Archive for the ‘scientific misconduct’ Category
November 29, 2012
Maybe the detection of fraud has improved lately but it is still highly unlikely that the majority of cases are being discovered. I have the clear perception that the increasing number of cases of manipulating or faking data that are being discovered is just the tip of the iceberg. These cases – as with the case described in my previous post about Diedrik Stapel – also demonstrate the systemic disinclination of peers to be critical or to find fault with their colleagues. Traditional peer review has always had its failings but is now also proving to be incapable of handling the huge increase in the number of papers being published. And the apparently increasing incidence of fraud among scientists will not change until scientists can be held liable for their misconduct. Academic freedom is all very well but it needs to be tempered with some responsibility and some corresponding accountability.
In the long run – over a few centuries – it probably does not matter. Scientific cheating does not alter natural laws or relationships but in the short term of our lifetimes the damage is considerable. Not only does it waste resources but the the misdirection of other scientific efforts leads to much work being done on a foundation of quicksand. On the shoulders of midgets!
In this case where Eric Smart has been found to have been falsifying data for a decade, the Office of Research Integrity has published its findings and 10 papers are to be retracted and he will not seek grants for 7 years. 13 researchers at his lab “have moved on to other projects and endeavors.” The papers to be withdrawn have been cited over 100 times.
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Tags:Eric J. Smart, Office of Research Integrity, ORI, United States, University of Kentucky
Posted in Academic misconduct, Behaviour, Science, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »
October 5, 2012
I am amazed.
I would not have thought it possible that for whatever the ends a government agency could justify such means.
JunkScience carries a report today:
EPA admits to Court: Human subjects ‘may die’ from air pollution experiments
EPA has admitted to a federal court that it asks human guinea pigs to sacrifice their lives for regulatory purposes — and $12 per hour.
EPA has responded to our emergency motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against its ongoing human experiment (called “CAPTAIN”) involving the air pollutant known as PM2.5.
In the declaration of Martin W. Case, the EPA clinical research studies coordinator for CAPTAIN, Case claims he verbally warns study subjects before the experiment as follows:
… My first approach after being introduced to the subject by the medical station staff is to ask the subject if they have read the consent form. The subjects for CAPTAIN have been given the informed study consent form on a previous visit, and, they are also given the same consent to read again if they have not read the consent the day of the training…
I provide participants with information about fine particles (PM2.s). I say that PM2.s are particles so small that they are able past through your airways and go deep into your lungs, these particles are so small that your usual lining and cilia of your airways are not able to prevent these particles from passing into your lungs, Therefore, if you are a person that for example lives in a large city like Los Angeles or New York, and it’s been a very hot day, and you can see the haze in the air, and you happen to be someone that works outside, and if you have an underlying unknown health condition, or, you may be older in age; the chances are that you could end up in the emergency room later on that night, wondering what’s wrong, possibly having cardiac changes that could lead to a heart attack; there is the possibility you may die from this…
………..
Tags:Air pollution, CAPTAIN, EPA, human guniea pigs, Human subject research, Particulates, United States Environmental Protection Agency
Posted in Behaviour, Environment, Ethics, scientific misconduct, US | 1 Comment »
September 29, 2012
I have the most wonderful memories of my time as a post-doc at University College Cardiff in the mid-70’s. This was where I was educated into the intricacies of the rules of rugby and the tribal rituals surrounding the game. Pubs and real ale and rugby grounds and rugby songs and – of course – Max Boyce.
So I was a little sad to read about the strange goings-on at the laboratory of the Dean of Medicine at what is now Cardiff University. Lots and lots and lots of papers published by the Dean, Professor B P Morgan, (172 papers and 35 review articles or chapters since 1998 – giving 207 publications in about 180 months!) and now a retraction and a formal investigation into apparent image manipulation and duplication. A case of
“There were all those doctor’s papers and they all said just the same”
(with apologies to Max Boyce and his great lyrics to “We all had Doctor’s papers”)
THES:
Cardiff University has confirmed that it is to launch a formal investigation into alleged research misconduct in the laboratory of its dean of medicine.
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Tags:Cardiff Dean of Medicine, Cardiff University, Max Boyce, Prof B P Morgan, Rugby songs, Scientific misconduct, University College Cardiff, We all had doctors papers
Posted in Academic misconduct, Medicine, scientific misconduct | 1 Comment »
September 6, 2012
Psychology is an academic discipline but it is not (yet) a science.
The Hausergate affaire followed by the Diedrik Stapel affaire only confirmed my view that psychology as an academic discipline is permeated by confirmation bias (and sometimes just plain fraud). Now the Marc Hauser affaire reaches some kind of a conclusion (at least until he has served his “sentence” and is then “rehabilitated”) with the Office of Research Integrity’s report.
Retraction Watch comments on the ORI report:
Two years after questions surfaced about work by former Harvard psychology professor Marc Hauser, an official government report is finally out.
It’s not pretty.
The findings by the Office of Research Integrity were first reported by the Boston Globe, which was also first to report the issues in Hauser’s work. They’re extensive, covering misconduct in four different NIH grants ……..
As I had posted at the end of last year, psychology as an academic discipline needs to start introducing some intellectual rigour:
That psychology is a discipline and a field of study is indisputable. That the study of human (or animal) behaviour is a worthy field and that experimentation and research are well worth pursuing is also obvious. But I am of the view that it is far from being a science. Psychology can be considered to be a pre-science similar to alchemy. And the practitioners of psychology are similar to priests and shamans and witch-doctors and other practitioners of magic. Inevitably the field contains many charlatans. …… In the various fields of psychology, the null hypothesis is rarely if ever brought into play. …..
…. As Paul Lutus so well puts it
…. psychology can make virtually any claim and offer any kind of therapy, because there is no practical likelihood of refutation – no clear criteria to invalidate a claim. This, in turn, is because human psychology is not a science, it is very largely a belief system similar to religion.
Tags:Confirmation bias, Diedrik Stapel, Harvard University, hausergate, marc hauser, Office of Research Integrity
Posted in Academic misconduct, psychology, Science, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on ORI finds misconduct by Marc Hauser in 4 NIH grants
July 3, 2012
It is not only scientists in social psychology who indulge in fraud. Anthropology for example has had its share of frauds. While corporations – such as Glaxo Smith Kline– can be held liable and sanctioned for fraud, it is very rare for individual academics who fake data in pursuit of their own agendas to be held liable. Why cannot a concept of tort or “product liability”apply to scientists? The members of the medical profession who aided and abetted GSK are unlikely to face any sanctions. But the recent scandals of social psychologists faking data to show statistical correlations between sets of propositions and then inferring causal relationships have demonstrated two things which I think apply in many more so-called “scientific” disciplines than just social psychology. :
- The ease with which sampled data can be faked or cherry picked by workers from reputed institutions to show apparent correlations can then be provided a stamp of authority through the publication of “peer-reviewed” papers, and
- that there is a need to return to the scientific method of focusing on propositions that are falsifiable and to avoid the temptation of concluding that any positive statistical correlation provides proof of a causal relationship.
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Tags:academic misconduct, climate science, Diederik Stapel, Smeesters, Social psychology
Posted in Academic misconduct, Scientific Fraud, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Social psychology falls from grace
June 11, 2012
When science leads to activism great things can be accomplished but when activism leads to “biased science” to justify the activism, we plumb the depths.
The Gergis affaire has some way to run as her activism-led science is revealed. ACM has preserved some of her activist writings on her now-disappeared blog :
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Tags:Activism, Climate Audit, Confirmation bias, improper data screening, Joelle Gergis, screening fallacy
Posted in Academic misconduct, Alarmism, Climate, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on How to beat data into a hockey-stick…
June 9, 2012
One would think that after Climategate, climate scientists would be a little more careful with their “trickery”.
When a supposedly peer reviewed paper in the American Meteorological Society Journal is withdrawn / “put on hold” after publication when the on-line community (Jean S / Steve McIntyre) find the authors to have cherry picked and improperly “massaged their data, it says 2 things:
- that the peer review process at the AMS is either incompetent or corrupt (in that it is especially friendly to papers propounding the global warming orthodoxy), and
- that the “tricks” revealed by Climategate are still being actively used by so-called climate scientists to support their beliefs
That one of the authors – probably responsible for this cock-up – a Joelle Gergis from the University of Melbourne, is more an “activist” than a “scientist” does not help matters . Going through the abstracts of her list of publications suggests that she often decides on her conclusions first and then selects data and writes her papers to fit the conclusions. Cherry picking data is bad enough but when it is done because of confirmation bias it is perhaps the most insidious form of scientific misconduct there is.
Interestingly
joellegergis.wordpress.com is no longer available.
The authors have deleted this blog.
The AMS Journal “peers” who reviewed this paper don’t come out of this very well either. But of course they will receive no strictures for a job done badly.
Sources:
Gergis et al “Put on Hold”
American Meteorological Society disappears withdraws Gergis et al paper on proxy temperature reconstruction after post peer review finds fatal flaws
Gergis paper disappears
Another Hockey Stick broken
Tags:American Meteorological Society, Confirmation bias, data manipulation, global warming, hockey stick, hockey stick withdrawn, Joelle Gergis, peer review, Scientific misconduct, Steve McIntyre
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Another warming hockey stick is withdrawn/”put-on-hold” for bad data
April 6, 2012
The Polargate investigation being conducted by the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General “is looking into allegations of scientific misconduct related to a 2006 report by wildlife researchers Charles Monnett and Jeffrey Gleason, who described seeing dead polar bears floating in Arctic waters. The apparently drowned bears raised concerns about the effect of melting ice in the Arctic, and they were mentioned in Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth.”
Now NPR reports that new witnesses are being questioned in this 3 year old investigation:
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Tags:Al Gore, Charles Monnett, Inconvenient Truth, Inspector General, National Marine Mammal Laboratory, Polar bear, Polar bear numbers, polargate, polargate investigation
Posted in Alarmism, Climate, scientific misconduct, Wildlife | Comments Off on Polargate investigation questions new witnesses
March 15, 2012
It was high time and even though they have tried before, the new measures just announced by the Chinese Education Ministry will hopefully begin to curb the widespread plagiarism, data manipulation and even data fakery that allegedly goes on.
India needs to institutionalise something similar. The Society of Scientific Values in India is an independent body and tries valiantly to act as a watch-dog but it has no teeth and no official standing. Of course in India the danger with creating institutions under a Ministry – and therefore under a Minister – is that the institution will very quickly become politicised. And Indian politicians are perhaps not the best choice when it comes to monitoring and establishing ethical standards. Nevertheless a start has to be made and the Ministry of Science and Technology in India is the natural home of an institution to promote ethical standards in scientific research and at institutes of higher education. The key will be to provide the backing of the Ministry to give it sufficient weight but to maintain its independence from party political influences. Giving such an institution semi-judicial status is one way but could be very heavy handed.
China Daily reports:
China’s Ministry of Education on Wednesday issued new rules to supervise universities’ scientific research and academic activities in order to “effectively prevent and curb academic misconduct.”
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Tags:China, China Education Ministry, ethics, India, Scientific misconduct, Society for Scientific Values
Posted in Academic misconduct, China, Ethics, India, Science, scientific misconduct, Technology | Comments Off on Chinese Government tries to get to grips with science misconduct. When will India follow?
March 14, 2012
Professor Akihisa Inoue
Professor Akihisa Inoue is the President of Tohoku University, is a leading materials scientist and the author of over 2,500 publications. But criticism from other Japanese scientists (as on this Japanese website) has now led to at least 7 retractions for plagiarism. Three investigations have been conducted so far with rather wishy-washy conclusions. The investigations are in uncharted territory since Japan has no established processes for handling cases of scientific wrong-doing. There is no institution or body for supervising ethics or misconduct in research. And now yet another investigation committee is proposed. Without the guidance of precedent Tohoku University and even the Japanese Science and Technology Agency are not really sure how to proceed – especially when the allegations are against as prominent a person as the President of a University. Almost a classic case of what in industry would be called “paralysis by analysis” where every analysis shirks the task of coming to conclusions, declines to make judgements and merely proposes further analysis.
Nature reports:
Japan fails to settle university dispute
It has been a rough year for materials scientist Akihisa Inoue, the president of Tohoku University in Japan.
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Tags:Akihisa Inoue, Japan, Nature, paper retraction, Paralysis by analysis, Scientific misconduct, Tohoku University
Posted in Academic misconduct, Ethics, Japan, Science, scientific misconduct | Comments Off on Tohoku University struggles to handle transgressions by its President Akihisa Inoue
The k2p blog 