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Doubts about Johns Hopkins research have gone unanswered, scientist says

Sam Carter

Guest
Messages
435
I've only skimmed this article but it seems to lend weight to the argument that fraud and malpractice are more common in science than previously thought and also that, when confronted with this problem, many institutions choose to look the other way instead of taking steps to correct the record.

""""
Doubts about Johns Hopkins research have gone unanswered, scientist says

Over and over, Daniel Yuan, a medical doctor and statistician, couldn’t understand the results coming out of the lab, a prestigious facility at Johns Hopkins Medical School funded by millions from the National Institutes of Health.

He raised questions with the lab’s director. He reran the calculations on his own. He looked askance at the articles arising from the research, which were published in distinguished journals. He told his colleagues: This doesn’t make sense.

“At first, it was like, ‘Okay — but I don’t really see it,’ ” Yuan recalled. “Then it started to smell bad.”

His suspicions arose as reports of scientific misconduct have become more frequent and critics have questioned the willingness of universities, academic journals and the federal government, which pays for much of the work, to confront the problem.
...

Last year, research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the percentage of scientific articles retracted because of fraud had increased tenfold since 1975.
...

On Sept. 28, a Nature editor informed Yuan by e-mail that the journal was still waiting on a fuller response from Boeke and that “experiments are being done and probably a Correction written.”

Such a correction has not appeared.
...
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Ruthie24

Senior Member
Messages
219
Location
New Mexico, USA
Scary when you start wondering how many of the ME/CFS studies have been affected by this kind of attitude on the part of the researchers where they just need to get a study done to get their money or an article published. Makes one wonder how much of an impact it has on the overall findings in ME/CFS where so many of the studies seem to not be reproducible. I know that is frequently blamed on heterogeneity amongst patient samples but I wonder if this has some impact as well.

Sad, really that "science" has come to this although I guess historically it's always been under the influence of the prevailing whims of those with the money and power to fund and/or regulate it.
 

jimells

Senior Member
Messages
2,009
Location
northern Maine
Johns Hopkins University typically receives more than $600 million a year from NIH, according to NIH figures.

The university had already fired Yuan in December 2011, after 10 years at the lab. He had been raising questions about the research for years. He was escorted from his desk by two security guards.

The university's reputation is certainly more valuable than scientific integrity. Anybody who jeopardizes their institution's ability to generate revenue will get what they deserve. Don't they teach that in grad school?

I hope Dr Yuan finds a new job soon. We need a lot more people with his kind of integrity.