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MIT Professor Fired over Fabricated Data
karvind writes "CNN is running a story where MIT has fired an associate professor of biology for fabricating data in a published scientific paper, in unpublished manuscripts, and in grant applications. Luk Van Parijs, 35, who was considered a rising star in the field of immunology research, admitted to the wrongdoing. The revelations are a serious blow to MIT, which prides itself on its reputation as a scientific powerhouse. The announcement also serves to answer the rumors that have been swirling on the campus since Van Parijs vanished from the campus more than a year ago and had his lab disbanded without any comment from the university. Readers may remember the infamous Jan Hendrik Schön from Bell labs."
The revelations are a serious blow to MIT, which prides itself on its reputation as a scientific powerhouse.
Revealing a case of fraud strengthens their reputation. If they had let the case die in the darkness after dismissing him--that would lessen their reputation. But admitting that fraud has happened and that the school will not stand for it--that can only gain respect.
what's gonna happen to them? i'd imagine that's something you wouldn't put on a resume
I'm sure they will try and twist it that way, but it's worth keeping in mind that we know about this precisely because scientists take things like making up data seriously, and try very hard to uncover those who would do it. The Intelligent Design side isn't quite so gung-ho in terms of caring about falsifying data (heck, or even providing data).
Huh? It is a "blow" to their reputation iff they knew about the misconduct and did nothing about it. In this case it is clear that they took swift action. I would give kudos to MIT for reacting swiftly. Recall the conduct of other organizations like NYT in such instances.
I've always wondered why the global scientific community doesn't do more replication of data as part of peer review.
Just try getting a grant for "Doing exactly what this other guy already did, just to make sure."
Yeah, it actually is important, but try explaining that to the bean counters. The best you can do is propose some sort of "continuation" and include the original experiment as a control group, and hope to verify it that way.
Oh come on, you think this guy is the only one who did it? Let me ask you this: you have a hypothesis. You spend a ton of money from your grants and have your grad students spend a lot of their time trying to prove their hypothesis. The data you get is basically useless since it doesn't prove or disprove anything. Do you just say "New research into immunology finds nothing?" Of course not.
We VERY rarely hear of research actually failing, when in fact we should be hearing it ALL THE TIME since taking stabs at new ideas shouldn't be successful all the time. Failure should be a natural part of research, and there really shouldn't be an urge to have to make your research fruitful everytime. Unfortunately, no one would actually do this even if they agreed with the thought - people would only expect other people to follow the rule.
It's not like it matters too much regardless - 90% of research papers are bullshit wrapped in a myriad of technical jargon which makes it seem like they achieved something ridiculously important.
My 2 cents.
What you say is true, however, this isn't really the greatest timing for a story to break on the fact that scientists sometimes fabricate their data. This provides a rather juicy opportunity for the various anti-science forces out there to point to this and say "See, scientists aren't the pristine investigators of truth that they would like us to believe! This one got caught, but how many others are doing the same thing right now? That's why we need to keep an open mind about {intelligent design, alternative medicine, bigfoot, global warming is a myth, etc.}."
You and I may see this story as evidence of the scientific system working the way it is supposed to. I suspect that the public will see this as evidence that science doesn't have a monopoly on the truth and maybe we ought to give those creationists equal time. Like I said, this isn't the greatest time for this story to break.
GMD
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You completely missed the point of the article you linked to. The "World Multi-Conference on Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics" is one of those academic "Conferences" that exist solely to make money. These conferences are a well known phenomenon used by organizers to make money on outrageous registration fees and by "attendees" to take vacations at their institute's expense. No reputable academic conference has such a thing as a "non-reviewed" paper. Even a cursory reading of the papers they submitted makes it obvious that it's random junk.
It's true that it's possible to sneak fabricated data past the peer-review process, but I think the damage is self-limiting in a way. If your results are significant, people will be interested in duplicating your results... either as a way of understanding them better or to compare against their own work. If nobody is able to duplicate your results, you are likely to have your fraud caught sooner or later.
If your results are not all that significant, it gets forgotten and nobody builds on your bad work so the scientific process itself isn't subverted although the dishonest researcher may have got an undeserved feather in his cap.
And if you got rid of government funding, you wouldn't have much left (or so the conventional knowlege goes). I'd actually agree that gov. funding should be eliminated, but I don't see how it "distorts the intellectual environment". If you're claiming that "money" in general is corrupting, I don't know what to say. People who reserach for the hell of it do it either way; money convinces the greedy bastards to start contributing. It seems you're more blaming shortsightedness than money itself.
Most great leaps in science have been governments funded/nobility patronaged. Most incremental improvement of exsisting technlogoies come from corprate enviroments. Corprate research goes to where the money soon will be, this leads to near sighted research into only a few fields. We get better cars, but we won't derive new energy sources. This is where academic government funded research is for. They research the things that aren't profitable but are interesting to science. Gov. funding should never be eliminated unless you want science to degenerate into nothing more then incremental improvements of consumer products.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Sometimes when an experiment doesn't go as hoped, its Creator must guide the results intelligently.
Actually that sounds about right, especially from my experience at secondary school (aka High School). If you do a lab experiment, do something wrong and write up the results as you observed then you actually get a bad mark on your write-up. This actually encourages people to fudge the write-up and make it as the teacher expects. This is where I would like to see write-ups marked independently of the experimentation, to give more value to the procedure and observations, no matter how wrong the results mighte be. Maybe also encouraging the students to explain why they think the results differed from the expected results, to help make up for any experiemental errors.
We learn from our mistakes as well as others, but if we chuck them into trash then no one stands to learn from them.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
I think including alternative medicine with the other topics you mention is pretty short sighted. To think that we have all the medical answers, and that there aren't other medications or treatments that western medicine might not know about is ignorant. Take for instance pressure points: no western doctor or treatment explains or addresses them.
This is almost precisely the same argument used by the Intelligent Design folks to get creationism taught in schools! I'm flabergasted that this got modded up. Yes, yes, yes -- neither evolution or western medicine has all the answers. Scientists fully admit this. However, the fact that those fields don't have all the answers doesn't mean that we should start relying on creationism or alternative medicine. You need to provide verifable evidence that sticking needles into people can cure ailments and not rely on "well, you guys don't have all the answers" arguments. Alternative medicine most definitely belongs with the other things I listed. Not because it's all crap. Because all of those things openly (almost pridefully) reject the scientific method.
However, I'll tell you right now that there are a great many instances where accupressure/puncture can make huge differences in a number of maladies.
Oh boy, take a guess what my next question is going to be. Can you provide references to multiple peer-reviewed studies verifying your claim? You "can tell me", huh? And who the hell are you? Some guy on slashdot? I'm going to take medical advice from User 549286?
redfieldp, I think you misunderstood my post. Maybe I should have left UFOs out of the list. My point was that alternative medicine is anti-science. Alternative medicine practitioners apply their techniques to the public at large without scientific evidence that these methods work or are even safe. Having scientists publically outed for falsifing data is only going to provide more ammunition to those who claim they deserve equal status and recognition. Alternative medicine is welcome to use the scientific method to verify their claims. Until that time, it belongs squarely in the "anti-science" camp.
GMD
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