Re: Pressure to publish, stem cell fiasco


Russell.Martin@xxxxxxx wrote:
>
> Also, it is
> not cheap to verify much biomedical research, and if your
> research grant is to investigate X, I suspect in many cases
> it is also, strictly speaking, not proper to use that money
> toward verifying or disproving Y. Now, there are ways
> around that to some extent (for instance nobody is going to
> be able to prove that you charged an hour you spent thinking
> about how to verify Y to your X grant, there is overlap in
> research areas that allows wiggle room, etc.), and some
> people have some discretionary money to spend where their
> noses point them, but most researchers are busting their
> butts to get enough results with the money they have for their
> present research project (and maybe a few extra results to
> seed their next research proposal) that they don't have the
> time or other resources to take on the world-acclaimed Dr.
> Smith and his Latest Amazing Results.
>
> I don't have a solution, in the sense of I don't have a magic
> wand to wave to make every researcher totally ethical.
> Except for such fantasy solutions, solutions take resources.
> Those resources can be as "small" as professors
> emphasizing ethics to their students or as large as
> actually funding people to repeat important experiments.
> Even the latter doesn't necessarily prove anything, since
> technique can be important and while experiments are
> replicable in principle, in practice when one is working
> on the cutting edge some people can make it work and
> some can't.
>

The solution is so to say "invincible Joe" approach. The Joe is
invincible not because nobody can catch him but because nobody
interested in the first place. People should not bother in verifying
the second rate results. On the other hand really important results
must be and will be verified many times before they become fully
accepted.

Therefore, the rule #1: never ever falsify anything really important.
If you step on the slippery slope of scientific fraud stay in the
second rank and you will be fine,

Old Pif

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