If there really is more fraud being done by prominent scientists than there was in the past, why? Here’s a theory:

Joshua Brooks points us to this news article by Charles Piller, Scores of papers by Eliezer Masliah, prominent neuroscientist and top NIH official, fall under suspicion.

Maybe this Masliah guy could get a job at UNR?

Seriously, though, it makes me wonder. It does seem like there’s more of this fake science going on than a few decades ago. Simine Vazire and I wrote an article a few years ago about why the replication crisis in psychology happened when it did, but the replication crisis in psychology is mostly not about fraud but rather about bad research (Clarke’s Law notwithstanding).

So the question is: If there really is more fraud being done by prominent scientists than there was in the past, why? (And, yes, causal inference people, it’s ok to ask Why.)

Here’s a theory:

Back in the day, shady characters who had jobs as scientists would cheat by pulling strings, embezzling, taking credit for students’ work, etc. It seems like some sort of recent innovation that they’ve realized how easy it is to cheat not via social engineering but by faking their data. Perhaps this is a consequence of the vastly increased number of papers being reviewed and published.

Brooks added:

I was thinking about this a bit more. It’s like the polling where a disturbingly large percentage of people say scientists sometimes change their data to match their self interest. Seems a problem. But then what would happen if they polled people about whether they think used car dealers are always honest when dealing with customers? Or auto mechanics? Or lawyers? Or plumbers?

Point being, we should assume a certain amount of fraud among researchers just as we would with any other profession.

Maybe there isn’t more fraud in academic research than anywhere else but (1) we have an unfounded expectation (perhaps self-serving among academic researchers) that there should be less and so what is exposed feels more shocking, and (2) unlike other kinds of fraud it’s not generally illegal, so in one sense there’s less external pressure suppressing it, meaning that despite the amount that there is, it’s impressive because there’s not as much “cost” in getting caught so it compares favorably to other professions where fraud is more forcefully externally supressed (3) another sense, because the investigators are internal, they have a better idea of where to look and thus nail a relatively high % of “law breakers.”

OK, that last one is probably wishful thinking. Especially since presumably, concern about exposure by co-authors and peer review should provide an internal pressure to surpress the overall amount of fraud, meaning that the numbers caught wouldn’t be a low % of overall fraud.

And here’s another theory: There’s a lot more of all sorts of science going on now than there was a few decades ago. I think there are more prominent scientists now than there were back then. So even if the percentage of fraud being done by prominent scientists is constant, the amount of such fraud will have increased. I guess what we need is some measurement.