Failure of Peer Review

**master of the puppets** · 01-09-2006, 20:19

i wonder how rich he got off this lie, and i wonder what would have happened if someone in oppenheimers crew did that.

**Geoffrey S** · 01-09-2006, 20:55

I like to think that if someone intends to use such a person's 'work' they'd examine for themselves the evidence and conclusions. The fact that the man faked his evidence was bad, but ultimately should not cause problems since if it reaches the point where someone may examine it for serious reasons it'd fall apart; only ridiculous levels of trust in the idea that he wouldn't fake such paper could cause trouble, but in such a competitive world of science I find this unlikely.

**BDC** · 01-09-2006, 21:12

Originally Posted by master of the puppets

i wonder how rich he got off this lie, and i wonder what would have happened if someone in oppenheimers crew did that.

Probably not very. You can only sell stuff that works...

**Papewaio** · 01-10-2006, 01:52

On a similar tangent:

900 university cheats busted

**rory_20_uk** · 01-14-2006, 17:58

Those in the media are neither the brightest lightlbulbs, are not used to reading research papers nor are trained to do so and frankly have no interest in the truth if that ups the cost of the programme.

Fast, lots of graphics - forget the second you've watched it are the rules of modern TV.

**doc_bean** · 01-14-2006, 22:21

2 years ago, an ex-student body president (well, rough translation of the concept) graduated from my faculty with some nice results. The next year a doctoral student continue working on the subject but for some reason his test gave *strange results*, at least compared to the ones in the thesis. So after about half a year of trying to figure out what he was doing wrong (noone likes to admit they can't do something) he calls the graduate and asks about his thesis.
His reply:
" I'm graduated and don't have anything to do with the faculty or university anymore."

This might be an extreme example, but I've heard from a lot of people they 'adjusted' their data a little to make it fit better. I've even had assistants (doctoral students) tell me I should maybe, adjust a measured value a little bit. Personally i don't understand their problem, no one should expect perfect results, and mistakes in measuring do happen, you remove the points and mention it, no big deal normally, but it seems that in today's scientific world, honesty doesn't count for a lot anymore.

**Alexanderofmacedon** · 01-14-2006, 22:25

In my 5th grade science project I tweaked a couple of grades...

I was young and I never did it again!

**71-hour Ahmed** · 01-14-2006, 23:23

With the shear amount of papers and data out there I don't believe that anyone can feasibly tell from the limited data in papers if something is genuine or not if it looks right. And with so many journals it would be easy to replicate the same paper across several in different formats etc. At least one bunch of people in a Japanese Uni have put papers out on a subject closely related to my old research project that use a chemical that is fundamentally unsuited to the role its applied in. I know from my work that the results it gives are erratic (even with the controlling variable not altered, the measured variable shows a wide range of results, never mind what happens once you changed the control variable), yet there graphs are all nice and orderly with few results off the trend line and a very even trend. Mine in comparison would look like a picture of snow flakes quite easily.