What percent of univeristy / scientific research is just totally made up? Dr. Gregg Semenza, Ranga P. Dias & others exposed

Also, your "Black Brilliance" kind of people. You're right, but call it both ways :)

You don't appear to know very much about academia, getting papers published, betting grants funded, getting good jobs, getting tenure, etc. I don't think they'd call it "publish or perish" if there were no competition.

I think just making up outrageous topics and applying for funding could be the best way to stop that nonsense.

Just make up any topic and try to tie to racism and/or sexism and you're gold.

"Ice cream flavors are racist."

"How marriage is state sponsored rape."

stuff like that.

Even in running there is some dishonest research. For instance the study that compared the vaporfly 1 to the streak lt 3 or 4 but completely omitted the streak lt 2, which is a far superior shoe. The false assumption was made that the streak lt 3 or 4 was a better shoe for what was being tested for and the existence of the superior streak xc to lt 2 was ignored simply because that was what nike had on market.

This is taken to the extreme with shoes for which an updated model is launched yearly.

There’s obviously a huge difference between being wrong and putting your finger on the scale to achieve an outcome.

Ethics training is the thing that guides you and keeps you from going astray.

This

dailymail.co.uk

FSU professor with reputation for falsifying data abruptly leaves

https://www.facebook.com/DailyMail

A professor at Florida State University suddenly left his $190,000-a-year position after being accused of fudging data to make racism seem more common than it is.

Open link

altered sample size, among other things. He’s a pretty good example of what not to do

"Just totally made up"? 0.0001% if we're talking real science. You might end up with cherry-picked data points that support a hypothesis or seem significant, but it would be very hard to completely fabricate a scientific process, testing and results and have several co-authors sign on. Now, if we're taking about social science 'research,' then a good bit of that is opinion and assertion supported by some extrapolated data points that don't really show what they are purported to show.

You’re right about there being competition in those aspects, but academics don’t have the assumption that all the top performers in their discipline are cheating and therefore need to cheat themselves to keep up.

Undergraduate admissions has nothing to do with scientific research or academia.

Exactly 2.39% is made up

This is basically the right answer. As a "real science" researcher with over 150 peer-reviewed publications and 40+ years of experience, my take is that there is very little (not zero!) overt fraud in science. There is, however, a fair amount of cherry-picking of data. People who aren't actually engaged in scientific research don't realize how much gray area there is. There's a lot of judgment involved in deciding whether it's legitimate to throw out a particular piece of data. And many of the papers that get retracted, because it can be shown that someone manipulated an image to make the data look more convincing than they really were, probably actually are correct.

As another poster said, outright scientific fraud gets a lot of attention largely because it is rare.

reads about 3 examples of fraud, (the one at johns hopkins sounds like it involves interprestation of medical imaging which can be open to interpretation and visual error), makes claim about all research being corrupt.

It would be good to take a lool at the total number of publishing professional academics to article retraction rate before making this statement.

also, reserach that is not fraudulent, but potentially poorly done (think overt assumption that was a little bit off the mark) gets retracted or re-reveiwed often.

Do you really believe this? Do you have a background in science?

If so, no wonder people don't trust scientists. That's an idiotic take.

Agreed, the publish or perish paradigm is problematic and creates incentives to publish at any cost, particularly in high impact journals, and particularly if you are in a R1 research institution. That being said, I think most academics get into the game for the right reasons and are passionate (although often biased one way or another) regarding their area of interest. Obtaining a PhD or other terminal degree takes a lot of time and usually pay next to nothing during the process... those that end up as research professors rarely make big bucks, and if that's the goal, there are jobs in industry that would more reliably offer a high salary.

I think the peer review process in itself is flawed, though it's the best we've got... way better than the "do you own research" crowd's understanding of scientific consensus. While there are some bad apples who purposely submit fraudulent or plagiarized work, I think the majority of "bad" research out there is simply poor study design and flaws in the peer review process rather than outright corruption.

I'm in academia and we are human beings so there is corruption. But if every institution had to show their work and have it reproduced like we do, the world would have far less bullsh!t. So to answer your question, a very small percentage despite your anecdotes. Your anecdotes actually highlight a functioning immune system that identifies corruption. The places with such immune systems are fewer and fewer by the day.

Please keep physics out ya mouth 😂. Any decent physicist should be able to explain the meaning of any topic in any field in simple everyday terms. Also, cosmology is a branch of physics…

When ask what the thing actually “is” - I’ll quote the great William Jefferson Clinton to say “… it depends what the meaning of ‘is’ is…”. The answers are generally unambiguous and are matter, field, and space-time or some combination thereof.

Tensor calculus and the tools of theoretical physics are not hocus-pocus. You might not be able to understand them, but it makes them no less real

I'm a professor in the sciences at a good American university. In my research area, I have never encountered anything that I thought was fraudulent, though often I read papers that are sloppy, lazy, or incorrect for non-malicious reasons. With the high stakes biological experiments or, recently, things like high-T superconductors, there are huge incentives for breakthroughs. Just like sport, it pushes some small fraction of people to try to cheat. I think it is rare, but often elevated in the news because those that get caught are often making extraordinary claims in the first place.

There's the correct answer from someone in it. There's corruption (I appreciate the honesty), BUT according to you, there is not as much as in other fields (that happen to be overrun with corruption). And, it's all getting worse by the day.

That's great.