Fake science is out of control

[Roboramma]

If there's something economically useful that requires the LHC to discover it, that might also require building an LHC to produce it. When scientific experiments become prohibitively expensive, that means it's probably less useful to any industry which doesn't have unlimited funds to invest (which is all of them). Don't get me wrong. I'm sure there could be exceptions to this rule. But when there are exceptions, we probably could have made the discoveries more economically, too.

So arguably, this mental model suggests that science is often outspending industry by far too much to be practically applicable, at least in the short term.

Related: https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2024/02/is-science-a-public-good.html

The question of whether science is a public good is not merely technical but has significant implications. If science is a public good, markets will likely underproduce it, making government subsidies to universities crucial for stimulating R&D and economic growth. Conversely, if ideas are embodied and thus closely tied to their application, government funding for university research might not only fail to enhance economic growth but could also hinder it. This occurs as subsidies draw scientists away from firms, where their knowledge directly contributes to product development, towards universities, where their insights risk becoming lost in the ivory tower. (Teaching scientists who then go on to careers in the private sector is much more likely to be complementary to productivity growth than funding research which pulls scientists away from the private sector.)

In a commentary on Arora et al., the Economist notes that growth in universities and government science has coincided with a slowdown in productivity.

The paper linked in that post:

https://www.nber.org/papers/w31899

We study the relationships between corporate R&D and three components of public science: knowledge, human capital, and invention. We identify the relationships through firm-specific exposure to changes in federal agency R\&D budgets that are driven by the political composition of congressional appropriations subcommittees. Our results indicate that R&D by established firms, which account for more than three-quarters of business R&D, is affected by scientific knowledge produced by universities only when the latter is embodied in inventions or PhD scientists. Human capital trained by universities fosters innovation in firms. However, inventions from universities and public research institutes substitute for corporate inventions and reduce the demand for internal research by corporations, perhaps reflecting downstream competition from startups that commercialize university inventions. Moreover, abstract knowledge advances per se elicit little or no response. Our findings question the belief that public science represents a non-rival public good that feeds into corporate R&D through knowledge spillovers.

 

[pipelineaudio]

When this article came out, Apologetics for the religion of college were in full Kent Hovind spin control mode

 

[pipelineaudio]

Harvard just can't catch a break. https://youtu.be/wT-Vgtm2KLM?si=155VfXPk8mJBp0u7

 

[ahhell]

Yeah, I have a slightly crackpot view that this problem has been going on for a while but getting worse over time, and is at least one of the causes of the decline in productivity in science (in per researcher terms, if not in absolute terms). This is as opposed to the "low hanging fruit" view.

The article blames paper mills in China and the former soviet bloc countries and notes that hit as been increasing lately.

Watchdog groups – such as Retraction Watch – have tracked the problem and have noted retractions by journals that were forced to act on occasions when fabrications were uncovered. One study, by Nature, revealed that in 2013 there were just over 1,000 retractions. In 2022, the figure topped 4,000 before jumping to more than 10,000 last year.

Then there's this:

Of this last total, more than 8,000 retracted papers had been published in journals owned by Hindawi, a subsidiary of the publisher Wiley, figures that have now forced the company to act. “We will be sunsetting the Hindawi brand and have begun to fully integrate the 200-plus Hindawi journals into Wiley’s *portfolio,” a Wiley spokesperson told the Observer.

One publisher seems to be responsible for the vast majority.

 

[Checkmite]

One publisher seems to be responsible for the vast majority.

I would not bet money on that yet.

 

[Puppycow]

I would not bet money on that yet.

I smell a rat.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Research_Foundation

There has always been crackpot science.
Babson wanted to abolish Gravity, because he blamed it for the death of his family.

 

[Puppycow]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_Research_Foundation

There has always been crackpot science.
Babson wanted to abolish Gravity, because he blamed it for the death of his family.

I put fake science in a different category from crackpot science.

A crackpot may be an honest crackpot. And they usually didn't make it past peer review. I don't know if that's still true, but these days a lot of garbage and fakery seems to be slipping past peer review.

In an essay titled Gravity – Our Enemy Number One, Babson indicated that his wish to overcome gravity dated from the childhood drowning of his sister. "She was unable to fight gravity, which came up and seized her like a dragon and brought her to the bottom", he wrote.[9]

Gravity can certainly kill, but without it life as we know it wouldn't be possible.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

I put fake science in a different category from crackpot science.

A crackpot may be an honest crackpot. And they usually didn't make it past peer review. I don't know if that's still true, but these days a lot of garbage and fakery seems to be slipping past peer review.



Gravity can certainly kill, but without it life as we know it wouldn't be possible.

Look, if we didn't have water in 1889, Hilter would never have been born.

Are you are one of those filthy Hydrophiles?

 

[Hlafordlaes]

It is a real problem. In my own endeavors, there is a claim out there that a powdered metal application technology is capable of making extremely advanced alloys on the fly. Sure, there's some melting, but nothing that would lead to much more than jumbled intermetallics. We'll see, but there are things in materials science papers that are sounding fishy. Paper in question is from China.

 

[Puppycow]

I put fake science in a different category from crackpot science.

I was thinking about the difference between fake science and crackpottery, and here's my own thoughts on the difference:

The 'crackpot' is typically a contrarian. He (or she) has a 'big idea' that goes against the scientific mainstream. Einstein was wrong, for example, and he has a better theory. The crackpot thinks that "the establishment" is suppressing his ideas and sees himself as some sort of modern Galileo, challenging the orthodoxy and dogma of the establishment.

The fake scientist has a different motivation. He (or she) wants to be accepted by and rewarded by the scientific mainstream. In some cases, if they are successful, they may even achieve this. There have been several recent cases involving highly successful academic careerists. These people are not contrarians. They are often part of the mainstream, and their goal is to publish papers that appear to be legitimate science, but they cut corners on the science or data that they base these papers on.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

I smell a rat.

Researchers worry that the growing use of AI will make published research less trustworthy.

Quelle surprise! The real threat from AI.

 

[ahhell]

Fake science vs crackpot(psuedoscience), there is a difference but they are kind of on a spectrum.

The crack pot truly believes the thing, the fake is just making stuff. Not all crackpots are just making stuff, mostly they just don't understand what they are missing.

Even if the crack pot believes it, he may start faking evidence to prove it and even if the fake starts by just making stuff up, they may eventually start believing there own lies.

Key difference in my opinion is whether the purveyor of the fake/pseudo science started with fake evidence that they knew was fake or not. This the same for a lot of woo. Some faith healers and psychics probably think their gifts are real and are as fooled as their clients. Most are just conmen.

 

[The Great Zaganza]

A lot of Fake Science, just like Fake News, is based on the assumption that the presented "facts" are actually factual, but the author
can't find them just this moment, or
they we haven't got the right technology yet, or
they are being suppressed by T-H-E-M, or
they could easily be discovered by a Special Council with unlimited Subpoena Power.

that is because Fake News and Fake Science "feel true" to their proponents.

 

[ahhell]

A lot of Fake Science, just like Fake News, is based on the assumption that the presented "facts" are actually factual, but the author
can't find them just this moment, or
they we haven't got the right technology yet, or
they are being suppressed by T-H-E-M, or
they could easily be discovered by a Special Council with unlimited Subpoena Power.

that is because Fake News and Fake Science "feel true" to their proponents.

I'd argue(not to vociferously) that that is the difference between fake science and psuedo science. What you describe is more pseudo science than fake.

The difference between misinformation and disinformation. Depends on whether the purveyor knows its fake and they aren't just faking evidence for something they know to be true.

 

[Puppycow]

Who fakes cancer research? Apparently, lots of people.

Dana-Farber was rocked this January by a blog post by Sholto David, a molecular biologist and internet data sleuth, in which he presented evidence of widespread data manipulation in cancer research published by leading researchers including the institute’s CEO and COO. David reportedly contacted the institute with concerns about 57 papers, 38 of which were ones for which the institute had “primary responsibility for the potential data errors.” The institute has requested retractions for 6 of them and initiated corrections for 31.

Being a data sleuth is deeply unrewarding, and even risky. David is currently unemployed and doing the work of flagging data manipulation in his free time between gigs, as he told the Guardian.

Many data sleuths have been threatened with lawsuits for exposing data fraud. “A lot of important science gets done not by big institutions questioning things but by independent people like this,” defamation lawyer Ken White told me last summer. The problem is that there’s no institutional process to review papers unless someone else brings problems to light — and most scientists don’t want to endanger their own careers to do that thankless, frustrating work.

 

[Puppycow]

Former Maryland dept. chair with $19 million in grants faked data in 13 papers, feds say

 

[Roboramma]

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01672-7

Research-integrity watchers are concerned about the growing ways in which scientists can fake or manipulate the citation counts of their studies. In recent months, increasingly bold practices have surfaced. One approach was revealed through a sting operation in which a group of researchers bought 50 citations to pad the Google Scholar profile of a fake scientist they had created.

The scientists bought the citations for US$300 from a firm that seems to sell bogus citations in bulk. This confirms the existence of a black market for faked references that research-integrity sleuths have long speculated about, says the team.

 

[Puppycow]

This is a big one:

Academic fraud endemic in published research, from photoshopped blots to AI slop

Eliezer Masliah, a prominent neuroscientist and top NIH official steering billions in federal grant money, has "fallen under suspicion" of extensive academic fraud, writes Charles Piller at Science.org. The understated measure of that quote collapses quickly into a basement stuffed with comically overwhelming evidence.

A Science investigation has now found that scores of his lab studies at UCSD and NIA are riddled with apparently falsified Western blots—images used to show the presence of proteins—and micrographs of brain tissue. Numerous images seem to have been inappropriately reused within and across papers, sometimes published years apart in different journals, describing divergent experimental conditions.

Fraud, so much fraud, writes Derek Lowe.

It seems like a strange thing to take someone with a long and respected career and subject them to what would essentially be a Western blot and photomicrograph audit before offering them a big position. But if the NIH had done that in 2016, they wouldn't be in the position they're in now, would they? How many people do we need to check? How many figures do we have to scrutinize? What a mess.

 

[Roboramma]

Damn.