[81alum]

I guess my reaction is a bit different. Does anybody seriously believe that the senior author on the vast majority of scientific publications has verified the provenance of all (actually any of) the data contained therein? They are not in the lab physically watching all the experiments that are done. In many cases they are collaborating with colleagues that are not even at the same institution. Some of the larger labs have 70 or 80 graduate students who are working under supervision of post-docs that the PI actually doesn't know all that well. While some may operate in the fantasy world where all the PIs are intimately involved in every experiment and actually know what is going on in all aspects of their labs, that is simply not how it is. I think in many cases the best one can hope for is that the PI has actually read the paper before it was submitted :-).

It isn't a good system in many ways, but it is the system we have. It relies on the honesty of a lot of people. In point of fact, artifacts are sometimes the basis of some paper's data. There are so many papers published that contain data that will never be important enough to reproduce that many such thing go unnoticed for years. I think there are probably more honest errors than fraud. How many papers are published that are the result of something finally "working" after many failures? How many PIs insist on the data being reliably reproducible?

Thoughtful comments as I have come to expect of you, Goose.  I think I might be inclined to reluctantly agree if we were judging the career of a research scientist qua research scientist.  But when one becomes the President of a leading research university the standards go up.  As you say, it is not a good system, and we need leadership to change it and improve it.  That leadership needs to start at the top--and there is nowhere in the world closer to the top than a President of a premier research university.  Instead, we have leadership that is, by example and association, affirming the slimier side of the current broken system.

[81alum]

I guess my reaction is a bit different. Does anybody seriously believe that the senior author on the vast majority of scientific publications has verified the provenance of all (actually any of) the data contained therein? They are not in the lab physically watching all the experiments that are done. In many cases they are collaborating with colleagues that are not even at the same institution. Some of the larger labs have 70 or 80 graduate students who are working under supervision of post-docs that the PI actually doesn't know all that well. While some may operate in the fantasy world where all the PIs are intimately involved in every experiment and actually know what is going on in all aspects of their labs, that is simply not how it is. I think in many cases the best one can hope for is that the PI has actually read the paper before it was submitted :-).

It isn't a good system in many ways, but it is the system we have. It relies on the honesty of a lot of people. In point of fact, artifacts are sometimes the basis of some paper's data. There are so many papers published that contain data that will never be important enough to reproduce that many such thing go unnoticed for years. I think there are probably more honest errors than fraud. How many papers are published that are the result of something finally "working" after many failures? How many PIs insist on the data being reliably reproducible?

Thoughtful comments as I have come to expect of you, Goose.  I think I might be inclined to reluctantly agree if we were judging the career of a research scientist qua research scientist.  But when one becomes the President of a leading research university the standards go up.  As you say, it is not a good system, and we need leadership to change it and improve it.  That leadership needs to start at the top--and there is nowhere in the world closer to the top than a President of a premier research university.  Instead, we have leadership that is, by example and association, affirming the slimier side of the current broken system.