Harvard Fake Data SCANDAL: Why Academics Fake Data

In this video share with you why academics fake data and what the Stanford scandal can tell us.

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▼ ▽ TIMESTAMPS
0:00 – introduction
0:58 – culture
2:17 – publishing
3:14 – money
4:09 – oversight
5:55 – prestige
7:24 – doing the right thing
8:05 – wrapping up

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[diodio]

Great summary, but I don’t buy about those few bad apples. From my experience the cheaters stay and good people get pushed out of the system.

[LiteraryLDawn]

1, 0000% why I left academia. No jobs, exploitation and abuse by PI’s, and pressure to have a high h-index (i.e., tons of publications), no matter the cost…my goal was to actually help society and to solve problems. This was frowned upon in my PhD program

[tnvcxzd]

When i was a postdoc it was always amazed how everyone elses experiments always worked and hypotheses always proved. I was less successful as i was rigorous, meticulous, and reproduced experiments with monastic devotion. I couldn't keep up with my peers' publication output as i was diligent.
My views stood me out as ultimately i wouldnt play the game everyone else was and i was in a minority willing to speak out.

[os]

I remember a PI in a lab I worked at UPenn shouting his postdocs “where is my F$**=/*&ng P value “?!! Demanding positive results true or false he didn’t cared…He was the worst person I ever worked with … he destroyed several minds …

[ElliottHartman-yo]

"They lie, they cheat and if you look..."
Why not stealing? You should do a video on scooping! I was shocked when it happened to a friend of mine in the sciences. It astounds me that stealing research data is so common that there is colloquial term for it.

[timothyrday]

It's going to get to a point where having a super-abundance of publications looks suspicious. Having a few, solid articles with reproducible results is better, if you ask me.

[phillifighter]

Soon to be chemistry PhD here. Regarding the vast majority of researchers doing the right thing: I agree that most researchers dont FAKE data per se; but "massaging" data, ignoring conflicting results and omitting things in papers that may cast doubt on results is very common if not the norm...

[Immudzen]

When your entire PhD depends on getting papers published and journals refuse to public negative papers (this is still usually the case) it is really hard for people not to lie. It is not your fault that the research idea did not work out, you still learned a lot from it and added a great deal of valuable knowledge but the system doesn't value it.

The more prestigious the university the worse it gets.

[DaLiJeIOvoImeZauzeto]

When I was in my teens the movie Shattered glass came out, picturing a high profile fraud journalist. Never thought I'd see so much fraud in science, but as I'm finishing my PhD, I'm both unsurprised and disgusted. The system needs a flamethrower.
7:26 According to several in-depth surveys, 40% of everything that gets published is either unintentionally or purposefully faulty. We clearly need a system that fosters higher scrutiny.

[blizzart]

This is the main reason why I'm pro " open science, "( goal: making science more accessible and transparent for everyone) which they discussed more heavily lately, but which is unfortunately still not established. They have some good concepts that counter bs like mentioned in the video, for example showing and publishing all data, even from the beginning phase of a study till it's " end"( good or bad data doesn't matter)... but somehow, there are always parties with personal interests slowing innovative and positive stuff down. Reminds me of political bureaucracy, a coincidence?

[charlesdarwin]

Colleges in USA focus on publications instead of teaching.

Grants is the only way to survive .

In other countries, they have junior lecturers, senior lecturers to teach. Research is personal.

In USA, it is publish or perish

[amahana]

This isn’t just in academia. I worked in a chemical test lab at a major chemical manufacturing company for three years; and I can’t count how many occasions I saw calibration numbers faked to keep production samples processing at warp speed.

[tp]

I'm not nearly as optimistic about fraud impacting only a small percentage of published research. For every paper this is retracted, I wouldn't be surprised if there are 10 others that get missed because the fraud was too good or reviewers were lazy, in addition to the power dynamics at play in academia that force silence for the sake of everyone's career and reputation. PIs in my experience can't even be punished for sexual assault against their students, much less academic fraud.

[blogintonblakley]

Authoritarian structures are inherently corrupt and corrupting. The higher you go in any such system the more likely it is that you are corrupted. Works the other way as well, if you are corrupt, you are more likely to rise. Which is the point of this video.

My initial rendering of this principle is always ignored. Instead the onus falls on the individuals who get caught cheating in a system designed to elevate cheaters.

[HellRaiZOR]

Now this is the video I have been waiting for.

Academia and the academics must be exposed like this.

[Regimented]

My only reason to pursue a PhD is to get out of my country for a better life.
Is that a good enough reason?

[KAZVorpal]

The problem with peer review is that it's unscientific censorship.
So, naturally, its focus ends up being on whatever corrupt objective the reviewers have.
For example, rejecting things that go against their own biases, be those in their discipline, or according to their politics, or what will make them or a crony money.

[StillAliveAndKicking_]

There is the infamous case of the junior researcher who discovered the second known antibiotic. He was pusuaded to sign away any royalty rights. Little did he know that he department head and university did not do likewise. They made a fortune. The department head claimed the research as his own. The scientist sued and won. But he was never able to get a decent research job. Later on the department head was awarded the Nobel prize for the junior scientist’s work. He did not acknowledge the junior at all. So yes, some scientists are as dishonest as hell. The other famous case is of course Rosalind Franklin. The Nobel prize winner’s work was based on hers. She didn’t even get a mention from them. She could not have won the prize due to her death, but her treatment was nasty.

[bolt]

I love how a channel talking about academia has made me not want to go anywhere near academia.

[samuelculper]

When I began a career in health science and pharmaceuticals I learned very quickly that if a study doesn’t produce the desired results, one simply adjusts the study until it will produce the desired results and all the old data is thrown out. So when people talk about “what the data says..” I just don’t have faith as I once did. It doesn’t hold much value to me which is very sad. What’s the solution?