- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
- cross-posted to:
- technews@radiation.party
A high-profile expert on ethics and dishonesty is facing allegations of dishonesty in her own work and has taken administrative leave from Harvard Business School.
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There is a real need for a discussion on the publish or perish culture in academia as it seems to be having a negative impact on the overall quality of research.
This would be great if it resulted in a reversal of established academics not wanting their names on papers unlessy they are conversant with the whole experiment and where integrally involved rather than the current practice of adding anyone who you so much as borrowed a piece of equipment from.
Honestly, I always look askance at ‘big ideas’ & ‘exciting breakthroughs’ from places like Harvard, I think the inflated expectations that come along with a career at ‘prestige’ institutions tend to exacerbate academic dishonesty.
These folks face a lot of unrealistic pressure to ‘excel’, and generally get the benefit of the doubt because people assume they’re the best, while also being targeted by a bunch of shady business interests who want to leverage that position.
We’re still grappling with all the disinformation about saturated fat that came out of Harvard in the 60’s… I wonder how many people were sickened or killed by the trans fats in margarine and other ‘healthier alternatives’.
For background: “The documents show that a trade group called the Sugar Research Foundation, known today as the Sugar Association, paid three Harvard scientists the equivalent of about $50,000 in today’s dollars to publish a 1967 review of research on sugar, fat and heart disease. The studies used in the review were handpicked by the sugar group, and the article, which was published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, minimized the link between sugar and heart health and cast aspersions on the role of saturated fat.”
So I performed and experiment in a PhD program that was published. My name was not put on it but I got a nice thanks for mention at the end. That is one thing that is messed up with academic papers today. The “authorship”. Beyond that though this experiment had been done before was inconclusive and im sure I know why. I saw the data and all the points where at one minute intervals and that was the protocol but I can tell you right now that it can’t be done. You take the readings and count cells after you add a component to stop replication. You go round and round but there are a lot of steps. I recorded my time when I was able to record the data. at 55 second or 65 second or whatever the elapsed time was. I saw this a lot as a science major. Some folks just don’t have a correct mind for science. They are not intentionally being dishonest but they want to fit things into these patterns like even spaced time and such. They fudge things so the graph looks pretty. All sorts of stuff. Even if the ones who make it through the programs are good about these things the experiments are not carried out by and large at that level.
Yep, I think the current ‘publish or perish’ pressures mentioned above lead to a lot of authorship issues, and generally have a negative impact on scientific advancement as a whole.
It seems to me, like most modern problems, money is at the root of this, with both big journals and the ‘corporate capture’ crowd incentivizing a quantity-over-quality approach to publication.
The big journals just want more to stuff to put behind their paywalls, and don’t give a damn about the actual science. The corporate folks like sloppy work, because it helps them generate conveniently errant results, which let them astroturf scientific support for any profitable position, and confound any financially inconvenient findings.
On the whole, I think we’re pretty much screwed until we find a way to break away from the capitalist incentives, and focus on research quality.
we need bodycams for scientists! /s
Archival link because paywall.
Francesca Gino is one of HBS’s best-known behavioural scientists and author of Rebel Talent, a 2018 book with the subtitle “Why It Pays to Break the Rules at Work and in Life”.
Oh sweet irony.
On my machine the link goes nowhere. :(
Try this link
Thanks
