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a story where MIT has fired an associate professor of biology for fabricating data in a published scientific paper, in unpublished manuscripts, and in grant applications.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."

Comments

Huh?

[LeonGeeste]

What do copyrights have to do with anything? If you want to read the article, your university probably paid the (all things considered) small fee to get the journal, or it's available online. It's really a tiny cost. Fair use permits citation and excerpt quotes.

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.

Exactly. The problem is money.

[CyricZ]

Indeed, the main problem is money. They're not doing science for the sake of good science. They're doing science so they can make money (to live and to continue to do science to make money), and sometimes that may necessitate the modification of results and data.

Just think about what could be done without the monetary restrictions, or even if they could be significantly reduced. If the US had instead used for scientific research the $200 billion they wasted on Iraq, who knows how far ahead of the world they could be. Investing that much money in something constructive, like scientific research, would reap tremendous benefits. Even half of that dollar figure could fund a lot of cutting-edge research.

Re:you must be kidding

[LeonGeeste]

I actually have an upcoming paper on this topic, but I don't know where to submit it. I basically flesh out the idea that you could make a return from research, even if you gave it away for free, by speculating in the markets you distort. Say your research unveils an energy source that makes oil obsolete. You could make up research costs by shorting the stock of anyone heavily invested in selling oil. Of course, the paper goes into much more detail. Any idea what the best site to submit it to where it would reach the most people and the most people who would be interested in it?

(Btw, like the other guy suggested, this is kind of tangential since the person I was responding to was taking the odd position of saying that gov. funding is corrupting without explaining any alternate funding method.)