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Blockbuster Alzheimer's paper retracted by former Stanford president
- andrewflnr 3y agoA case of science progressing just slightly faster than by-the-funeral.
- ekianjo 3y ago> This retraction is Tessier-Lavigne’s fourth in as many months, a stunning turn of events for a researcher of his stature. That says a lot about how worthless the whole science journal and peer review process is. At this rate your assumption is that 50% of what is published is complete junk.
- wolverine876 3y agoThat would be a far less scientific, and true, conclusion than what was in the papers. From the article: > Retractions remain exceedingly rare for scientific papers: Just eight out of every 10,000 are retracted, according to a Retraction Watch database.
- teh_infallible 3y agoIf retractions are exceedingly rare, it could imply that, once published, fraudulent papers have a tendency to persist.
- wolverine876 3y agoYes, it could imply lots of things. To focus on only that possible implication shows a bias; to focus on any possible implication without data shows a disinterest in actual science.
- bsder 3y agoIt's also a recent thing that both wide dissemination and the "reproducibility crisis" have gained momentum. It has become a LOT easier for non-experts to hunt down fraud as electronic dissemination has widened.
- jyxent 3y agoYou misunderstand. The issue is that many more papers should be retracted. A paper this major that couldn't be replicated still took another decade to be retracted. There are many more papers that are less cited that will never get looked at in enough detail to discover fraud.
- wolverine876 3y agoYou're just making up results, sans data. Your paper won't even pass peer review - on HN.
- jyxent 3y agoAnd you downplay evidence of fraud. You mentioned studies where 1/3 to 1/2 of reviewed papers are found to not be replicable and say they get similar but weaker results. This is evidence of p-hacking or data manipulation. You should expect far less papers to not be replicable given proper statistics.
- Beldin 3y agoFirst: your arguments, even if I accept them as-is, do not constitute evidence of fraud, but of a systemic problem. Second: your argumentation raises the question: what are reasons for retraction? Shoddy science is (currently) not a reason for retraction. So just because a paper's results aren't replicable doesn't mean it should be retracted. Deliberate falsification is. But you'd need to distinguish those from not-perfect science. Last, a sanity check: your comment implies/suggests that 1/3 to 1/2 of published science is fraudulent because it's not replicable. But fraudsters might accidentally hit upon the truth - at least sometimes. Moreover, plenty of research answers a binary question (yes/no, which of the two has a greater effect, etc). For those research questions, just guessing the answer gives you a50% chance of being right. All of that implies that, following your logic, a huge portion of published research is based on fraudulent practices - not mistakes, but deliberately falsified contents. Add to that the "meta-fraud" (playing with authorship, citations), and one has to wonder if every second scientist on the planet is cheating and faking everything they publish. To me, that is an obvious sign that the reasoning went off rails somewhere - much like the result of a sine function being outside of [-1, 1]. So no, you shouldn't expect 1/3 to 1/2 of all published research to require retraction.
- vlovich123 3y agoAll a small retraction rate tells us is that it’s very difficult to get a retraction. But as with peer review, whether or not there’s a lot of retractions tells you little about the quality of the unretracted papers. Think about how much attention has to be paid for retractions to happen, how long the work existed without retraction, how difficult it was to get a retraction for outright fraud (ignoring work that itself was poor quality). This maybe says more about the incentives against retraction which then explains the low retraction counts better than whether or not the remaining papers are good. After all, the papers that have been retracted are high citation count papers that are foundational for certain avenues of research (this one for Alzheimer’s, the other famous fraudulent work about honesty pledges, etc). What does this say about all the papers that then cite these papers as work they’re basing theirs off of. What about the papers that then “agree” with papers that turn out to be completely fraudulent?
- wolverine876 3y ago> All a small retraction rate tells us is that it’s very difficult to get a retraction. You're just making the data fit your preconceived beliefs, which would is how we get fraudulant research.
- ekianjo 3y ago> making the data fit What? this is literally what happened (someone pushing hard to challenge the results) for these 4 retractions related to this guy's work. You don't get a retraction just by posting a comment on HN or something.
- vlovich123 3y agoI don’t think that’s correct. I’m saying that the retraction rate tells us nothing either way and highlighting why a low retraction rate could exist even in the face of massive problems using actual facts that are not in question as examples to illustrate that point. You’re the one making definitive statements of a position and then claiming the data backs up your position and then arguing with anyone who posits that your interpretation of the data may be flawed.
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- ekianjo 3y agoErm... > Retractions remain exceedingly rare for scientific papers This retraction actually happened because someone BOTHERED to check the results and push for hard questions. You can bet that this does not happen for every publication... So...
- wolverine876 3y agoMore data: > [Elisabeth] Bik later told The [Stanford] Daily in an interview, relying on her experience of investigating more than 20,000 papers for research misconduct and causing nearly 1,000 retractions and roughly the same number of corrections to make that claim. https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/29/stanford-presidents-research-under-investigation-for-scientific-misconduct-university-admits-mistakes/ https://stanforddaily.com/2022/11/29/stanford-presidents-res... Let's assume Bik chooses papers to investigate because, to a significant degree, her expert judgment is that they are most likely to have fraud, and Bik may know that topic better than anyone in the world. Of the 20K most likely candidates, 5% were retracted and 5% corrected, and 90% apparently needed neither (though possibly they were inconclusive or she couldn't convince publications or authors to retract).
- fnordpiglet 3y agoGiven how difficult it is to know what’s true in some of these fields and what’s fiction, that might be a pretty good rate. I think the bigger question is why is fraud and sloppy work so important? Maybe the incentive structure of academia is the actual problem and the peer review system is an imperfect, but perhaps effective, control? What’s the alternative to peer review?
- ekianjo 3y ago> Maybe the incentive structure of academia is the actual problem it's fairly clear that it is the case. You are rewarded with tenure for pushing lots of papers, regardless of their validity, since nobody actually cares about replicating anything. > peer review system is an imperfect, but perhaps effective The peer review system is just about checking points of details or calculation in a study, they never bother to actually check if the original results are valid. It's a mostly useless process that does nothing but remove the most obvious problems in the writing stage. > the alternative just like we did for hundreds of years now, proper replication baked in, by different people in different places, following the exact same conditions or protocol.
- fnordpiglet 3y agoSome (many) experiments the replication is difficult it exceptionally expensive. Particularly for experiments with large exotic equipment, huge populations, etc. But certainly replication should be incentivized - sadly I think even then it’ll be largely a secondary behavior.
- mike_hearn 3y ago> Maybe the incentive structure of academia is the actual problem There are definitely major problems in academic research (the number of retracted papers should be much higher than it is), but it's worth noting that Tessier-Lavigne did the non-reproducible research whilst working at Genentech. One of the strangest parts of this story is how Genentech apparently already knew that the claims didn't replicate, but allowed MTL to publish a paper in Nature about it anyway ... and then went ahead and presented the claims to investors. MTL left soon after Genentech was acquired, and when they concluded years later that the paper was definitely bad they had apparently lost the ability to retract it, even though it had been done by their own employees. Whilst papers are not much of anything, presenting research to a potential acquirer that you knew wasn't reliable sounds like the basis of potential legal claims. Normally companies are very careful about that because the liability from misleading investors or acquirers can be huge.
- the-dude 3y agoGreat timing.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nonrepeating 3y agoAs a young man, I would have given nearly anything to attend Stanford or MIT, but I knew I wasn’t quite up to their standards. Now I find their presidents are not up to mine.
- ShamelessC 3y agoTrue that. I used to feel bad not being able to get into these schools due to mental health issues. Felt insecure. Now I’ve looked around at the community of the Ivy League, the various so called success stories like Zuckerberg, and of course incidents like this. All I see is the rich fucking over everyone else for power and inflating public perception of their intelligence to try and keep actually intelligent people down.
- dpflan 3y agoI recall Paul Krugman discussing the composition of Ivy League college student bodies, and how legacy admissions allow subpar students to matriculate while the schools have the resources to attract the most intelligent / capable students — so the student body let’s say is half legacy, half brilliant outliers (one maybe consider rich legacies as societal outliers too for different aspects). The brilliant students give the schools clout for being intellectual; while, the legacy students support the elite way of life and make that associated with the school — elite lifestyle as an enticing prospect for many brilliant students. A symbiotic relationship is formed, one that may then essentially slowly corrupt the minds of people to aggressively pursue elite-perpetuating actions (so then elite are preserving their position in society, a position that can be challenged by the more intelligent).
- mgiampapa 3y agoPeople have to have the innovative ideas and skill to make them happen, and others need to know them to fund the venture.
- beenBoutIT 3y agoThis is why the objective admission system used by the University of California is so important. Nobody can game their way into a UC and IIRC, being a legacy only DQs you from some financial assistance they offer to 'first in family' to attend.
- mnky9800n 3y agoSeems like every day the rules apply to thee but not too me. Except I never seem to be the me in this situation. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
- wand3r 3y ago> Retractions remain exceedingly rare for scientific papers: Just eight out of every 10,000 are retracted, according to a Retraction Watch database. This to me is a crucial statistic. Is this number much less than it should be? Or are many more papers dubious in their methodology?
- LordShredda 3y agoWhat's the rejection rate? Maybe it's low because peer review tends to block them from being published
- VHRanger 3y agoThe replication crisis and data colada showed there's tons of dubious science. About half of papers results don't hold up to replication.
- wolverine876 3y agoAbout 1/2 (1/3?) of papers in a specific field, when replicated, produced similar results but less strong statistical measures of them. It's fun to hear people complain about accuracy in this way.
- korginator 3y agoAdd this point from the article for context: "This retraction is Tessier-Lavigne’s fourth in as many months, a stunning turn of events for a researcher of his stature." That begs the question, how did at least four such cutting-edge research works with fabricated data and results go through the review process unscathed?
- ekianjo 3y agoYou just discovered that the peer review process is a big farce. Well done.
- wolverine876 3y agoThere's no evidence of fabricated data, afaik. (That's your own fabrication, apparently.)
- roddylindsay 3y agoFun fact: Theo Baker, the student journalist for the Stanford Daily who broke (and continues to break) major portions of this Marc Tessier-Lavigne scandal, is the son of Peter Baker, chief White House correspondent for the NY Times.
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- WillPostForFood 3y agoAnd his mom is Susan Glasser, who was assistant managing editor at The Washington Post, the editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine, the founding editor of Politico Magazine, and a global affairs analyst for CNN.
- pfannkuchen 3y agoWonder if this is a case of journalism in the blood, or having media connections others don’t have (probably both).
- i8comments 3y agoStill a good place to study, though.
- laidoffamazon 3y agoI think it would be beneficial if every Stanford admit just went to their state schools. The purpose of these institutions isn't to educate, it's to confer status (in a tax efficient and positive-eugenic way)
- wolverine876 3y agoHave you attended any of those institutions? That's not my experience at all. The education was off-the-charts good. In more detail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38829116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38829116
- laidoffamazon 3y agoOf course not, I wouldn't get in. But I never said the education is bad. I just said their purpose is not to educate. Morill Act institutions were developed to educate, and by accepting the vast majority of people that apply University of Oklahoma will always exist to educate. The same cannot be said for Brown or Stanford.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoI got master's in CS from Brown. Fwiw, I was really pleased with the instruction.
- laidoffamazon 3y agoAgain, never said the education was bad! Just that their purpose isn’t to educate as evidenced by the fact that they don’t let in 95% of those that apply. Maybe Brown MSCS is 94%, I don’t know.
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- pedalpete 3y agoFor those not familiar, this is the paper which first proposed the amyliod plaque theory (the original link mentions protiens, but not beta-amyloid or Tau specifically). https://www.drugdiscoverynews.com/what-now-for-the-amyloid-hypothesis-15611 https://www.drugdiscoverynews.com/what-now-for-the-amyloid-h...
- whoiscroberts 3y agoWow, even as a lay person I hear other lay people talk about amyloid plaque. It’s scary to know how far into common knowledge misinformation can burrow.
- timbit42 3y agoHave you been following politics?
- whoiscroberts 3y agoIndeed, same phenomenon plagues that arena as well. The desire of high profile people to be seen as brilliant is strong.
- kristianp 3y agoHow many years have these false papers set back Alzheimer's research? The amyloid plaque hypothesis has been dominant for a decade-plus while people continue to die from Alzheimer's. Will there be suings or criminal cases as a result of this?
- wolverine876 3y ago> Retractions remain exceedingly rare for scientific papers: Just eight out of every 10,000 are retracted, according to a Retraction Watch database. Reading HN, one might get the impression that it's much higher.
- ekianjo 3y agoIts not because most of stuff is not retracted that its valid. Most studies are never replicated...
- wolverine876 3y agoWhat data do you have to support that?
- ekianjo 3y agofirst, I have a functioning brain that makes it possible for me to imagine that incentives to cheat and the complete lack of replication process makes it easy to push the balance towards publishing fake results. Then, I am well aware that the peer process is not about replication at all and is mostly useless in its current shape. Then people actually tried it which confirmed everything I mentioned: > This certainly does not only happen in cancer research. In a study from Nature, out of 1,576 researchers, more than 70% have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and over half failed to reproduce their own. And even though 52% agree there is a reproducibility crisis, only 31% think that failing to reproduce published results means that the result is wrong. Even if replication is not necessary for results to be valid and true, any further work based on these results requires confirmation of valid results beyond the initial study. source: https://vce.usc.edu/weekly-news-profile/the-replication-crisis-issues-in-scientific-research/ https://vce.usc.edu/weekly-news-profile/the-replication-cris... Current Science is mostly cargo cult.
- bsder 3y ago> Current Science is mostly cargo cult. Such statements are mostly cargo cult. Experiments with known results are finicky. See: "Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass" https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~kovar/hall.html Experiments with unknown results are ridiculously finicky. You would be stunned at the number of experiments that got lucky and hinge on things like "how strongly stoppered the bottle is" (this normally manifests as "give it to grad student so-and-so as he somehow always makes it work even though the rest of you suck"). Unless you actively attempt to replicate an experiment you simply will not trip over this. This isn't to say that there isn't real fraud--there is. However, even when everybody is fully aboveboard and cooperating, replication is ridiculously hard. This isn't limited to science. Any company that tries to replicate a manufacturing line trips over this, too. Suddenly, a whole bunch of variables that you didn't even conceive of affect your results. Go to an injection molding conference and prepare to laugh until you cry over how uncontrolled everything is.
- DanAtC 3y ago[flagged]