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posted by janrinok on Tuesday March 31 2015, @01:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the there-are-little-fibs-and-big-fibs dept.

An Anonymous Coward provides the following story:

A Guardian story from a week or two back shows that not all in the scientific community are as diligent or trustworthy in their research as would be hoped:

"It appeared to be one of archaeology's most sensational finds. The skull fragment discovered in a peat bog near Hamburg was more than 36,000 years old - and was the vital missing link between modern humans and Neanderthals. This, at least, is what Professor Reiner Protsch von Zieten - a distinguished, cigar-smoking German anthropologist - told his scientific colleagues, to global acclaim, after being invited to date the extremely rare skull.

However, the professor's 30-year-old academic career has now ended in disgrace after the revelation that he systematically falsified the dates on this and numerous other "stone age" relics."

"Anthropology is going to have to completely revise its picture of modern man between 40,000 and 10,000 years ago," said Thomas Terberger, the archaeologist who discovered the hoax. "Prof Protsch's work appeared to prove that anatomically modern humans and Neanderthals had co-existed, and perhaps even had children together. This now appears to be rubbish."

Damn it science.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by kaszz on Tuesday March 31 2015, @01:29AM

    by kaszz (4211) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @01:29AM (#164588) Journal

    There's probably more academic fraud that will be discovered due to more cross checking because communication and collaboration is so much more prevalent and efficient now than pre-internet. Much easier to get away with inconsistencies in paper journals filed away under a layer of dust that no-one has the time to read and cross check.

  • (Score: 5, Informative) by chris on Tuesday March 31 2015, @01:37AM

    by chris (3977) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @01:37AM (#164590)

    dated Friday 18 February 2005 20.25 EST

    • (Score: 1) by Linatux on Tuesday March 31 2015, @01:47AM

      by Linatux (4602) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @01:47AM (#164592)

      It'll still be used as evidence in text books for a couple of decades yet. 10 years is nothing :-P

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday March 31 2015, @01:16PM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday March 31 2015, @01:16PM (#164769) Journal

        Which is why I've been saying for years we need to toss schoolbooks in the same bin as the 8-track and go electronic, because 1.- the rate of discovery means that unless its something like basic math? Its very possible it will have multiple things that have been revised or outright disputed before the ink is dry, 2.- they charge insane prices for the dead tree databases, which are then used by schools longer, which just makes 1 worse, and 3.- in the USA because of the buying power of 1 or 2 big states they often get to dictate changes that will affect schoolbooks that the other 48 have to buy.

        What we need is an all electronic textbook format that can be updated as new information is accepted by the scholars of that field quickly. there is no reason why with e-ink and tablets being so cheap that this couldn't be done and this way students wouldn't end up with books with outdated (or in this case fraudulent) information for ages before they are finally removed from circulation.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
        • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday March 31 2015, @10:11PM

          by Reziac (2489) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @10:11PM (#165090) Homepage

          While it's true that print books can tend to perpetuate bad info simply due to the inertia of print, electronic texts would be so much easier to add fraudulent material to, or subtract embarrassing or inconvenient info. In short, I think the net effect would be far more unreliable, depending on whose agenda the text happened to pass through.... at any point along the distribution chain. It's rather more obvious if someone's taken a magic marker to a text.

          Also, textbooks do occasionally print and distribute addendums, so errors are not forever (this also saves the cost of reprinting the whole rest of the book).

          --
          And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
          • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday April 01 2015, @09:21AM

            by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday April 01 2015, @09:21AM (#165321) Journal

            You obviously never went to a "football school" where the gyms rival the NFL while the books list Carter as the current president! Sure there might be some downsides, most I argue would be easy to fix with peer revue, but the upsides, especially for poorer (or football) school would IMHO vastly outweigh the down. As a bonus you could make learning actually enjoyable, like imagine looking up The Alamo and seeing a clip from one of the many movies that had the famous battle, or seeing an animated short showing what life was like during the age of the dinosaurs. Imagine Hawking showing how a black hole works, Sagan explaining how atoms work, or Einstein talking about relativity...the ways you could stimulate young minds, while being so much cheaper to make and easier to update, far outweigh any drawbacks that I can see.

            Oh and its not like the anti-science group don't mess with print books, not too long ago one state had teachers rip out the pages concerning evolution, no matter the medium, the willful ignorant will stay ignorant.

            --
            ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
            • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday April 01 2015, @01:24PM

              by Reziac (2489) on Wednesday April 01 2015, @01:24PM (#165375) Homepage

              Actually, I went to a persistently-state-champion AAA football highschool (also usually tops in basketball and wrestling), but sports was always second fiddle to academics. Our school heroes were the eggheads. Our chief egghead was the most popular kid in school. The most embarrassing thing you could do was get a grade below your norm (peer pressure played a role there). Our school system was always in the academic top 1% nationwide. Goes to show that being tops in sports doesn't mean you can't also be tops in academics. And our HS graduation rate was 96% statewide and over 99% locally. My sister's firm (possibly the largest in its field worldwide) recruits architects from MSU, because she says they're the only ones worth two shits. Yep, backward redneck Montana, education star despite all the football and rodeo.

              Making learning "more enjoyable" doesn't necessarily make it stick in your brain any better, and often worse. You can pretty much predict success by how well students handle the less enjoyable aspects, not by how much they enjoy the class. That doesn't mean everything has to be boring (my 11th grade American History teacher kept our attention even with this dullest of all subjects, cuz you never knew when she'd drop a juicy or unflattering tidbit about some historical figure). But too much focus on 'enjoyable' and you lose the most critical aspect of education, which is self-discipline. One reason my old school system did so well for us was that they hadn't forgotten there's a lot of value in rote learning of fundamentals, even tho it's boring and tedious. Still know your spelling and times tables all these years later? Don't have to stop and work it out every single time? That's cuz you learned 'em by rote, not because they were entertaining.

              My point on paper vs ebooks was that you can tell when a paper book has been tampered with -- missing or redacted pages make it bloody obvious, and kids don't like it when adults lie -- which is how kids see a tampered book. But if you don't already know the subject well enough that why are you taking the class?? you'll never know what's been altered in an ebook. Considering how many agendas flourish in higher education nowadays, I'd be =extremely= leery of ebooks at that level.

              --
              And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
              • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday April 05 2015, @06:12PM

                by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday April 05 2015, @06:12PM (#166716) Journal

                Sigh you did NOT go to a "football school" you went to a school with a decent football TEAM, there is a difference. If the school has a gym that rivals the NFL while having PCs from the days of DOS? If the football field looks like what you'd see the AAA NCAA football teams playing on, while the books are so old that Clinton is the current president? THAT is a football school. With a football school the money isn't spent on anybody else until AFTER the team gets every. single. thing. on their wish list.

                I should know as I got to graduate HS without stepping into a single classroom after the first day, even though my grade sheets show As in all classes and never missing a day...how? The coach for the football team caught me reading Asimov as I sat in detention the first day (stupid track coach said "Anybody that isn't ready to give me 10 laps can get out of my gym!" so I got up and walked out, with a dozen kids following me, much lulz when the principal gave him a dressing down for telling kids they could leave LOL so we got the choice of running the laps or taking a week in the study hall as "detention". We chose the latter natch) and when he saw I wasn't hiding a mag and that it didn't have pictures he took me around to my classes and told them to mark me present and give me an A, I was on "special assignment". What was special assignment? I was given my own classroom where I taught football players how to spell things like "flower" and "stood" (no shit, these players had been coddled for so long even 5th grade spelling? Seriously difficult, hellish on the field though) and how to pass the tests required by the state to be eligible for football. My parents found out and was like "Meh, better than you sitting in detention". They knew the constant boredom only punctuated by me pulling shit like programming the class computers to call people dumbass when they got something wrong meant that I would probably spend most of my time in detention anyway.

                The funny part is I always figured I was a rare case, some "dirty little secret" that only my school ever pulled....until one day I was in a VB class a few years after HS and told the story and the teacher said "No way, I cannot believe a school would let you go through 4 years of HS without taking a class" which was immediately followed by this little mousy black girl in class meekly raising her hand and saying "Its true, cuz the same thing happened to me at my school" and the second I said "Go Lions!" her eyes lit up and said "Go Panthers! We played you guys like 8 times, real tug of war we had going huh?" and as we laughed and compared notes the look of sheer horror on that teacher's face? Priceless. Still I wouldn't have changed it for the world, all that free time let me study things I actually gave a crap about instead of being forced a dumbed down lowest common denominator pile of boredom because anything harder would either not be passed by the few players that could read or take funds away from the team....and THAT sir is what separates a football school from a school with a good football TEAM, I'm sure you can now see the difference.

                --
                ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
                • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday April 05 2015, @06:30PM

                  by Reziac (2489) on Sunday April 05 2015, @06:30PM (#166734) Homepage

                  Well, I guess my point was a school can win at sports without having to lose at academics.

                  I suspect more often than not, tho, sports gets the blame for poor academics even when the academics wouldn't have been any better if the sports had been entirely absent.

                  Our schools were very blackboard-centric. You sat your ass down and paid attention to what the teacher wrote on the blackboard, and you didn't act like a fuckwad in class. We had great teachers. We didn't insult them by failing to learn.

                  --
                  And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
                  • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday April 07 2015, @07:02PM

                    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday April 07 2015, @07:02PM (#167543) Journal

                    Ours was teaching 6th grade math in 12th grade because anything harder wouldn't be passed by the BBall team, and as I said there is always an egghead that gets "special assignment" to insure the teams pass the minimum tests to stay in football, along with another eggheads whose job it is to turn in enough paperwork it looks like the players have actually been doing shit in class. Any teachers that do anything innovative that gets kids to learn? Will be out the next year as they need teachers that teach the same shit every year so they can make sure their eggheads have all the answers ahead of time. Haven't you ever wondered how they can have college players that graduate some big college that can't even write their name? Well there ya go, from the time they walked on the field they have been in "the program" and not had to worry about learning shit, its all done for them because if they did it themselves they might flunk a test before the big game. Can't have that if you want in the playoffs ya know!

                    --
                    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
                    • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday April 07 2015, @07:49PM

                      by Reziac (2489) on Tuesday April 07 2015, @07:49PM (#167571) Homepage

                      That's great balls of suckage. Sure glad I didn't suffer from a school system like that.

                      When we had a sports star drop below the required B grade average, they'd get dropped off the team til they got their grades back up. And they weren't given any freebies, either. Happened to the guy who sat right behind me for several years (we usually got seated alphabetically) and he worked his ass off to bring his grades back up. Being the star of our wrestling team didn't get him any special treatment.

                      --
                      And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
                      • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday April 08 2015, @06:49AM

                        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday April 08 2015, @06:49AM (#167759) Journal

                        I'm surprised your team got a decent record then, as kids quickly learn which schools have "the program" and you'd be surprised how many parents from neighboring district will move their kid (or at least get a coach to give 'em a PO box they can say is their address) so they can get their "star" on a team that consistently gets headhunted by the colleges.

                        And I found it wonderful actually, I had my own class, could learn what I wanted, could sit there at practices smoking like a chimney without anyone saying boo, its like being a rockstar. You can do what you want, nobody fucks with you (I had one motorhead try to fuck with me ONCE, just once, and before I could even draw back to swing a 275 pound linebacker slammed him so hard against a wall I was surprised it didn't split his head open like a watermelon) and I could spend my time reading and playing bass...it was like heaven.

                        --
                        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 1) by _1156277 on Tuesday March 31 2015, @01:54AM

      by _1156277 (5139) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @01:54AM (#164596)

      how appropriate!

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:26AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:26AM (#164606)

      I submitted this story because it was forwarded to me one social media and it sounded interesting. Later in the week, I shared the story with a friend of mine whom is actually in the field of anthropology and he laughed about this news, circa 2005. She said that it still gets posted to their list-serves once and a while, so I guess it is still circulating.

      In any case, I should have checked the date. My apologies.

      • (Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:33AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:33AM (#164609)

        You didn't submit this. I did.
        The dating analyses I performed on this article were fraudulent. Actually I don't even know how to date articles, I just make numbers up on the way to my my father's estates, the Dukedom of Hulligan. I sold the front page of all the periodicals in the department's basements though for a good penny.

        • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @03:06AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @03:06AM (#164616)

          Are you mad, taking credit for what is clearly my own work? I should sue you for plagiarism and fraud. It's obvious I faked the dating analysis, my digital fingerprints are all over it. It just screams Anonymous Coward, you cretin of dubious parentage! You're not fooling anyone, you know.

          • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:25PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:25PM (#164800)

            How dare you! You can obviously tell by the carbon dating of the article that YOU couldn't have existed when this article was written and it's clearly *my* work. Your mother smelled of elderberries you clod formerly known as Anonymous Coward. I shall out thee yet!

    • (Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Tuesday March 31 2015, @03:50AM

      by frojack (1554) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @03:50AM (#164633) Journal

      dated Friday 18 February 2005 20.25 EST

      Apparently the submitter used the same dating mechanism as the Professor.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
    • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 31 2015, @05:26PM

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @05:26PM (#164901) Journal

      Scientists Human, Not Mindless Automata
       
        News at 10 (years ago)!

    • (Score: 1) by soylentsandor on Tuesday March 31 2015, @07:41PM

      by soylentsandor (309) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @07:41PM (#164996)

      Good catch. I wondered why it took the guy a whopping fourteen years from first suspicion to nailing the professor. Turns out it was "only" four years.

  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @01:50AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @01:50AM (#164593)

    and this guy, three of a kind.

  • (Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:02AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:02AM (#164599)

    The most direct challenge to multiple Bill O’Reilly controversies was published [today, March 30, 2015], as a cameraman whom O’Reilly claims to have rescued during 1982 coverage of Buenos Aires riots says the Fox News host made up his account.

    https://www.yahoo.com/tv/s/bill-o-reilly-rescue-story-refuted-cameraman-o-172549768.html [yahoo.com]

    On Fox News in 2013, O’Reilly claimed to have rescued his photographer, who was bleeding from the ear: “My photographer got run down and then hit his head and was bleeding from the ear on the concrete. And the army was chasing us … I dragged him off.”

    Mother Jones tracked down the man who claims to have been O’Reilly’s cameraman, who flatly denied O’Reilly’s story.

    “I never fell nor was I bleeding out my ear at any time during my Buenos Aires assignment,” Ignacio Medrano-Carbo said. “I do not even recall Mr. O’Reilly being near me when I shot all that footage nor after I left the unrest at Plaza de Mayo that evening. But it is not uncommon to be separated from your reporter during a disturbance such as that one.”

    O’Reilly disputes the claim, telling TheWrap, “I never worked with Ignacio Medrano-Carbo. This is nothing more than yet another coordinated attack which predictably comes on the heels of my appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman.”

    Another member of the CBS crew, Jim Forrest, also confirmed Medrano-Carbo was paired with O’Reilly that night.

    • (Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:30AM

      by Non Sequor (1005) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:30AM (#164608) Journal

      You wanna know how to get Capone? They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.

      Compromise? Reconciliation? Pffffft. What matters in politics is that everytime your team takes a hit, you find a way to even the score.

      --
      Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Covalent on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:03AM

    by Covalent (43) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:03AM (#164600) Journal

    I always get really mad when this kind of thing happens, as I feel it sets "science" back many years. But this is exactly what makes science great. It isn't just the word of one person, case closed. Science is always re-examining, re-checking, re-thinking. As a wise man once told me, "Be careful of people who KNOW that they know. They are the most dangerous people in the world."

    So don't say "Dammit Science". Science worked exactly as it was supposed to. We humans are fallible, and we fall for the bias of "experts" all the time, but if scientists continue to do their job, people like this will always be rooted out.

    Go Science!

    --
    You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by glyph on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:52AM

      by glyph (245) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:52AM (#164613)

      I can relate to "damn it science" not because events like this set scientific progress back but because events like this erode public acceptance of science... and once that horse has bolted it's nearly impossible to get it back.

      When you are struggling to get people to believe in climate change or get them to immunise their precious crotch-spawn this kind of thing is a Leeroy Jenkins moment.

      Damn it, Science!

      • (Score: 1) by t-3 on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:52PM

        by t-3 (4907) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:52PM (#164823)

        So you should say, "Damn it, assholes!", not "Damn it, science"

      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 31 2015, @04:55PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @04:55PM (#164886)

        I can relate to "damn it science" not because events like this set scientific progress back but because events like this erode public acceptance of science... and once that horse has bolted it's nearly impossible to get it back.

        What's even more frustrating is that people are so stupid, they'll decide "science is bunk" because of mishaps like this, and then strengthen their faith-based beliefs, whether it's some stupid religion, or alternative medicine, or anything else where you just take the word of some charlatan and don't do any cross-checking at all.

      • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 31 2015, @05:30PM

        by DeathMonkey (1380) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @05:30PM (#164903) Journal

        I can relate to "damn it science" not because events like this set scientific progress back but because events like this erode public acceptance of science...
         
        And it's completely purposeful FUD. Why else is a 10 year old story being passed around as "news."
         
        I'm sure it has absolutely nothing to do with evolution....

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @12:17PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @12:17PM (#164755)

      > It isn't just the word of one person, case closed. Science is always re-examining, re-checking, re-thinking.

      Absurd, seen in context of religion vs. science debate - I mean, fake controversy:
      Religion is bad because it is not scientifically accurate.
      Scientifical accuracy does not really exist.
      Religion is therefore bad because it doesn't match something that does not really exist.
      Which shows how much of a joke the debate really is, people choose an arbitrary threshold and ask retroactively that religious books respect it, which wouldn't prove anything anyway.

      Nothing can prove or disprove the word of one person in religious contexts, so the word is sufficient. People usually don't go for the single person word anyway, as it is apparent by the adoption rates of FSM vs. the monotheistic god.

  • (Score: 4, Informative) by gishzida on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:50AM

    by gishzida (2870) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @02:50AM (#164612) Journal

    This is a "tempest in a teacup" that is embarrassing for a German University but does not really seem to have the wide spread effect as claimed. I went looking and found this: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/10/121012-neanderthals-science-paabo-dna-sex-breeding-humans/ [nationalgeographic.com] and this: http://www.nature.com/news/mystery-humans-spiced-up-ancients-sex-lives-1.14196 [nature.com]

    While "Herr Professor Lyingputz" may have told some whoppers, the link between Neanderthals and their Denisovian cousins being a part of (some) modern human DNA seems to be factual. I think TFA may be going over board that "all of this prehistory will have to be re-written". If the DNA work is on solid ground (and it seems to be) then the lies of a single individual have little effect in the over all picture.

    I was once told by an anthropologist friend that many anthropologists "twist the facts" or "make them up" to fit their particular beliefs. As an example, consider that Carlos Castenada received an MSc. and a Ph.D. from UCLA for works about a Yaqui "sorcerer" and his "teachings" which were in actuality totally fictional. Upon discovery of this UCLA did not take a way the degrees... and in fact some of the folks at UCLA thought that the "fictionality" of Castenada's work made it even more brilliant. Go figure.

    • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday March 31 2015, @03:15AM

      by JNCF (4317) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @03:15AM (#164620) Journal

      You are totally correct, Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons almost certainly fucked each other. This requires being in approximately the same place and time. That being said, the DNA evidence for that has come relatively recently. The summary claims that this news story is a couple weeks old, but it was actually published in 2005. I'm pretty sure that we didn't have any DNA evidence of Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon inter-breeding in 2005, but I'm unfamiliar with the other evidence for them coexisting. For all I know, this skull could have been the lynch-pin in 2005.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Tuesday March 31 2015, @07:58PM

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 31 2015, @07:58PM (#165012) Journal

        IIRC, there was in 2005 some genetic evidence that there was no interbreeding. It was based on mitochondria, and, AFAIK, is still correct, but what it actually meant was that children of a Cro Magnon father and Neandrthal mother did not survive. My understanding was that given the shape of the hips, and of the infant's head, this is what should be expected.

        --
        Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
        • (Score: 2) by JNCF on Tuesday March 31 2015, @08:30PM

          by JNCF (4317) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @08:30PM (#165032) Journal

          A darker interpretation of that might be that Cro-Magnons never raped any Neanderthals, but the opposite wasn't true.

  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @03:39AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @03:39AM (#164626)

    "Discovered" 1912; debunked 1953.

    Charles Dawson (not "Darwin") had a bunch of fakes in his collection.
    The list starts with Plagiaulax dawsoni. [wikipedia.org]

    Arthur Conan Doyle is one of many suspected of being involved in the Piltdown hoax.

    *Peer review* is an important part of the Scientific Process.

    -- gewg_

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @04:48AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @04:48AM (#164653)

      I wonder how many peer reviewed bits of "science" are floating around which were reviewed by people who have a conflict of interest. One professor reviewing the work of their friend for instance. There are enough connections between scholars that certainly a meta-study could be done to determine the odds or frequency of occurrence.

  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @03:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @03:59AM (#164638)

    distinguished, cigar-smoking

    has now ended in disgrace after the revelation that he systematically falsified

    This clearly show that cigar smokers cannot be trusted.

    Was he a distant cousin of Churchill?

    • (Score: 2, Funny) by gishzida on Tuesday March 31 2015, @04:10AM

      by gishzida (2870) on Tuesday March 31 2015, @04:10AM (#164644) Journal

      Mark Twain would agree with you and so would Groucho Marx... of course they got paid to be distinguished liars.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @05:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @05:15AM (#164661)

    This is the proof that there are no humans besides homo sapiens and that the earth is only 6000 years old!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @09:24AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 31 2015, @09:24AM (#164704)

      Hehe, yeah I too was annoyed by "Damn it science." when in fact this proves exactly the opposite, a fraud is discovered and we're that much closer to the truth again. Of course it's a shame it took so long to blow the lid of this thing and I'm sure a lot of people are falsifying results this very moment. But if interesting claims are made, those will be investigated.