Then, corner the bastards.
The dossier was so unsettling, one neurologist revealed, that he couldn’t sleep after reading it. It contained allegations that an experimental drug meant to curb damage from stroke — and eyed up for regulatory fast-tracking for fulfilling an unmet medical need — might instead have raised the risk of death among patients receiving it.
The dossier, assembled by whistleblowers and obtained by an investigative journalist, was recently submitted to the US National Institutes of Health, which is finalising a $30mn clinical trial into the medicine. The whistleblowers allege that the star neuroscientist driving the research, Berislav Zlokovic from the University of Southern California, pressured colleagues to alter laboratory notebooks and co-authored papers containing doctored data. The university is investigating; Zlokovic is, according to his attorney, co-operating with the inquiry and disputes at least some of the claims.
The facts of this particular case, set out in the journal Science last week, are yet to be established but research is fast becoming a catalogue of mishaps, malfeasance and misconduct. Rooting out mistakes and manipulation should not have to depend on whistleblowers or dedicated amateurs who take personal legal risks for the greater good. Instead, science should apply some of its famed rigour to professionalising the business of fraud detection. […]
As the Oxford university psychologist Dorothy Bishop has written, we only know about the ones who get caught. In her view, our “relaxed attitude” to the scientific fraud epidemic is a “disaster-in-waiting”. The microbiologist Elisabeth Bik, a data sleuth who specialises in spotting suspect images, might argue the disaster is already here: her Patreon-funded work has resulted in over a thousand retractions and almost as many corrections.
That work has been mostly done in Bik’s spare time, amid hostility and threats of lawsuits. Instead of this ad hoc vigilantism, Bishop argues, there should be a proper police force, with an army of scientists specifically trained, perhaps through a masters degree, to protect research integrity.
Publish, then perish, one hopes.
Quizz: Who said?:
“The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Bonus point if you can name another quote from the same document.
It seems too easy to say its Dwight Eisenhower.
It was. His farewell address famous for the quote about the military-industrial complex that every lefty has a boner about. It’s a couple of paragraphs below and I think he’s also scary right about that one too.
If established how long before this force to protect research integrity is co-opted?
3,2,1:
Paul
Yup, a dedicated loner may be harder to corrupt.
Nah, they’re not longer interested in the long game. No infiltrations. No pretenders. And, no longer a need to corrupt. Instead, they destroy. They end careers. They take away credentials. Obliterate reputations. Gang rape you in friendly media. etc. They are no longer covert in their efforts. They’ll flat out tell you they are coming for you and those you know, then attack you personally, in civil suits and through law enforcement.
When the control tilts away from them due to a larger number of independent media outlets holding the line, they turn to the “misinformation experts” and the “fact checkers” to “set the record straight.” This is nothing more than writing the rules and applying them in the same breath.
In short, they are no longer subtle because if plays against their immediate gratification…and they no longer have to be.
Exactly. That’s what happens when 99 percent of your counterattack force assumes the fetal position.
https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/medicine/thalidomide
This has a Harrison Ford the Fugitive kind of feel to it.
Bishop argues, there should be a proper police force, with an army of scientists specifically trained, perhaps through a masters degree, to protect research integrity.
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Yes, The Ministry of truth :).. Or should we call it the Ministry of empirical evidence?.. No government funding permitted on circle jerk politics.. One can only wish but then politicians would have nothing to campaign on..
It would be a good thing.. That they would kill ASAP..