World Conference on Research Integrity

[Eleanor]

Saw this in a Mastodon thread today about the World Conference on Research Integrity.

https://mastodon.online/@tomstafford/114301415246307147

@tomstafford@mastodon.online

First, Patricia Murray on the scandal of fraudulent medical evidence (leading to patient deaths) in trachea translant research

[screenshot of a slide with the following text]

What have I learned?

Bad science harms patients and wastes money

Institutions sweep serious research misconduct under the carpet

Journals don’t like retracting fraudulent papers

Some funding bodies champion research fraudsters

Research fraudsters usually face no consequences

Whistleblowers are often threatened with legal action

Media exposure can help

​

 

[V.R.T.]

This conference should have a keynote speech on what went on with PACE. Perhaps in five or ten years conferences like this will do.

 

[Sasha]

I used to think that research misconduct was a thing, and that someone was policing it - maybe the person's university - and that there would be consequences if they were found guilty of it, such as losing their job.

Was it ever a thing?

 

[rvallee]

Institutions sweep serious research misconduct under the carpet

Journals don’t like retracting fraudulent papers

Some funding bodies champion research fraudsters

Research fraudsters usually face no consequences

Whistleblowers are often threatened with legal action

Interesting to state this so boldly. I would actually say that institutions are fully responsible for research misconduct. They don't just sweep it under the rug, it only happens because institutions support it. As all the other points support. It can even be argued that they want the misconduct to continue, could stop it at any moment, but choose to keep it going. Usually for corrupt reasons, having to do with a calculation that it's better to cheat in a system that rewards cheating, than be one of the suckers who doesn't take advantage of a system that rewards cheating, upholding principles above interests. Interests always win, the institutions guarantee it.

And to think that all of this overlooks the kind of misconduct that is standard in psychobehavioral research, so it massively underestimates it and its impact. And it would never consider the kind of grand misconduct we have seen with the "immunity debt" stuff and the institutions pushing the interests of the rich by simply ceasing to do their job and providing the reasons for it, like still denying that COVID is airborne, encouraging people to be sick regularly, dismissing masks and even vaccines in the process.

 

[Eleanor]

I hadn't heard of Patricia Murray before. https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/people/patricia-murray

Interested to see that she began her career as a nurse. Perhaps this helped her to see medical claims in terms of their impact on patients rather than on the researchers' careers.