Scientific fraud in medical research

Machiavelli said:

I haven't got the time to watch all of that, but the opening minutes give the game away. Yes, academics are assessed by publication metrics, and that doesn't lead to good research. I'm not entirely convinced by the truth's immutability, but that would be a rather long discussion. Thanks for posting.

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Harry Wilson's tackle said:

Cheers. It resonated for me with our present situation. I am a keen advocate of the pursuit of truth, and accept that the truth is often impossible to identify, but it certainly exists, and it strikes me as a human duty to seek it. If one is not that fussed, fine. The dangerous people are those who not only don't care what is true, they are happy to peddle any old bollocks if it suits there narrative and agenda. In time we may find there has been some or even a lot of that occurring during this crisis. In the case of Trump we can all see where he fits into the spectrum of behaviours. With others it is not yet clear. I find it unsettling.

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Machiavelli said:

Written (ethical, political -- metaphysical?) philosophy begins with an 'argument' between Socrates and Thrasymachus. The latter is basically Trump, who declares 'might is right', which basically approximates to 'might makes right'. There's a big discussion as to the extent to which the 'Socrates' that appears in The Republic constitutes the view of the real Socrates, or of Plato who wrote the text, thereby putting words into the mouth of Socrates. Whereas Thrasymachus' argument on truth (which can be boiled down to: it doesn't exist) can be summarised in a few words, 'Socrates' continues to investigate the notion of truth, and other qualities that he aligns with it, including justice, the good, knowledge, etc.
He even launches a method to arrive at truth which he calls 'the dialectic'. Fast forward 2,500 years and the widely regarded method to arrive at truth is the scientific one, although there has been a lively, interesting debate within the philosophy of science over the past 80 years or so, as to whether -- and how -- the scientific method can access the truth.
I think 'Socrates' was right to challenge Thrasymachus at the political (and, to a lesser extent, ethical) level, but that he was wrong to claim that the truth exists in the world and that philosophers can discover it -- a baton that has been passed on more recently to scientists.
That's about the best I can do with metaphysics, the philosophy of science, etc in a short space of time (although I can't do too much better at greater length).

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Harry Wilson's tackle said:

Cheers! My knowledge of 'old' philosophy comes largely from Russell's 'History of Western Philosophy'. I'm not bothered about learning more because a lot of the old guys were apparently dishonest (shaped by their time, their belief in a god, etc). Of course, as a scientist, I am attracted to the scientific method and Popper's 'falsification' of hypotheses (which is the scientific method as far as I'm concerned). And, yes, even in that sense there is no truth, only hypotheses, theorems and laws, and even the laws are 'truth' only in context. The method is the thing, for me: taking an assumption and seing what it predicts and what can be tested. With a working hypothesis I can proceed, testing it to distruction. Or not. And if not, I'll accept it as sufficiently close to the truth to encourage me to build from it. Never will you get me to say what I 'believe' unless I'm being careless (which I can be) or using the word as a lazy surrogate for how much I am prepared to invest in the testing of a hypothesis. Anyway, you probably guessed all that

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chip said:

Thanks for that HWT. I guess there is nothing in that that was not previously known but the chair's comment at the start of questions was very telling, someting like it was only the tip of the iceberg. I remember having an appraisal years ago when single author papers carried a high currency and being told I needed more and that I shouldn't be afraid to tread on other peoples toes to get them. Another form of fraud being encouraged by a very senior colleague which encouraged me to trawl through their publications. Of course lots of repitition with different author lists for essentially the same paper in multiple places. As you say, I concluded their work was fairly unimportant as no one seemed bothered.

Coincidentally, I got an email from Wiley this morning about a fairly recent publication which has been well read and cited which I looked at again. The author declaration is quite clear:

A.B.C., D.E. and F.G.H. all contributed to the writing of this article, approved the final version of the manuscript and agree to be accountable for all aspects of this work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved. All persons designated as authors qualify for authorship, and all those who qualify for authorship are listed.

Some of the examples that Peter gave certainly demonstrate that the above is meaningless if Journals aren't doing anything about this and reviewers are insufficiently thorough. Indeed, some of them are criminal. Your last point is so pertinent but also highlight the vested interests of individuals and the difficulty of verifying "new" results and rigorous review. It also gets pushed down the supply chains with PhD students pressed to come up with results and publications. I know that a lot of supervisors don't always check these outputs well. I think I shall pull some of those examples for grad school AI training purposes. I wouldn't have expected NSC to be a source for that, so thanks again for posting!

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Harry Wilson's tackle said:

Cheers. It resonated for me with our present situation. I am a keen advocate of the pursuit of truth, and accept that the truth is often impossible to identify, but it certainly exists, and it strikes me as a human duty to seek it. If one is not that fussed, fine. The dangerous people are those who not only don't care what is true, they are happy to peddle any old bollocks if it suits there narrative and agenda. In time we may find there has been some or even a lot of that occurring during this crisis. In the case of Trump we can all see where he fits into the spectrum of behaviours. With others it is not yet clear. I find it unsettling.

Click to expand...