The Stanford Daily: Stanford president resigns over manipulated research, will retract at least three papers

Link

 

Another one bites the dust.

 

Stanford president’s research under investigation for scientific misconduct, University admits ‘mistakes’ (Nov 2022)
Internal review found ‘falsified data’ in Stanford President’s Alzheimer’s research, colleagues allege (Feb 2023)
Stanford president dodges research misconduct questions (Apr 2023)

 

The journalist on the student newspaper that reported on this is Theo Baker who is a comp sci/journalism undergraduate. Reporting on the image manipulation investigations by Dr Elisabeth Bik.

See also This 18-Year-Old College Journalist Could Bring Down Stanford University’s President (Buzzfeed News, March 2023)

 

You love to see it.

 

Ah! I've seen her stuff, follow her on twitter. She spends a lot of time chasing after this kind of fraud, obvious copy-pastes that are hard to notice unless you're really looking for them.

Glad it worked out, but this is one bad apple who remained in, in fact was top of, the bunch for a long time and as we know: a bad apple spoils the whole bunch. Everyone always ignores the implication that unless someone was caught early, and this is the president of a major university we are talking about, then everything that derives from that should be considered rotten unless proven otherwise.

It will be interesting because this is something AIs will excel at, are already pretty good. Whatever fraud is out there, they will be caught. I doubt it will change anything until there is mass reporting of this, I noticed that Dr Bik faces the same issue where she points out this stuff to journal editors and they react the same as when we do. They really, really do not like it when errors are pointed out in their business. Even though the entire premise of academia is the exact opposite of that.

But as we noticed recently, even basic math involving 2-digit percentages is now a matter of opinion when one prefers the outcome, so I'm actually surprised that he resigned over it instead of just calling it a witch hunt, or that it doesn't change the value of his research. It has been very effective for our BPS overlords. It clearly was for this fraud. Until it wasn't.

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1682191114025967618

 

Familiar behavior. Actually, identical behavior.

(Asking Theo Baker, the journalism student who caused the resignation)

 

Keep in mind that the identified fraud was over copied images, if I understand it correctly. Not exactly disputable when you're caught. Just as disputable as overlapping entry and recovery criteria. And yet, hubris and bullying.

 

As we know, many actual journalists, and editors, from major publications, did back down from threats by Wessely and his gang. And likely elsewhere.

Although it's hard to say whether he could have stormed this if his father was not chief White House correspondent for the New York times, and his mother also a prominent journalist (or editor, not sure, anyway, influential).

 

Article in NYT by Theo Baker. Haven’t read yet…

The Research Scandal at Stanford Is More Common Than You Think




https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/30/...LGAhGEtE-SNXrwJQZlxXUybwa4zWhQ&smid=url-share

 

https://twitter.com/user/status/1685631150805463042


The NYT asked me to write a guest essay about the resignation of Stanford's president. My takeaway? This is so much bigger than one man and his research. Scientific integrity is vital and its guardrails have proven insufficient:

 

I think S4ME members can be proud of being on the right side of that equation.

 

I think it's even bigger than that, still. However much he thinks it's bigger, it's probably as much worse as whatever he thinks.

Because the system is built on the same naïve premise that doctors don't do harm, even though the history of medicine is basically a history of horror, with maybe 1.5 centuries of progress.

It has zero real accountability, which is the same issue with medicine. Judges can't make stuff up. Attorneys can't lie. Engineers, accountants, you name it. They can't lie in the conduct of their profession and are held accountable.

Medicine and academic reward fraud and allow even the most basic criticism to be framed as basically lèse-majesté. Retractions aren't good enough. They often amount to the kind of fraud that would lead to someone being kicked out of a profession. It's barely a slap on the wrist. And journals aren't even interested in most errors they publish, because it's only when they acknowledge them that they look back. They usually react defiantly because there is no downside to it.

The premise of this naïve system needs to change. It's ridiculous. Peer review is some of the most absurd BS ever invented. As if "some dude down the hall where I work looked at it quickly and says it's probably fine" is the same thing as actual accountability. There are some disciplines where this is serious, like in physics, but in medicine it's a complete joke, and that barely accounts for how massively worse it is with anything psychosomatic, or even just psychology.

 

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