Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit
If it’s any consolation I split up with an ex partner after she wanted to put me as a co-author on a pseudoscience bullshit paper that she was working on to try and hit her quota. Her entire field, in the social sciences, is inventing a wild idea and using meta analysis to give it credibility. Then flying to conferences and submitting expenses.

I contributed nothing other than a statistical framework which was discarded when it broke their predefined conclusion.

loading story #43125419
I treat all social science degrees as "likely bullshit" these days. Could as well be astrology.

A few computer science friends of mine worked at a social science department during university. Their tasks included maintaining the computers, but also support the researchers with experiment design (if computers were involved) and statistical analysis. They got into trouble because they didn't want to use unsound or incorrect methods.

The general train of thought was not "does the data confirm my hypothesis?" but "how can I make my data confirm my hypothesis?" instead. Often experiments were biased to achieve the desired results.

As a result, these scientific misconduct was business as usual and the guys eventually quit.

Let me introduce you to theoretical condensed matter physics, where no one cares if the data confirms the hypothesis, because they are writing papers about topics that very likely can never be tested.

At least in the social sciences there is an expectation of having some data!

loading story #43130454
Sounds like economics.

Research fraud is common pretty much everywhere in academia, especially where there's money, i.e. adjacent to industry.

It does rather depend on the industry. Research in fields relevant to electrical engineering are much less likely to be fraudulent because the industry actually uses the results to make the products and the customers depend on those products working as specified.. If you discover a better and cheaper ceramic insulator you can be confident that transformer manufacturers will take it up but the big companies are well stocked with experts in the field so a fraudulent paper will quickly be spotted.
Graphene in electrical engineering is a staple of every (dis)reputable papermill.
"New battery tech promises 1.5x density, no fire risk, 20 year lifespan"
Glad to know they quit. That's exactly what I observed, except it was probably worse if I think back at it. I'm a mathematician "by trade" so was sort of pulled into this by proxy because they were out of their depth in a tangle of SPSS. Not that I wasn't but at least I have conceptual framework in which to do the analysis. I had no interest or knowledge of the field but when you're with someone in it you have to toe the line a little bit.

Observations: Firstly inventing a conclusion is a big problem. I'm not even talking about a hypothesis that needs to be tested but a conclusion. A vague ambiguous hypothesis which was likely true was invented to support the conclusion and the relationship inverted. Then data was selected and fitted until there was a level of confidence where it was worth publishing it. Secondly they were using very subjective data collection methods by extremely biased people then mangling and interpolating it to make it look like there was more observation data than there was. Thirdly when you do some honest research and not publish because it looks bad saying that the entire field is compromised for the conference coming up which everyone is really looking forward to and has booked flights and hotels already.

If you want to read some of the hellish bullshit, look up critique of the Q methodology.

loading story #43138168
loading story #43125937