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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a story where MIT has fired an associate professor of biology for fabricating data in a published scientific paper, in unpublished manuscripts, and in grant applications.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."
can't believe this.. a Harvard graduate fired from MIT omg!
When you say something is "not profitable" what you really mean is "consumers don't want it." PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING ANALAYSIS BEFORE YOU IMITATE MOST SLASDHOT READERS WHO RESPOND TO ME BY IGNORING IMPORTANT CONTENT IN MY POST To be sure, consumers prefer "improvements in technology" to "no improvements in technology" - you can never beat "something" with "nothing". But that's not the choice here: you have to count the costs, not just the benefits. If you spend $100 billion dollars now to get a benefit of $160 billion fifty years from now that was a loss because the ROR was ~1%/year. You could have benefitted more people by sticking the money in a bank. In other words, the research cost you much better opportunities.
(And please don't say "well you can't just count monetary savings, you have to count improvement in product quality" - because I am. Any benefit can be expressed equivalently, for purposes of comparison, in dollars via indifference curve analysis.)
I'd estimate that when you tabulate the ROR on current long-term research, it's well below 1%, maybe even negative. Remember, you have to count all research costs, not just the costs of research that actually leads to something. Nor can you count research whose results are "force-fitted" into applications we can already do better and cheaper, like memory metal being used to check if fish were defrosted when a 50-cent memory thermometer can do the same thing (which I keep griping about).
If all current long-term research funds were redirected into the private sector, corporations would "flush out" any significant gains from incremental improvements, at which point the ROR on more long-term activities would look more attractive and then they would invest in it.
(Btw, this is kind of tangential - I was just questioning where the thread starter got his conclusion that government funding is corrupting.)
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This is exactly the type of thing that I expect from the old institutions these days. They rely on "honor systems" and refuse to police things like plagiarism. What they ACTUALLY teach is "don't get caught and you're fine ... and we won't try to catch you". Until I see these schools implement things like turnitin [turnitin.com] I will continue to disrespect and distrust their grads.
Okay... fine, dollars posited were given in nominal terms. In that case, it was a waste. Now let's say the dollars posited were given in real terms (i.e., year 2005 dollars). In that case, it was a waste.
You're right that inflation needs to be a factor in calculations, but it really wasn't relevant to this particular example.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531