

How the Biggest Fabricator in Science Got Caught - sergeant3
http://nautil.us/issue/24/error/how-the-biggest-fabricator-in-science-got-caught

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tlb
It doesn't seem that hard to generate entirely plausible fake data using
simple randomized algorithms, that wouldn't leave any particular signature.

I don't want to actually publish fake data, of course. But it could be fun to
have a contest, where one team cooks up fake data and the other team tries to
detect it. You could take real papers, scrub all the experimental data out of
them, and people try to cook up fake data to support the conclusions. If the
other team can't reliably decide which paper is fake, the first team wins.

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Maultasche
That's true. If you can detect fake data patterns, you can generate fake data
that doesn't follow those patterns.

That wouldn't detect the researchers who were lazy and published fake studies
because they are expected to. It would, however, foil the researchers who are
creating supporting data to arrive at a particular conclusion

