Academia is BROKEN! Harvard Fake Cancer Research Scandal Explained

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[JonathanBhagan]

Lying about cancer research ought to be a criminal offence

[tayzonday]

Imagine having a 2nd or 3rd or 4th authorship on your advisor’s paper and it gets retracted as you’re applying for jobs 😳

[buzznovo]

"Oh you went to Harvard? Oh wow, I'm so sorry."

[Luminarada]

Weird, it's almost like having extremely high pressure to publish positive results in high-impact journals encourages people to cut corners or fudge numbers to get positive results when things aren't going their way

[amv]

As a recent PhD graduate from an Ivy League, I gotta say that the academic research system is just corrupted. Finding answers to how the natural world works or understanding the limits of so-called applied science are nowhere near as important to the modern day research group as is the publication of papers or the award of research grants, even for projects that are doomed to fail. Wait until you find out that the same research group is often unable to replicate its own results… It’s very sad, but I don’t see it changing anytime soon.

[papertape]

If you think about it these scandals out of Harvard are actually excellent in helping us to dismantle the idea that this institution has any sort of legitimacy that supersedes other academic institutions because of its name and perceived status. In short can't say I don't like.

[dimibolhas]

I’m currently a postdoc at one of the Harvard-affiliated institutions and I do cancer research. Curiously, one of my housemates is a grad student at Khalid’s lab. If there’s one thing that being a scientist has taught me it is to identify patterns. And in this specific subject (scientific fraud), one of the most recurrent themes is working for a toxic boss. But let’s get to the root of the problem. This whole Harvard publications scandal is a byproduct of how research is funded. It all starts with the asshole principal investigator putting pressure on their students to deliver these megalomaniac high-impact papers because that will bring funding to the lab. And they *have to* keep winning these grants, otherwise they won’t be able to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on fancy experiments such that they can publish more high-impact papers, and get more funding. It’s a vicious cycle, and this has nothing to do with our endless curiosity to understand how nature works anymore, as other people have stated in this comment section. Modern science is just another cog in the capitalist engine, so it’s almost impossible to “fix the system”. What I believe can work as a solution is changing the way science is funded. Instead of giving grants to researchers who publish hundreds of papers every year, funding agencies should be giving money to groups that not only do innovative research but also publish highly reproducible data. If you’re proposing groundbreaking hypotheses but your previous Nature/Cell/Science papers cannot be replicated, then you’re out. Not only that, but a proper investigation should be followed, and if fraud is proven these PIs should be banned from asking for funding. I mean, if you (the government) are going to give away millions and millions of dollars to develop science, why not create some sort of agency that tests the reproducibility of published data? What is the point of making fancy science if the experiments only work in the hands of the paper's first author? What would happen then is that we scientists would have to slow down and do careful and well-documented science, instead of this shit show that we keep seeing, not only at Harvard but everywhere. I wonder how much of all the published data we can truly believe. I’m afraid that if I find out the actual number, I might just give up science

[FlexibleFlyer]

Years ago any research coming out of Harvard was considered the gold standard. Now, in light of all the plagiarism and then questionable research, anyone should think twice about the academic and scientific integrity of any Harvard study or publication.

[whynotjustmyusername]

Oh man. I'm sitting here, writing my little medical dissertation, wondering whether that comparatively simple thing I've done is even worthy of publication... but then I see this and at the very least I have the consolation that all my data is mine and real.

[stischer]

As a former CS prof who was asked to peer review articles for publication, I didn't last long because I was honest about the trash I was asked to review. And the vast majority was trash - statistics didn't make sense, papers cited didn't say what they said it did, etc. That wasn't what the publication wanted. So, after two years I was not asked again. Publish or perish has caused endemic fraud.

[swordboy]

it's the lack of action that kills me, in high school if I used a sentence from something else, I could be expelled, and they were flat out faking and coping all that?

[rummy]

Harvard’s reputation will fall if Harvard doesn’t take any action against these people. As a person of science, I am glad I have not chosen Harvard.

[Kiran_Nath]

I remember trying to replicate the results of a psychiatric paper whilst in my 3rd year of university and i could for the life of me not figure out how they got the results that they did, especially since their paper was peer-reviewed.This makes me think that data falsification might be much more rampant in academia then i previously thought.

[flambr]

there should be large cash rewards for these kinda debunks, fraudulent science is such a horrible thing

[joshuacuebas]

Harvard University wanted my blood for erythromelalgia research. I would have had to pay for the blood drawn and they only offered to “repay” the cost for it if I did pay. Harvard received 505 million in donations in 2022. The cost of my blood being drawn was 150. Cheapskates wouldn’t give me 150 to pay for the blood drawn. Even with my rare condition with even rarer age and gender circumstances they put money before everything.

[Solsev]

Elizabeth Bik, the hero we need.

"How did you manage to sleuth out these peer-reviewed, and dastardly cases of academic research fraud?"

"Well, unlike the people who formally reviewed the papers, I actually bothered to look at the data contained therein."

This is the saddest part of the video.

[IdiotWrangler]

Research is based on prior research. If its falsified for something like this, they should be in prison and their degree credentials revoked forever

[Videomorgue]

It's about time we apply criminal charges of fraud for academic misconduct like this.

[adam]

The whole point of senior researchers having their names on these papers was the assurance of proper oversight.

"I didn't really pay much attention to this paper I put my name on" is quite a damning admission.

[Dehstil]

Years ago, I helped my professor with some vector art for an illustration. It was maybe 15 mins of work and he still attributed me. Point being not all researchers are void of integrity, but it gets hard when you see your peers pull this stuff.