Re:Why bother with the panic? (Score:5, Informative)
The beauty of (natural) science is that you can replicate the results.
Spoken from a true armchair POV. Trying to replicate results can be very expensive and time consuming. Furthermore, failure to replicate results does not immediately invalidate the original work, as there can be all kinds of legitimate explanations. Either party may have simply made a mistake, or there may be some critical variable that isn't yet recognized. Fraud in science is a very serious matter, a major impediment and expense, and unfortunately can be very difficult to prove. Therefore when it is found it should be punished severely.
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Regardless of the outcome, the result of any attempt to replicate the result is worth publishing. A failure may be caused by something as trivial as the original researchers accidentally leaving out some step which was obvious to themselves. It may also b
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Is it any less "armchair" to simply assume an article is valid without corroboration, or to assume this particular scientist is a fraud without actually checking?
Just because it's more easily said than done doesn't make it untrue - and I strongly suspect none of us particularly care about these specific results anyhow, so of course we'll just comment from afar without actually doing anything.
I mean, if this bothers you, do you have an alternative suggestion?
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Trying to replicate results can be very expensive and time consuming.
It's worthwhile doing though. A result that can be reproduced is genuinely useful. Of course, what "reproduce" means is not trivial at all, as there are a lot of unique experiments and data collections out there. (You can't rewind the natural world just so you can put a different set of instruments in place to measure an event again in more detail.) Reproduction might mean using a different approach to analysis of the raw data, or measuring another "sufficiently similar" thing, or trying to do exactly the s
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The beauty of (natural) science is that you can replicate the results.
Spoken from a true armchair POV. Trying to replicate results can be very expensive and time consuming. Furthermore, failure to replicate results does not immediately invalidate the original work, as there can be all kinds of legitimate explanations. Either party may have simply made a mistake, or there may be some critical variable that isn't yet recognized. Fraud in science is a very serious matter, a major impediment and expense, and unfortunately can be very difficult to prove. Therefore when it is found it should be punished severely.
Well, the beauty of science is that it is self-correcting. Even if the results are too expensive/time-consuming to reproduce, eventually someone will attempt to use the results as a basis for their own research. And when they do, they will quickly find out that it was a load of crap.
Unlike the corporate world where you can hide malice and incompetence by burying it in BS, you can't do that for long in the science world. Every time you publish you put your reputation on the line, and if it is found that you
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I imagine a lot of people would prefer to know whether the results are faked before devoting long hours and large amounts of money to trying to replicate them. Not to mention the stress of working round the clock on an experiment trying to figure out why your results aren't matching the published paper. Without this sort of revelation, you'd be left to assume that you were the one doing something wrong.
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The beauty of (natural) science is that you can replicate the results. Why spark a debate (which is more in social sciences ballpark) when you can just run the experiments and validate the statement that way?
Because the journals tend to have an affirmative results bias. If someone replicates the experiment and fails to produce a result; it probably will not get published. On the other hand, if they replicate the experiment, and get the desired result -- perhaps it will.
People care about the r
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Because it costs a lot of money, your taxpayer's money. Because it costs a lot of time and ruins the career of young scientists who will waste their time trying to replicate bogus results. Because it should not be acceptable in the first place. What about these reasons?
Sadly it shows that no one really bothered reading the manuscript thoroughly before publication, neither the authors, nor the reviewers.
Re: Why bother with the panic? (Score:1)
Re:Why bother with the panic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Why bother with the panic? (Score:1)
you're a massive, MASSIVE, *MASSIVE* dick. good thing you don't like women, because you're never getting laid.
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Because getting laid is all that matters in existance.
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No one cares what you think
You cared enough to reply to him.
It took (Score:3)
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7. The word is "commentator", not "commenter".
Wrong. Absolutely nothing incorrect about "commenter."
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Disprove = free paper (Score:2)
Analyze that elemental analysis, if it's obviously fabricated publish short refuting paper in a better journal
Or offer ACS to print it if ACS is the best in the industry, boom name recognition and easy paper.
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Ya, and good luck getting it published.
Science - It Works (Score:5, Insightful)
some commenters have noted that "just make up" could be an awkward choice of words by a non-native speaker of English who intended to instruct his student to make up a sample and then conduct the elemental analysis. Other commenters aren't buying it.
You know what the great thing about science is? We don't have to focus on emotion and rhetoric. We can do the experiment, and see if it would have supported the conclusion. If it would, our societal view of justice compels us to assume they were asking for the valid test results to be included. If it would not have supported the conclusion, then we can call for the author to be sanctioned.
Re:Science - It Works, but only for the big stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, we can do the experiment, but most of the time we don't. Nobody gets grant money for replicating stuff other people have already done. There's no glory in it; the citations, the namings, the prestige will all go to the original experimenter, and grants are very much about glory (to the host institution, of course, not so much for the researcher herself). Yes, the big, important stuff gets replicated, but a dreadfully mundane study of some palladium catalysed reaction is not in that category, and so is unlikely to be replicated. The allegation of "made up" data in this particular paper may prompt somebody to try it in this case, but there will be many more that will slip through.
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In this case, the author did not follow the instruction to (apparently) just make something up. So the question is not whether someone falsified something, it's whether there's someone out there promoting a cyncical approach to writing scientific papers.
And science is a social process. Yeah, you're supposed to have a physical proces
Re:Science - It Works (Score:5, Insightful)
"And you can't repeat the experiment to see if it would have supported the conclusion, you just have to trust the original researcher's models." as in astrophysics, and yet it is highly predictive since it is based on physics.
The 'emotion and rhetoric' comes when some people don't like the consequences of the answers.
Re:Science - It Works (Score:5, Funny)
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No matter who wins, we'll shake hands, raise toasts to each other in the mead hall, then go slaughter the Comic Sans crowd.
Re:Science - It Works (Score:4, Informative)
It's not Courier unless you have your browser set up to display Courier. It is a <tt> tag, which has a css style of "font-family:monospace;". Courier is monospaced, but so are typewriters. He is at least as correct as you are.
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Your order-of-magnitude higher ID than the parent poster suggests an explanation.
Myself, I like Courier. But then, I'm in the lower 10x of that equation.
And please, if you're going to criticize someone's choice of font, take a moment to do it with precision and figure out what the name of the font is.
The name of the font? OK, how about why-is-a-fucking-typewriter-hacking-my-computer-screen font? Is that better?
Shitty font is shitty. No one remembers the scientific name of the dodo bird for the same damn reason, so knock it off already with this precision crap.
Raphus cucullatus
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That's true for hard sciences, but not climate science. Emotion and rhetoric play a huge part in that. And you can't repeat the experiment to see if it would have supported the conclusion, you just have to trust the original researcher's models.
While it is true that there is a lot of rhetoric, and you cannot re-run the experiment, you can, and should, independently audit the data and formulae. I did, when I didn't know which side of the issue I fell on, and felt that both sides had presented reasonable conj
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Very well could be (Score:2)
Very well could just be as they say, a poor choice of words. Maybe he just wanted her to do the needful?
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Very well could just be as they say, a poor choice of words. Maybe he just wanted her to do the needful?
I'm waiting for the day when something from the House, Senate or Whitehouse goes out with a not attached, "...and don't sent this to the press."
Or has that already happened?
Re:Very well could be (Score:5, Insightful)
Or has that already happened?
On numerous occasions politicians have released MS-Word docs, and the full edit history could be retrieved, with occasionally embarrassing results.
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Like releasing the same document twice, with different redactions? http://www.aljazeera.com/humanrights/2013/08/2013851618340986.html [aljazeera.com]
Or information on an Iraqi shooting? http://gcn.com/articles/2005/05/13/pdf-user-slipup-gives-dod-lesson-in-protecting-classified-information.aspx [gcn.com]
Or when the TSA published their 'classified' handbook? http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/12/tsa-leak/ [wired.com]
Or when the UK revealed their nuclear submarine secrets? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-13107413 [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Very well could be (Score:5, Informative)
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Thus, instead of "make up an analysis", one could easily imagine someone with a less than perfect grasp of english meaning "do an analysis"
Really, one could easily imagine someone with a perfect grasp of english saying it.
I say things like, "I need you to make up some charts showing X and Y over Z..." and I've never once intended anyone to falsify the data. To "make up" something is to "create it". I could just as easily said "I need you to create some charts showing X / Y / Z" and again the called for act
Re:Very well could be (Score:5, Interesting)
That looks like German wording of "make up" = "do", nothing nefarious about it, slow news day?
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Not even just German, I understood "make up" in English to mean to do the work to collate the results. I don't think it's so much a slow news day as a dumb audience century.
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Shouldn't peer review catch this? (Score:5, Insightful)
I would have thought that standard peer review would have caught this - someone reading this, specifically with an eye towards accuracy, should have noticed it well before it made it to print. Whether that would result in just removing the offending text (which, while not completely guilty, definitely sounds bad) or result in actual correction of the experiment, I can't say.
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For better or worse, journals, editors, and referees often turn a blind eye towards supplemental information (which this was). My most recent publication, the Royal Chemistry Society even had a disclaimer that they do not open or view the Supplemental Information.
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"supporting information" (Score:3)
Re:"supporting information" (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, true. Can't blame peer review for only skimming the appendices.
Now, the journal editors, them I think we can blame.
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Especially when these journals have subscriptions in the hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars per year. I used to pay for Nature, but even with the student discount it was insane how much they charged.
peer review isn't worth the spit it's made of (Score:2)
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Supplementary information is usually not peer revived. At Least not that I know of.
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should have noticed it well before it made it to print
Also, much peer review happens after it goes to print. After all, that's the purpose of printing it in the first place, to get it out to more people.
I'm not sure if the person who discovered this bit in the supplemental information is a "peer" or not -- but if so, it looks like peer review worked perfectly.
This is the internet... (Score:2)
Why let the search for truth get in the way of a good lynching.
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Why let the search for truth get in the way of a good lynching.
A lie can run around the world before truth has got it's boots on - Terry Pratchett
Looks like truth got a running start on this sprint.
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I am shocked to discover that natural languages have ambiguous parsing!
IF you RTFA (Score:5, Informative)
None of the data talked about in the note was used in the final journal submission and the compound the author was referring to was what he claimed was a theoretical intermediate. I am leaning toward a misunderstanding in a hastily written note.
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Reminds me of the day... (Score:5, Funny)
when I was tricked into drinking Hydrogen Hydroxide when I distinctly requested a beaker full of Dihydrogen Monoxide. The cover-up, the pointing of fingers, the falling out of the scientific community. HOYVIN GLAVIN!
Have to ask... (Score:1)
Get back to me ... (Score:1)
Conspiracy to falsify results? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not disturbed by the note, and yes it's likely a poor choice of words from a non-English speaker.
Are we now condemning conspiracy to submit fraudulent information? I thought fraud was the bad act.
I've worked with non-English speaking students, and there are a surprising number of awkward constructions that you wouldn't notice as a native speaker.
For example, one multiple-choice optics test question had this answer: "The image is half as large".
The phrase "half as large" translates simultaneously into "big" and "small" at the same time... it was pointed out that many students didn't know what this meant. The first rewrite came out as "half the size", but since many cultures implicitly measure size in terms of area instead of height, lots of people misinterpreted this as well (half the height = 1/4 the area). Having an answer "none of the above" further confused the issue. The test should have been specific in saying "half the height".
I've proofread/edited more than 10 papers written by foreign types, and "twisted meanings" are quite common - phrases that seem syntactically reasonable but which have a different meaning to a native speaker. (I grew up in Amish territory - statements like "Sarah is wonderful sick today" and "throw papa down the stairs his hat" were commonplace.)
I wouldn't think twice about the note in the paper. Unless the researcher actually makes up the analysis out of whole cloth it's not a problem.
Science is about evidence, not hearsay.
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(half the height = 1/4 the area)
Uh... no.
This is most likely a misunderstanding (Score:2)
Emma, please insert a little bit of misdirection on this post and click on submit after previewing. Those suckers will buy it like it's a 38k dollars handbag.
Oprah Winfrey (Score:2)
In a fit of pique, she purchased the entire country and now Stedman is evicting all its citizens to make way for condos . . .
Don't rush to judgement. (Score:2)
Remember that this was just an informal note. Even as an English speaker I occasionally produce an awkward construction when I'm in a hurry and writing informally. Any possible ambiguities only becomes apparent when I read it back later.
I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt until we find out more.
The obvious answer is... (Score:4, Informative)
Here's the rub... what that means to the assistant is, run an NMR; what it means to all the people who don't have a the education to understand what it means, or even what an NMR is, is that they can try to paint science as bad. You cant "make up" an NMR in that way, although you could substitute some other chemical and run the analysis... but why bother? Any lab with an NMR could check your work simply by running the correct NMR; and, running the correct chemical will take exactly as long, and exactly the same amount of effort.
This is basically people who don't have enough education somehow seeing a conspiracy in nothing. I swear, the human race is fucking pathetic sometimes.
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The NMR just gives you a graph showing the resonant peaks, you still have to interpret it to determine what elements are present (at least that's how it was when I was in college).
I read the note not as run the NMR, but just do the interpretation/analysis and write it here. A grad student should be able to do this in a matter of minutes, and they probably just hadn't typed it up when they first looked at it.
Re:The obvious answer is... (Score:5, Informative)
I run a scientific research lab in a Big University You Have Heard Of. I had a conversation with an intern and a post-doc earlier this week where we talked about figures that could be added to a review paper the intern is working on. I swear I used the words, "I'll make up a figure ..." to describe the actions of collecting the necessary supporting data to create a figure for the paper that my post-doc suggested would be instructional. "Make up" in this case meant, "construct," and wholly lacked nefarious, subversive, or deceptive connotations.
And I speak English as my mother tongue.
The so-called conspiracy to commit fraud here is a bunch of hooey. The only thing the authors are guilty of is not submitting a fully completed manuscript.
Re:The obvious answer is... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's become a sad day here in the US where there's a faction of people so against science, that they try to manufacture issues like this. I don't care that some people want to remain stupid... it's there choice, but they should at least have enough brain cells left to understand if they want to stay stupid, their opinion doesn't mean shit because it's based on stupidity.
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It's become a sad day here in the US where there's a faction of people so against science, that they try to manufacture issues like this.
I just don't see it. We have one blog that posted this and really didn't have much to say aside from that it looked kind of suspicious and in the same sort of procedure where some actual scientific fraud had occurred in the recent past. That's not much of a "manufacturing". There are some commentators condemning these scientists already for their red handed fraud and/or minor grammatical flub. But I don't see much in the way of a "faction" either.
br. I do see the common rush to judgment that follows any po
Re:The obvious answer is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, this whole thing is absolutely stupid. I don't even buy that it was a non-native English speaker; "go make up a..." is just another way of telling someone to go produce something.
Oblig. (Score:4, Funny)
I had a manual that described doing a track alignment on a floppy drive. Basically loosen the lock screw, adjust, tighten the screw. But...the author's english was from another continent...
"...when adjustment is complete, screw it up."
Making up Crap in Scientific Journals (Score:1)
No, they really do stuff like that?
I am soooooo surprised.
I just pointed this sort of thing out on a previous post and got modded to like 0 for it.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4072427&cid=44522737 [slashdot.org]
Now it is front page news.
I am SO surprised that happened too.
-Hack
We should send feedback (Score:2)
Obviously there is nothing criminal going on, just a conspiracy by a stupid editor. Make up = do. If he wrote manufacture I might wonder but still it isn't proof.
I have an idea, must not be the first to have it though.
When slashdot and other sites (like boingboing) get news stories from syndicators of syndicators etc. in the normal idiotic trickle-down blog syndication and altruistic submitters tree and the article upon intelligent reading is obvious drivel, the end consumers (the conglomeration of all slas
Probably meant fabriate (Score:3)
As a non-native, it's typically a mistake I'd make (Score:1)
http://www.wordreference.com/ [wordreference.com] proposes "make up" (vtr) => "assemble, put together"
I wouldn't have seen any problem in saying "please, put an elemental analysis together", thinking: the article lacks an analysis for completeness, a simple one should be included.
Makes me remember of red side notes from my teachers in my homework, long ago: "Results are ok, but where's the analysis?!"...
I only see conscienciousness by a (non-english) reviewer, in this instruction.
publish (positive results) or perish (Score:2)
It's what is incentivize when you count no results as non-knowledge. That's a large part of the problem. No results are information too, Unfortunately just anyone can produce unlimited amounts on demand.
There should be (and the idea is not original to me) and perhaps is now a journal of interesting no-effects, non-results.
The lying is pandemic in academia, and it's not just PIs lying about their results, it's everywhere .. sorry to say it's a culture which tolerates lying at every level. At our university,
Lost in translation (Score:1)