

How often do scientists fabricate data? - pg
http://www.thenation.com/article/165313/disgrace-marc-hauser?page=full

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denzil_correa
Depends on what you define as "fabrication". Most scientists tweak things
around to suit theories to look like facts, rather than deriving theories from
facts. _Winning the Games Scientists Play_ is a nice book [1] delves into this
issue in some detail.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Games-Scientists-Play-
Sinderma...](http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Games-Scientists-Play-
Sindermann/dp/0738204250/)

~~~
yulhape
Perhaps an example of such tweaking is the "discovery" of black holes reported
to the public, when the definition of a black hole precludes definitively
observing them. What actually happens is that astronomers plug values for
observations above a suspected black hole (e.g. the orbital speed of stars)
into Einstein's theory of gravity, and let the theory tell them whether they
"discovered" a black hole. Then they let the media report the black hole as a
confirmation of Einstein's theory.

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erikb
Am I so far away from reality or are these people? I can't believe these
numbers are so small. I don't have strong evidence, but the situation at my
university looks more like 99% of students cheated on a regular basis
(actually students who don't cheat are considered stupid). Like students of
one semester copy the exam questions and hand them to the next year's
candidates. Or papers are copied & pasted from Wikipedia and the likes and
data used is pretty much all made up by the writer. I never did or know
anybody who did it, but I think it is also common practice to pay others to do
your university work.

And the same with teachers. It is quite normal (meaning it happens everyday
and everybody does it, not in a sense of "it should be like that" normal) that
university government uses their funds to help their friends abroad (there are
even news articles about it, but nobody does anything against it), that
teaching professors use their funds to pay students to produce software and
other products to sell in the teacher's private companies and then hide that
work as "science". 99% teachers and students don't do real science.

I can believe that the numbers are lower in other schools, that I somehow
managed to get in one of the worst, most fucked up schools on this planet. But
even then the difference can't be that big. If you really believe, there are
less then 2 out of 3 people being involved in day to day cheating and
corruption, then I believe you must be blind. It's human nature, we are
talking about.

From my point of view it is so common, that you are really stupid to just
follow the artificial rules you read in rule & ethics books. Maybe science in
it's purest is about discovering truth. But human daily life is pretty much
not about it. It's about the relations you have and the "public face" you can
(artificially) create.

(Yes, I once was one of the fighters of true good. But if the whole world
around you is "cheating" you can't get anywhere. You know, teachers even fail
your exams, if they want to. And if you fight for the "good", nobody comes to
give you a high five. They just think you are stupid for not following the
real rules or just not being able to graduate normally.)

------
cumulus
~2% of scientists admit to have fabricated, falsified or modified data or
results at least once.

[http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005738)

