Scientist misconduct explains most study retractions

Overall, 67.4% of studies marked "retracted" in the National Center for Biotechnology Information's listing of studies suffer from fake data, plagiarism and other kinds of scientific dishonesty, finds the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

I find this just disappointing really.
I'm not scientist, but I would imagine if someone get's caught plagiarizing, forging or otherwise faking data in a scientific study, then their career is pretty much finished. It just doesn't make sense. All that schooling and time spent, just thrown away.

Idiots.

Alarmingly, the analysis concludes that retraction due to scientific misconduct has become 10 times more common today than in 1975.

That is ridiculous. Don't people have principals anymore, or professional dignity? Or is it that there are more scientists today which leads to higher misconduct statistics. I'm not sure, but all they are accomplishing is putting a black eye on science as a whole.

"The rise in the rate of retractions raises concern about the health of the scientific enterprise itself," conclude the study authors, calling for better ethics training of scientists. "Given that most scientific work is publicly funded and that retractions because of misconduct undermine science and its impact on society, the surge of retractions suggests a need to reevaluate the incentives driving this phenomenon."

I agree with this statement. This isn't like the guys who said they found neutrinos traveling faster than light. They had legitimately checked everything they could think of, and were really just asking for help.

Maybe it's the global financial downturn, causing researchers to get desperate to keep their funding? Then again, this has been increasing for the last 35+ years.

Source
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

It could be the pressure and massive competition for funds and grants that is leading to this type of dishonesty. Maybe some scientists see there career over either way when they realize all the money they spent on something they promised would work, doesn't. I can see it.
Not that it makes it right off course. I have to admit i am upset by that data...

ETA: Star and flag* Also what exactly can be done to combat this?

reply to post by Bixxi3


That is pretty much what I was thinking.

But you would think scientists of all people, would think things through a little more logically.

Error

Makes me wonder what to believe and what to toss out with the piss in the morning.

I am by no means a smart guy, but I can see big questions on the horizon from some posters on this forum.
I also anticipate a few posts from our posters here who rely totally on the science end of things and not their own instincts...

" 43.4% were retracted due to fraud or suspected fraud"

This thread should be a very lively one in my opinion.

S&F for bringing this to light.
Regards, Iwinder

reply to post by watchitburn


"This isn't like the guys who said they found neutrinos traveling faster than light. They had legitimately checked everything they could think of, and were really just asking for help. "

nahhh.... i think they just wanted attention...... they should have known better,,,, tested their results hundreds of more times before making the headlines..

reply to post by watchitburn

I would. Venture to say that scientific misconduct has been rampant in several fields for decades, all for the sake of keeping their field of study open, as it is complete rubbish.

Climate science anyone? I mean east anglia has to be the most corupt sudo science intstitution on the planet, as has been shown many times through their faked data, ommitted resultts, and out right lies, all for the sake of perpetuating their fields fear mongering, for more grant money. As if the issue was placed in the back of the stack where it belongs, there wouldn't be enough research money to employ 15 of them.

Medicine is another biggy for me, as we still use all the same "cures" I mean "treatments" that we were using 50 years ago, for cancers, despite billions in anual funding. This is of course not mentioning the fact all the drugs they make today lead to side effects quite a lot more severe than the disease to begin with. If money wasn't involved, we would already have an actual cure for just about everything. However they don't want to cure you nowadays, as that would be a one off payment, they want to treat you for the rest of your life, to ensure their profits in perpetuum.

reply to post by ImaFungi


They did do it for attention, just not the kind you think, they had been put in the posotion of already running tens of thousands of secondary tests resulting in the same data, so either they discovered somthing faster than light, or they were doing somthing wrong.

In science this is part of the peer review process, as another set of eyes can somtimes see what your over looking right in front of your face.

So they did everthing they could think of, and then asked for the help of the science community at large to help them either solve the problem or help validate their findings.

As it turns out, after many many scientific minds bent their considerable brain power to resolving the issue, it was wittled down to being a very simple problem, a loose IT connection, of all the possibilities, it was the last thing anyone had thought of, and was only solved with outside input.

reply to post by inverslyproportional


You hit that one square on the head.
I swear I saw a commercial the other day for a depression medication, and one of the side effects was depression.
Crazy, right?

reply to post by ImaFungi


This video from some physicists at the University of Nottingham explains the situation with the neutrinos pretty well.
From everything I have seen, I don't think there was any misconduct or glory hounding there.

Originally posted by ImaFungi
reply to post by watchitburn

 

"This isn't like the guys who said they found neutrinos traveling faster than light. They had legitimately checked everything they could think of, and were really just asking for help. "

nahhh.... i think they just wanted attention...... they should have known better,,,, tested their results hundreds of more times before making the headlines..

You're actually right. The scientist who went public with it was forced to resign. His team said no, we don't have all the facts yet. He went ahead against their wishes. So it was one guy, not the rest of the team.

reply to post by OccamsRazor04


He wasn't forced to resign. He voluntarily resigned.

Discovery.com

This seems to lay out what happened pretty clearly. It looks like it was a very awkward situation all around. Some things were definitely mishandled. But it still looks to me like it was just a screw up, I don't think there was any forgery or misconduct.

Originally posted by watchitburn
reply to post by OccamsRazor04

 

He wasn't forced to resign. He voluntarily resigned.

Discovery.com

This seems to lay out what happened pretty clearly. It looks like it was a very awkward situation all around. Some things were definitely mishandled. But it still looks to me like it was just a screw up, I don't think there was any forgery or misconduct.

edit on 2-10-2012 by watchitburn because: (no reason given)

Technically it was voluntary, but it was one of those times where he volunteered to avoid them pushing the issue. His team no longer had confidence in him, he was gone either way. There was no misconduct, but it was not handled properly and he went public before it was time to do so.

I think it's more an issue of who is funding the science, and the ulterior motives and conclusions they hope science will support.

But by this point in time, the corruption is everywhere, because people have figured out how to make money off of practically everything. And where there's money...