Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday August 01 2020, @05:16AM   Printer-friendly
from the we-can-do-better dept.

Nautilus has an interesting rundown on how scientific fraud happens and what could possibly be done to correct it written in comic book form. It's a fun little read and oh so true.

The book that it is based on, Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth, is worth reading as well.

Stuart Ritchie is a Lecturer in the Social, Genetic and Developmental Psychiatry Centre at King's College London. His new book, Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth, explains the ideas in this comic, by Zach Weinersmith, in more detail, telling shocking stories of scientific error and misconduct. It also proposes an abundance of ideas for how to rescue science from its current malaise.

How many Soylentils here are in academia? Have you felt the pressure of "publish or perish"?


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2020, @10:06AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 02 2020, @10:06AM (#1030208)

    For making thesis about modelling I have to know where the models come from. So I started a research. Names are a bit changed, but who is in the field, knows, years are OK.
    There's A's model. It has been called this way for decades and most papers show A's 1953 paper as a source of this model. I finally obtained a copy of this paper and... there is no such equation in this paper! There's an equation without dampening factor which goes nuts every time I tried to calculate it because nothing keeps the solids from flipping to the other side and develop holes with volume larger than the solid itself. The proper A's equation pops in 1984? A's paper when it has been already known, but not as A's model and without quotation.
    The first occurrence of equation described in 1953 paper is in 1898 paper made somewhere in Switzerland by R., but nobody read this as most people don't read Schwabacher and it's a bit PITA to read this.
    The "A's" version with dampening factor is just not there until 1961. In some Russian, Czechoslovak and Polish papers there is a version with two-factor dampening since 1960, but it does not work and has been only tested and then abandoned, quoted from P.
    I found a P's Russian 1959 paper, "published" in 150 copies by rationalization department in some forgotten factory (!), specifying equation in which the dampening factor has been calculated as a difference of two contacting rigid bodies. That's the two-factor version. While scientifically totally OK, measuring needed values gives rubbish so usually a single-factor is used, yet it is not there, so it must be somewhere between 1959..1961. But where is it from?
    Finally, 1960 handbook by H/B, totally Soviet with these funny "interruptions", who read Soviet science books these times knows. The last chapter, to bully reader even more. Yes, it is. Yes, dampening factors exactly like "A's". Yes, he developed it step by step from P's equation and described even machines he designed to obtain precise measurements. So much for A.
    I have no idea did A read H/B. But I slowly start to call this model a "R-A-P-H".
    Now, the best thing: In 2002, someone finally found that using elementary functional analysis it is possible to drag the constant out of the integral. Now this is known as a T's model. The model is computationally the same as 1960 one, but the constant is moved, which in fact is a normal thing scientists do during implementation.
    Then I decided to make the model a bit better by using a numerical trick, purely in implementation (the constant has been described as two constants, to make long story short). I called it "Adapted R-A-P-H". And guess what? Someone writing paper called it "R-A-P-H-T-W" model.
    Being afraid that it may be possible to run out of letters, I think the model should not be altered anymore :).

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   -1  
       Offtopic=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Offtopic' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   -1