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LordVayder t1_j95xkje wrote

End his career. Obviously he hasn’t learned his lesson. Science has no place for people like him.

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SecretStonerSquirrel t1_j97jbhs wrote

Stanford has always been a place of grift, the Trustees are facing allegations of tax fraud and money laundering

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Strix780 t1_j97fdpl wrote

I'm not going to name names, but I've known cases where someone has done something really awful like this, but they rehabilitate themselves. I'm thinking plagiarism, embezzlement of research funds, stuff like that. I'm not as sure about data fraud.

What happens is they move somewhere else far away out of the country and lie low for a few years, in a lower profile job. If they can keep their noses clean, they may be able to slide back into polite academic society in a surprisingly short time.

In this fellow's case, he has international connections and a lot of friends who can lubricate his redemption. Really, the whole world would be open to him unless he's pissed too many people off in his scramble to the top. It would probably mean a private sector job. The other big advantage he'll have is that he's certainly rich; I'd guess a guy like him would have a net worth in the high seven figures, maybe more.

Of course, the other option is simply that he retires. He's 64, and it may be time to pack it in.

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Mydickradiates t1_j9b0i7f wrote

you could name names. I don't see the point of protecting someone you just described, and without that your post could've been written by anyone bluffing and puffing

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gornzilla t1_j97w5mr wrote

How long before AI is used to check research around the world, in all languages, looking for mistakes and possibly outright lying?

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Billis- t1_j988no0 wrote

How long before AI is used to do the research?

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riverrocks452 t1_j9b5sfg wrote

Allegations of data fraud can fuck someone's entire career, even if shown to be false. As a scientist, I'm completely on board with punitive measures for folks who knowingly and deliberately fuck with data....but I want a human- actually, several humans- looking into it before anything goes public.

The number of horror stories I've read from and about students accused of plagiarism because a comparison program thought their work was too similar to something else is...too high for me to ever place trust in a program. It's too severe of a consequence, and too high a rate of false positives.

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gornzilla t1_j9bffyq wrote

This is a great response. I don't know much about AI.

I did spend years teaching and I know for a fact that at some high up American education systems that plagiarism is allowed. It's not an open thing, but at many schools, bringing in foreign students with the massive amount of tuition they pay, it gets blown off.

A professor friend of mine was stalked by a foreign student and was told to arrange security to walk her to her car because the school wanted the huge amount of tuition.

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riverrocks452 t1_j9br9h0 wrote

A family friend went through the process on the other end. She had all the documentation to show it was her work, start to finish. More, truth be told, than I would ever have been able to produce if it had been me in the hot seat. Google Docs had recorded the evolution of her paper. Her citations were complete. She just used the wrong combination of less-common words, and the comp program dug up a source that matched it just enough to trigger.

I know that students get away with plagiarism all the time- even blatent straight up copy/pasting stuff. I myself was told to let it go unless it was verbatim the wiki article. But it shouldn't mean that we have a lighter trigger where we're allowed to enforce shit. Get enough undergrads attempting to sound sophisticated together and they'll eventually reproduce the language of any seminal work.

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gornzilla t1_j9bsic7 wrote

I'd give the "you need to stop doing this" but they knew there wasn't going to be any real repercussions. I was teaching overseas.

As an aside, students are paid to go to college in Saudi Arabia. They treat it like a job they hate for the most part.

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Meclizine11 t1_j961pwf wrote

Can you even call the president of a college a scientist? The one in my neck of the woods is just a show pony brought out for speeches, photo ops, and schmoozing with entitled assholes. No science in sight. He's a glorified mascot, and his suit is his costume.

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ErisWheel t1_j966wu8 wrote

That's a really weird comment. Wondering if he's "really a scientist" because he's also a university president doesn't make any sense. One is a professional designation while the other is an academic position.

Whatever else he may be now, prior to this point this guy was a Rhodes scholar and a credentialed physiologist and neuroscientist who spent a decade as the de facto head of a biotech/drug research and development firm. So yes, he's a scientist.

Falsifying data is one of the worst things you can do in the sciences and absolutely calls his entire career into question, but it's absurd to suggest he's not really a scientist because of an academic appointment.

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Schan122 t1_j96egcn wrote

Thank you for calling out poor logic where it stands.

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TogepiMain t1_j96mvc2 wrote

Okay, and that's probably true and sucks, but a "scientist" doesn't just become "Jim" when he takes the lab coat off. Which, is already me really really narrowcasting scientists, but thats just more to my point

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