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hgaterms t1_ixvjol8 wrote

Come on JAXA, you're better than this!

> Sasaki admitted JAXA did not have the personnel with sufficient knowledge and experience in the medical field to adequately carry out the project

So they just started making shit up. Classy.

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MaelstromFL t1_ixvldve wrote

Yep, we need to start severely punishing fudged science. Either make them pay back the grants, sue them, or send them to jail for fraud. They continue to do this, because they know they will just get a slap on the wrist.

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TheKingPotat t1_ixvs7rk wrote

To my knowledge what they did is a violation of japanese law. Especially if they misused government money to do it or lied about their credentials

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salamilegorcarlsshoe t1_ixw1fyb wrote

Are they gonna die?

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FrostyTheH0eman t1_ixwnju3 wrote

I’m no expert, but I think eventually they’ll die

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buttholetruth t1_ixwsoom wrote

I took a college biology class and I can confirm, they're all going to die.

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FuBaReD2 t1_ixzmbmp wrote

Think you missed bio 201 where they teach photosynthesis. Just start sunbathing at 60 and you won’t die.

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rocketsocks t1_ixw3jl2 wrote

We need to change the whole system of how research is conducted, especially the economics of it. This sort of thing (along with the whole reproducibility crisis) is caused by "publish or perish" norms. As long as there is intense pressure to not just get work done but get "the right" results then there are going to be individuals who give into the pressure and fudge things. The problem is that a great many folks are fudging things, cutting corners, jazzing up results, "p-hacking", etc. The vast majority of this is arguably not that serious, but when it's so prevalent it leads to a whole culture of focusing on the wrong things and a deterioration of rigor and intellectual honesty, which again will lead to the inevitable case of something squeezing out through the cracks in a way that is egregious enough to be a serious breach of ethics.

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Apostastrophe t1_ixxq0p5 wrote

As a medical professional and someone trained in the scientific method I actually find this concept rather distressing and have considered it before.

Like say we have X issue and there are grants to do scientific studies on it but 99% of the money is there to do studies proving X angle and only 1% of the money is there to just to consider Y angle, you’re going to end up with an information bias. I don’t want to get into controversies but I’ve seen this sort of thing happen within other scientific fields and it concerns me greatly. To clarify, I am 100% believing of anthropogenic climate change phenomenon, BUT there is now a huge amount of money there specifically to study how almost anything is caused by climate change and very little about things that are not and I have a friend who did a type of geography postgrad who pointed out that some of them are basically just mindlessly choosing such funding for research trying to find stuff that might’ve been affected by it as its always there and other areas aren’t to get money for their research and postgrad studying. I won’t insult them by saying that they’re deliberately fudging data (I would never know though) but when you overwhelmingly fund for one particular type of evidence you’re only really going to have that type of evidence if that makes sense.

Clarifying again. I Do believe in fairies climate change I do I do I do. I just query the way a lot of the funding is managed and how it’s affecting science.

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Still_Ad4634 t1_ixym5aj wrote

Fortunately, this isn't true - because oil companies drop frankly huge sums into funding research into climate change to the point where there's been attempts to put together a research group (Fossil Free Rearch) in order to operate without the influence of funding from sources that are heavily biased against results that show fossil fuel impact on climate change.

We have a history of fossil fuel companies doing the research themselves - including as far back as 1971 (Total, scientific article for internal corporate magazine) - proving their direct detrimental impact, and then hiding the results from the wider world. Exxon had a secret climate research program that even the wider oil industry didn't know about until 1984, which predicted that fossil fuel controls were going to be needed and determined that an international response from IPIECA would be needed to keep fossil fuels top of the heap.

tldr; The companies most invested in finding that fossil fuels and related issues (runoff, byproducts) are not affecting climate change are funding huge amounts of research and are /still/ finding the same results, to the point where the risk is that we are underestimating the issue - not overestimating.

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SnooConfections6085 t1_ixyyc0b wrote

You don't need to be scientist to know that we used to drive cars on the lake to go ice fishing as a kid, nowadays that same lake hasn't been driven on it in the winter in years, the ice doesnt get nearly as thick as it used to.

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Whatifim80lol t1_ixvmsg4 wrote

We already do all that. It's serious business to defraud the government.

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calmwhiteguy t1_ixwo3wi wrote

Typically all data is expunged, scientists are fired and typically never rehired in Academia. If you want to go down as a respectable researcher, I would think that the above is pretty rough.

In a lot of cases it has been unlawful too.

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dioxol-5-yl t1_ixx7u58 wrote

Or not reward the lead investigator with a trip to space? That would be a good start.

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[deleted] t1_ixvng0j wrote

[deleted]

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Gramage t1_ixvtwz5 wrote

Very messy in zero g I'd imagine. You'd need to invent like a seppuku bag you could climb into for space seppuku.

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Hattix t1_ixw4cmh wrote

This is one of the things which really sets science apart from all other fields of endeavour.

It ensures that, in the end, we do not fool ourselves. Fraud will be exposed, eventually.

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[deleted] t1_ixw5l5y wrote

[deleted]

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fabulousmarco t1_ixwmrtw wrote

Yep. As long as academia relies on funding from the private sector this will always be the case.

Companies have no interest in funding research unless they get precisely the results they want out of it. A refusal to twist and cherry-pick the results when this isn't the case often leads to the company interrupting any collaboration (and funding) with the research group in favour of more "compliant" ones.

Some fields (and companies) are worse than others in this regard, but generally speaking this is the very sad state of things.

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Zren8989 t1_ixwk9o0 wrote

Funnily enough in the American diet it is one of the largest sources of micronutrients for many because our diet is so poor in veg and fruit, and so processed. Yay coffee!

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soreros t1_ixwftk1 wrote

Its not 100% tho. Just because something says 'peer reviewed' in an article doesn't mean they actually replicate the data. They just see if the methods and data seem proper. And some studies don't even offer the complete methodology so even if you wanted you wouldn't be able to replicate it.

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Burnstryk t1_ixwi3uc wrote

That's because it's almost impossible. Even if I did include the complete methodology, someone would have to write the code to implement the method. If it takes me an entire PhD to correctly research a problem and write code to solve a problem, there is no way someone else is replicating that. They can just look over it and see if the underlying theory and assumptions are valid.

There are many incorrect papers out there, but that doesn't make it bad research, sometimes you need to start with simple assumptions and others will build on that.

Most data (in physics at least) is not replicated, you just have to lay out the steps so someone could theoretically replicate it.

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fabulousmarco t1_ixwfzsl wrote

From personal experience as an academic, I'm afraid you have a very optimistic view of science

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dioxol-5-yl t1_ixx7rj7 wrote

This is exactly how to encourage the continuing falsification of data and academic misconduct. The project head is NEVER involved in the actual writing, that's left to more junior staff. So to say "oh he didn't actually write it, even though he was the overall lead and personally responsible for the integrity of the study conducted, so we'll reward him with time on the ISS".

Not having personnel with the necessary competence to complete the study which you received significant amounts of funding to carry out is not an acceptable excuse. This is a slap in the face to anyone who values the integrity of scientists and sends a clear message to anyone who leads large studies that you can allow as much misconduct as you want so long as you don't actively participate. It's like saying that a head of a factory releasing toxic waste into the sewage isn't responsible cos they weren't the ones who turned on the taps... It's a disgrace

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peroxidase2 t1_ixx05sn wrote

Not the first time this happened to science world and not the first time in japan.

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[deleted] t1_ixw8myr wrote

[removed]

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vibrunazo t1_ixwhpf8 wrote

They got caught because of internal investigations at JAXA, found the root cause themselves and are working on steps to ensure the incident doesn't repeat themselves. Overall JAXA handled the problem fairly well after catching it.

China only gets caught red-handed making up data when external researchers dig into it. Deny the problem, try to censor it. Keep trying to cheat science but work on steps to better hide what they're doing so they don't get caught again. Overall there's an ongoing systematic scientific fraud in Chinese academia.

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