Anonymous Peer-review Comments May Spark Legal Battle 167
sciencehabit writes: The power of anonymous comments — and the liability of those who make them — is at the heart of a possible legal battle embroiling PubPeer, an online forum launched in October 2012 for anonymous, postpublication peer review. A researcher who claims that comments on PubPeer caused him to lose a tenured faculty job offer now intends to press legal charges against the person or people behind these posts — provided he can uncover their identities, his lawyer says.
His articles on PubPeer (Score:5, Informative)
A list of his articles on PubPeer:
https://pubpeer.com/search?q=sarkar
Conclude from the comments what you will.
Re:His articles on PubPeer (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if some comments are clearly justified, from many comments one can discern a pattern of an active campaign against the other. For example, one commenter posts :
This brings the total number of paper with problems for Dr. Sarkar, at Wayne State Unversity, to what? 50, 60 papers commented on PubPeer??!!
Most of the image reviews have also been made by the same person, indicating an active campaign against the author.
As well as this may be justified, this is not the proper way to address critical review of already published papers. Assuming that the issues are that important (I can't judge as it is quite far from my field of expertise), letters should be sent to the editors highlighting the issues. Also, review or comment paper could be submitted to the journals.
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Perhaps an underpaid and abused masters/doctorate lab rat with insider knowledge seeking payback for broken promises ;).
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Karma's a bitch
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Yes, criminals also say the police is on a campaign against them. if this author is continually putting out crap, then someone who knows it should continually point it out. that is not wrong at all (assuming it is justfied, which as you admit, you think it could be - how else does peer-review work than to voice your concerns?).
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Most of the image reviews have also been made by the same person, indicating an active campaign against the author.
That doesn't follow. If I read a science paper and thought that it was rubbish and wrote about it because it annoys me if rubbish papers are published, then it would be obvious that I would look for other papers of the same author and check them out as well. That's not an "active campaign against the author", it's an active campaign for papers that are not rubbish.
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It seems the main concern is figure reuse. Some are in different papers with the same caption: would it be that bad as long as it is clear it's old data that's being reintrepreted ?
Looked a bit worse than that to me. Looked like he/they took figures and then manipulated them via image editor to appear to be unique, such as re-ordering elements [imgur.com]
Even if there is a perfectly valid reason for doing that, its still a shady obscure as fuck reason.
Anyone else? (Score:2, Funny)
For a moment I thought it said PubBeer.
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PubBeer always tastes better than WalmartBeer.
This lawsuit won't help him get hired anywhere. (Score:2)
Perhaps, the worst job market in decades is as much to blame as the candidate's desperation to come to terms with the hard reality: there are too many people available for hire, including and perhaps especially, those already employed and willing to jump ship, laterally. It seems "poaching"
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This is the problem with our DIY justice system. This is the type of thing that the state should be handling... bringing people to trial, penalties if found guilty, that sort of thing. But in cases like this the prosecution has to be privately funded and consequences only come of the injured party pushes it on their own.
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True, but such lawsuits also might give people reason to not do such things again.
Do what again? This guy really was faking his research, look at the images. He's trying to sue the people that called him on it, into silence.
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That's the double-edged sword of lawsuits. They can be used to ensure that someone doesn't do something bad (e.g. skip out on paying a debt they owe) or to ensure that someone becomes too afraid to do something they have a right to do (e.g. speak out against someone with enough money and power to tie you up in legal proceedings should you upset them).
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Unless I missed something, he is suing to find out who is spreading lies against him. From his perspective.
Really, if someone is spreading lies about you and disrupting your lively hood, you should be able to defend yourself.
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I see pattern hunting, and out of context images.
If it was really an issue, you should be going through scientific channels. There are whole actual mechanism for dealing with this sort of thing, and they are more reliable then AC posting on a website.
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Lawsuits are generally an unreliable alternative to income earned by full time employment.
In the unlikely event that he wins, the lawyers should do OK out of it. He'll be left holding what little the lawyers don't take, and be unemployable for life.
Why did he lose tenure? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or he lost his tenure because there was an anonymous, but correct peer review negative towards him. His work wasn't up to scratch. In that case, his loss is deserved. If faults in his work were not detected in a normal review but only in further review by an anonymous person, these faults are still there and due to him. Suing would be like a criminal who got caught due to an anonymous tip suing the tipster.
Re:Why did he lose tenure? (Score:5, Informative)
Sarkar was a tenured researcher at Wayne State University.
He applied for, and initially received, an offer from University of Mississippi Medical Center. In order to take that job, he resigned his position at Wayne State.
Before his new job started, they revoked the offer. His lawyer says that the revocation was clearly a result of the anonymous campaign against him.
Wayne State allowed him to un-resign; but not to grant him tenure again.
My understanding is that actually being stripped of tenure is a much, much, bigger deal, one that would take some nice evidence of malpractice or some very, very, ugly togetherness issues with a substantial portion of the faculty and administration. In this case, he never actually lost tenure anywhere; but resigned it and then was unable to get it back when his other job fell through. Similar end result; but very different process.
Re:Why did he lose tenure? (Score:4, Interesting)
It is important to keep in mind that there is no factual proof that he lost his offer of employment at UoMMC or his tenure at Wayne due to the comments on PubPeer. Sarkar's lawyer claims that the retraction letter from UoMMC says this is why, but has declined to offer the letter as proof.
All that is factually known at this time is that the scientific integrity of Sarkar's articles have come under scrutiny, and that a potential job at UoMMC didn't pan out for him.
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My point was just that, even according to his own alleged version of events, he was never stripped of tenure (at all, much less on the basis of anonymous comments), he just suffered loss of tenure when he had an unsuccessful transition between two jobs.
I have no way of telling whether his story is absolutely true or absolute bullshit; but either way it's much, much, less notable than the idea that he would directly
Re:Why did he lose tenure? (Score:4, Interesting)
This part of the article caught my eye: "Roumel’s response is that his client has no responsibility to critics who refuse to put a name to their accusations. “I don’t think he has any obligation to provide the data [behind the papers called into question] to anyone other than a journal,” he says."
It is fundamentally wrong to fail to provide the data behind a published paper simply because the requester is anonymous or not a journal. The scientist involved has some questionable published figures and an explanation as to validity of the data would be useful to the scientist involved and to those who are questioning the figures. Far cheaper to put up the data and let the accusers hang themselves on the own stupidity or ignorance. On the other hand, if there is something less savory going on putting the data up would be a disaster and suing the accusers is an obvious strategy: accuse me of anything and I'll bury you in legal costs is a pretty steep penalty for questioning published data.
Unfortunately from my own experience with reproducing published work: the typical paper leaves a lot to be desired and sometimes, the published results cannot be reproduced using the methods and techniques described. This is sometimes due to fraud and most times due to incomplete experimental sections.
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Re:Why did he lose tenure? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two possibilities: He lost his tenure because there was an anonymous, incorrect peer review negative towards him. His work was actually good. In that case he should sue the university to make decisions based on anonymous, incorrect peer reviews.
There's a third, more mundane possibility: he lost his tenure because he quit. When he lost his new job offer, he went back to Wayne State asking for his old job back, and they said no. The devil is in the details here. If he had a written employment and tenure agreement with Mississippi all signed and finalized, he would have a damn good case against Mississippi. TFA is not clear on this point, but I would hazard a guess that he got an informal notice that Mississippi intended to hire him, quit at Wayne State before the offer was official, and then Miss yanked the offer before they were legally committed. This kind of shit happens all the time. So sorry.
Moral: never, ever, quit your current job until the ink is dry on the legal papers for your new one.
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There's a third, more mundane possibility: he lost his tenure because he quit. When he lost his new job offer, he went back to Wayne State asking for his old job back, and they said no.
Well in fact he did get his old job or position back at Wayne State, Michigan, but at the reduced level of pay, and without the other benefits of tenure. This was most likely simply the administration trying to control their expenses, as they had most likely planned on replacing him with a non-tenured professor.
> Moral: never, ever, quit your current job until the ink is dry on the legal papers for your new one.
Good intent, but often hard to keep in practice while also managing obligations such as the notice period for resignation (14-90 days), and planning (i.e. relocation) - most employers won't continue
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Moral: never, ever, quit your current job until the ink is dry on the legal papers for your new one.
Dos not change much. Even in super "secure" germany (secure regarding jobs), a new employee can be fired for no particular reason in the first 4 (or is it even 6?) weeks of his/her employment.
So, if you start your job, I can fire you a day later, if I want to give a reason I say: the chemistry does not fit.
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Anonymous public peer review (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a real problem with the concept of anonymous peer review without editorial oversight or not included in a due peer review process. That said, I do recognize the interest for post-publication peer review due to lacks in the commonly used review processes, although I do not believe this should be allowed to be done anonymously.
Anonymous review is usual in the peer-review processes of most journals, but these comments are in general non-public or at least reviewed by an editor before publication. Some reviewers choose to do their peer-review work without the cover of anonymity and I encourage this. If you have constructive criticism on the work of an other and can this criticism is well founded, you can very well do it openly.
I believe that the best why to process with peer-review is with a two steps process, where first the submitted paper is published in an open discussion paper. Comments from the official reviewers are public and any one can comment on the papers. Following the peer review process, the paper is published in the official paper which may be with or without open access (I prefer those with open access). Such a process encourages quality and brings the whole community in the peer-review process, but under the oversight of editors.
Something like PubPeer is extremely tricky. It's an open door to abuse and for commenter to wash their dirty linen in public. I don't know if such a platform is a good idea, especially with anonymity. I'd rather have a good review of the peer-review processes commonly used.
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I'd like to add, that most journals have a post-publishing commenting processes. Open letters, comments and critics may be addressed regarding published articles. Following those errata and replies may be published. This process is, in my opinion, underestimated and under-used.
Also, editors should be contacted if obvious ethical problem should arise with already published articles.
(OT: and sorry for the few typos in the above post.)
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Most journals will accept Letters or "Matters Arising", but very few are published. The journal's editors have an even higher bar for publishing a letter that disproves a published work than the bar they place on the published work itself. It's more difficult to refute bullshit than to publish bullshit.
Agreed, and I would add that the entire process is very time-consuming, which discourages scientists from investing time unless it's an especially egregious example or they feel personally wronged. I know of
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Agreed, and I would add that the entire process is very time-consuming, which discourages scientists from investing time unless it's an especially egregious example or they feel personally wronged.
To paraphrase "Scientists are too lazy to ensure integrity in their community unless the error is really bad or they have a personal issue".
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To paraphrase "Scientists are too lazy to ensure integrity in their community unless the error is really bad or they have a personal issue".
It's not about laziness, it's about setting priorities in the context of our current incentive system. We are not being paid to police the literature, nor do we get any credit for this from journals or funding agencies like we do for reviewing articles or grant proposals; we are being paid to do original research, which already consumes more of our lives than would be
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" which already consumes more of our lives than would be considered reasonable in non-academic jobs."
Don't bet on it.
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Anonymous review is usual in the peer-review processes of most journals, but these comments are in general non-public or at least reviewed by an editor before publication. Some reviewers choose to do their peer-review work without the cover of anonymity and I encourage this. If you have constructive criticism on the work of an other and can this criticism is well founded, you can very well do it openly.
No, you can't. Most active scientists do not have tenure and therefore openly criticizing the work of a bigwig in the field would be extremely dangerous, even when perfectly justified.
Something like PubPeer is extremely tricky. It's an open door to abuse and for commenter to wash their dirty linen in public.
Can you provide an example of someone using a service like PubPeer to wash dirty linen? I have a hard time to imagine how this could be done, especially if you want others to take your allegations seriously.
Re:Anonymous public peer review (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but I won't hesitate to openly criticize a bigwig if I believe I have the basis to do so. I won't sell my integrity for a tenured position. But I will not do it on A platform like PubPeer.
Not sure if to "wash dirty linen" exactly convey what I meant, but regardless I did not suggest this was the case or that is done. I said it is an open door to such action. As I am not a user of the PubPeer platform, I cannot judge if comments meant to attack the reputation of an other due to private disputes commonly occur. Furthermore, such attacks with other motive as pure improvement of scientific publication quality are difficult to spot, because this is what anonymous commenting enables to do.
Tenure track are extremely competitive, especially in fields like biomedical research. Knowing the human nature and with some of the dirty stuff I saw in my career, I can't imaging nobody would abuse this system to wrongfully block someone's progress at some point.
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Sorry, but I won't hesitate to openly criticize a bigwig if I believe I have the basis to do so. I won't sell my integrity for a tenured position. But I will not do it on A platform like PubPeer.
Would you keep silent to be able to work in the field that you love? Would you put your family's livelihood at stake for an opinion? You might have the moral fortitude and/or financial independence to do it but many people do not.
Knowing the human nature and with some of the dirty stuff I saw in my career, I can't imaging nobody would abuse this system to wrongfully block someone's progress at some point.
I would like to clarify what you meant by "can't imaging nobody". Was that a mistake in using a double negative and meant "can't imagine someone" or did you really mean "can imagine someone"? If it is the former then you need a better imagination. If it is the latter, good for you
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I do not use double negatives when I am not certain I use them correctly. In other words, I am convinced that someone will abuse the system at some point.
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Getting to the top of a field or extracting lucrative grants from government is a system with the same inherent susceptibility for abuse. As an example: the whole link between autism and vaccinations was a fraud and an abuse of the existing grant system.
Any system we humans build will be abused. So yes, Pub Peer will be abused. As is the current system of peer review. Disruption in the systems for review keeps the game afoot and the published data gets better. Cheaters have to adapt and change so thei
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"autism and vaccinations was a fraud and an abuse of the existing grant system."
Nope. It was done to discredit current vaccine so they will use his new patent technique.
Grants were irrelevant in that case.
If all you are doing is trying to abuse the grant system for money, then you would be better off working at walmart.
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I do not use double negatives when I am not certain I use them correctly.
The use of double negatives at any time is poor English.
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As I am not a user of the PubPeer platform, I cannot judge if comments meant to attack the reputation of an other due to private disputes commonly occur. Furthermore, such attacks with other motive as pure improvement of scientific publication quality are difficult to spot, because this is what anonymous commenting enables to do.
If somebody presents evidence for image manipulations, then why would you care whether this was posted because someone has an axe to grind?
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I wasn't commenting this specific case, but my comment was rather to read in a more broader context.
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I have a real problem with the concept of anonymous peer review without editorial oversight or not included in a due peer review process.
You mean it wasn't a good idea to basically make a 4chan for scientific paper review?
Who would have thought it, after all, 4chan turned out to be such an awesome, wholesome, and welcoming place... do I really need to add the huge sarcasm tag after that statement?
Remove the masks! (Score:2, Insightful)
People should not be able to hide behind the mask of anonymity! If I correctly accuse someone of being a charlatan, I should be willing to have my mask removed so that the charlatan can attack me and/or my family. It is only right.
Besides, is it fair for someone to be able to snitch on another person, even if that other person is doing something wrong? I say NO!
A person should be able to commit crimes without fearing the possibility that some anonymous coward could expose them for being a criminal.
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Gotta love your use of irony, AC.
Timing (Score:3)
According to this he has put out a lot of papers.
Today, they revealed that the scientist involved is Fazlul Sarkar, a cancer researcher at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. Sarkar, an author on more than 500 papers
He got his doctorate in 1978. That would be an average of less than 27 days between papers being published. One must admire someone who can do so much thorough, factual research in such a short time. An average of one paper a month is impressive.
Re:Timing (Score:5, Insightful)
His role on most of the papers was probably just to write the grant request.
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Even grant requests take time.
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But you can do many at the same time.
What? you think when they get to the wait part while someone at the university reviews it they don't do anything?
Same thing with papers.
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Even if they were grant requests, a grant request is not part of the text of a paper and therefore someone whose sole contribution is the grant request is not an author. By that logic a book agent, who negotiates advances similar to a grant request, should also be attributed as an author. It sounds like stat padding to me.
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Which means he rarely spent time on any of those papers and probably had little input. I call that stat padding.
blowing smoke (Score:3)
If he had a case, it would be against the people who retracted the job offer.
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That's assuming he didn't simply fuck up as a scientist and deserve to lose his job.
If the comments came in over the phone, whether they were legitimate criticisms pointing out mistakes you made or harassing calls that lead to you being fired for stupid reasons...you wouldn't sue the phone company or the callers.
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The commenters didn't file a suit against him, they just said things on the Internet, so the right to face his accusers is not applicable here.
He's suing for the business to reveal information on their customers, nothing more. He can then try to file a suit against those customers for saying mean things leading to him losing his job, but it wouldn't be smart.
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"Say something I don't like, and I will sue you"? (Score:2)
Sorry for the wall of text... summary and comments :P
From the Science article and PubPeer discussion on the topic, but not the comments on the papers by the aggrieved scientist (Dr Fazlul Sarkar), a broad summary would be that he was a tenured researcher at Wayne State University, who was offered a tenured position at University of Mississippi.
He resigned from Wayne State, then was informed by UoM that the offer was revoked. Dr Sarkur's lawyer comments that the retraction makes it "crystal clear" the retrac
If a peer reviewer is anonymous (Score:2)
Then how do we know he's an actual peer? This is an especially relevant question when it comes to certain scientific issues of an inflammatory politicized nature.
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Re:Know who to sue (Score:4, Insightful)
Eh I guess you can sue anyone for anything in 'merica
And the great thing about suing someone in the US of A is that even if you lose, there is no penalty. The guy you sue is out a ton of legal bills and time defending himself, and if you lose, you can just walk away. That's why so many companies and individuals in the U.S. will just settle even if they know the person has a bogus suit.
Fuck all those silly European countries with their "loser pays the winner's legal bills" socialist shit! USA! USA! USA!
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Only if he's stupid enough to sue in one of the few states with decent SLAPP protections.
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If it's SLAPP then no.
There should be no penalties if you lose. That would have a horrible chilling effect. You should no, that loosing a suit you bring against someone doesn't mean you were wrong. It may just mean they had more expensive lawyers.
The actual amount of frivolous lawsuits brought in the country(USA) isn't nearly as many as you think it is. Exaggerating that number is a common political move done by corporations who want to prevent people from suing. Mostly insurance companies.
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And in many of those silly European countries you can sue someone and prevail for making a factual statement. In the US, this commenter might have to spend money on his defense and win. In Europe, they could spend money and lose.
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I don't suppose it's considered usual and customary to pay your own lawyer in the country you live in?
Now that would be different. Kinda like having a doctor's hand cut off if he didn't cure the patient.
Re:Know who to sue (Score:5, Insightful)
The scientist and his lawyer suspect foul play by anonymous person(s) who allegedly defamed him by posting ad hominem attacks in their pubpeer comments and then distributed those comment pages to both universities associated with him.
So shouldn't these universities have figured out that there were anonymous person(s) involved defaming him by posting ad hominem attacks?
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It's not exactly news that, at least for jobs higher level than bagging groceries and not utterly standardized by some sort of hiring bureaucracy, a variety of somewhat intangible fa
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Isn't science all about trolling other scientists, really?
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I shouldn't complain, better that it goes to someone doing something useful than yet another financial stooge, but it's still a big number.
Re:Know who to sue (Score:5, Insightful)
Geez, you could probably hire an assistant vollyball coach for that much money.
other people's money (Score:2)
Just in time, I am sure, without making over $380K, I am sure all those administrators would just go work somewhere else and you wouldn't be able to find anyone qualified for such paltry salaries.
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Legally, Section 230 protections are largely in favor of the site and moderators. Not absolutely; but it takes some work to be liable for what a commenter said on your site. As a matter of practice, I'm certainly open to arguments in favor of the idea (and definitely open to the notion that a site wishing to be taken seriously might want to voluntarily practice good moderation); but it's hardly so self-evident th
Re:Know who to sue (Score:5, Insightful)
Is losing a $350,000 job offer something you consider trivial? The scientist and his lawyer suspect foul play by anonymous person(s) who allegedly defamed him by posting ad hominem attacks in their pubpeer comments and then distributed those comment pages to both universities associated with him.
Any criticism of his work should be valid and fact based and that should be enforced by the site's moderators. Still, anonymity is important when criticizing someone and they should not use this as an excuse to force critics to reveal their identities.
Not being familiar with the subject, does his work hold up? If so any comments should be discarded, especially a place such as a university should be intellectually above paying attention to ad homien. If not then that's what you get for putting sub par or wrong things on line. It's just going to get ripped apart, especially on a site that invites it.
Not ad hominem (Score:4, Insightful)
Not being familiar with the subject, does his work hold up?
I'm not an expert in the field but what I saw of the comments were very specific about reuse of figures and data without citation. They did not appear to be ad hominem at all but evidence based with image comparisons of figures from different papers. I expect that this is why he got into trouble - a relevant expert from the hiring university would be able to easily evaluate the merits of the comments.
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I expect that this is why he got into trouble - a relevant expert from the hiring university would be able to easily evaluate the merits of the comments.
That was what I figured as well. Whenever somebody sues because of some anonymous comments on a website my default assumption is that it only 'caused harm' because the comments were true, or at least accurate enough.
However, in the USA this is the equivalent of throwing a hissy fit because truth is actually a protection under US law. I know that over in England the rules are somewhat different, truth is not an absolute defense.
For that matter, in many cases the harm has to be deliberate - IE they had to p
Re:Know who to sue (Score:5, Interesting)
Is losing a $350,000 job offer something you consider trivial? The scientist and his lawyer suspect foul play by anonymous person(s) who allegedly defamed him by posting ad hominem attacks in their pubpeer comments and then distributed those comment pages to both universities associated with him.
Any criticism of his work should be valid and fact based and that should be enforced by the site's moderators. Still, anonymity is important when criticizing someone and they should not use this as an excuse to force critics to reveal their identities.
Go look at the images. He's guilty of what the anon commenters accused him. It's obvious at its face without any further detective work needed. On top of that, look at the number of papers he's submitted over his career. He'd have had to been publishing at least one paper every month for 30 years! This guys a fraud and about to finish some in-depth research into the Streisand effect.
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Go look at the images. He's guilty of what the anon commenters accused him.
LOL, now you're getting sued, too.
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Go look at the images. He's guilty of what the anon commenters accused him.
LOL, now you're getting sued, too.
Sounds great. Given that I know his salary, my counter suit should be fairly lucrative if he can ever find employment again.
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Actually it's amazingly possible, an embarassing number of times the biggest contribution a "lead investigater" makes is just signing his name on the paper. When you hire "Rock Stars", you have to expect prima donnas frequently burn thier bridges, they might be good at getting papers published and grants recieved, but that's only good if the minions keep working behind the scenes.
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"He'd have had to been publishing at least one paper every month for 30 years!"
or, work on several papers with colleagues...you know, like what scientists do.
I looked at the images I could find nothing that indicated any fraud.
Anonymous speech doesn't protect you against slander or libel.
Sorry, but you can't go around making things up and lying and expect nothing to happen.
All I know about this is what I read in the articles. I am not accusing or defending anyone. I'm just pointing out that your comments, a
Re:Know who to sue (Score:4, Interesting)
Walking in blind here, so help me out.
What's wrong with using the same data in in two different experiments? I mean, if you have an image of mars, and you want to analyze how much rust is in there and you also want to analyze how much the ice-cap changed.... why can't you use the same image? If you already have the data, why not use it again?
Did he work on two different experiments that were essentially the same thing? Like, he was double-dipping the grant pool for the same work?
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This guys a fraud and about to finish some in-depth research into the Streisand effect.
Repeatability is the hallmark of good science ....
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Yes, the facts should be checked and once the truth is known, the proper action taken. This can range from full re-instatement of the job offer to confirmation of academic fraud. As it sits, it appears that someone who lost out on that $350,000 job decided to poison the waters, and it worked. Be a good idea to inspect those on that short list...
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The scientist and his lawyer suspect foul play by anonymous person(s) who allegedly defamed him by posting ad hominem attacks in their pubpeer comments and then distributed those comment pages to both universities associated with him.
Any criticism of his work should be valid and fact based and that should be enforced by the site's moderators.
I am reading through the comments related to his papers on pubpeer [pubpeer.com]. I haven't found any personal attacks. May be there are some in the comments I have not read yet. Ho
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According to a post in this thread, some negative comments were deleted by pubpeer mods. The image evidence does seem pretty damning, even to someone who knows nothing about cancer research.
I'm also not sure how research papers are actually authored, especially so many by one person. Couldn't it be someone else did the actual research, perhaps grad or PhD students and he just mentored them, gave them advice and edited a few things which gave him the right to put his name on the papers? In which case, I gues
The perverse incentives in biomedical research (Score:3)
My experience is that most of the work is done by the first one or two authors under the direct supervision of the last author (there are exceptions when the lab is very big and the PI has delegated most of the supervision to postdocs or staff). Generally, the corresponding author on the paper bears much of the responsibility for the data being published under the assumption that he is supervising the research and is intimately involved in analyzing the results and writing the paper. Many journals now requi
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"Is losing a $350,000 job offer something you consider trivial?"
Considering *I* have the intelligence and education to obtain another equally-paying job, yup, really fucking trivial. Especially if I can prove I wasn't munging the experimental reports and data.
Real scientists wouldn't care about a tenured position, because they could find one with equal pay rather easily. Real scientists would be welcomed just about anywhere as long as they were REPUTABLE.
The fact this guy got canned over a huge peer-review
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Can we all work in your fantasy world? At least in the biomed fields, even 'reputable' scientists are having hard times getting grants and tenure. Not saying that this guy is reputable at all but it's a paramecium-eat-ameoba world out there.
'Nature red in tooth' and claw and all of that
Re:Incompetence (Score:4, Insightful)
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Tenure is competitive enough that simple accusations or slurs can be enough to sink a person. While it would be nice if solid research and objectivity were the only elements involved, there is a huge human factor which is distressingly easy to swing.
I thought tenure meant you had that job for life and you had to really fuck up to lose it? Almost as hard to get as to lose.
Re: Incompetence (Score:3)
Common misperception. Tenure simply means that your employment is no longer "at will" and to be fired requires going through an established process instead of just saying "you're fired and I don't need a reason!"
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That makes sense... but with tenure can the reason for dismissal be as flimsy as "I saw some bad stuff about you on the Internet"?
"I don't like you anymore" and "I want to hire somebody else to do the job you have been doing, but who will accept less money for it" are reasons too.... but I don't think they are acceptable reasons to dismiss someone from a tenured position.
Re:Incompetence (Score:4, Insightful)
I have always found the old 'those who can, do, those who can not, teach' rather ironic since for people who want to go into academia, private industry is where you go if you fail.
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In other words, before tenure they are simply like everybody else in the real world. In industry (as opposed to academia), you are always on the knife's edge of being terminated. Some employers more so than others I'll grant, but I fail to see how it is any worse.
Mind you, I've played the academia game too. The pecking order in academia is more being at a very prestigious position or university as opposed to working at a state college/university and perhaps if you can't cut it you end up teaching at a co
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He's not losing a tenured job, nor failing to make tenure. He was offered a job that happened to include tenure, and then the offer was revoked.
The only relevance of tenure to this story is as part of the value of the job offer that was revoked.
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Except that's not the issue.
The issue is, just the spike in comments, even with no evidence, cost him his tenure. Not actual scientific rebuttal.
This is equivalent to someone calling you work every hour until you boss gets fed up and lets you go.
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So one has to ask: why isn't he suing the folks who revoked the offer, demanding to see their justification, or violation of contract, or some such?
Seems the website posting the comments, as well as the commenters themselves, should be irrelevant. If UMiss chose to revoke a valid offer, it ought to be up to them to show the comments prove fraud or incompetence.
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