

Crystallographer faked data - yread
http://www.the-scientist.com/blog/display/56226/

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RK
Something like this happened/is happening to a professor that I worked for in
grad school. He has retracted several papers and will probably be retracting
at least one more from top journals (Nature, Science, etc). Fortunately for me
I was only in the group for a very short time and never had any publications
as a result. This can't be said for the other students I knew in the group,
although it was one of the grad student co-authors who apparently "turned him
in".

My assessment of the situation is that the prof is extremely capable, but the
pressures of being a tenure-track assistant professor, probably combined with
the arrogance of thinking he could get away with faking data, made it too
tempting.

I think he will certainly end up shut out of academia, but at the same time I
don't think you'll hear about it, because too many people stand to lose face
if it is publicized. I think this is probably the most common outcome of
"scientific misconduct" when it is actually caught and punished.

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ggruschow
What does this guy's future look like now? Nobody'll give him a job in science
right?

Is there any way he can use his expertise outside of starting his own company
that somehow monetizes it?

Would he be accepted as a high-school teacher?

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jackfoxy
A timely article, given some higher profile accusations that have recently
surfaced...

Newton appears to have faked experimental data in the optical research he
published, in that he interpolated experimental results to accuracies he could
not possibly have measured. Academic standards were a little different in
those days.

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Evgeny
Were the journals that published his articles peer-reviewed or not?

