Investigative Journalism

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Because so many of us hate the lack of critical journalism and because we need to be pressed on our opinions. And because some of you are both intelligent and have completely different worldviews, experiences, and opinions from myself and thus likely have exposure to more varied "news" than I do, I thought I'd start this thread. I do expect that most of the links will be paywall protected, as the best journalism typically is, and should be.

 

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Science Has a Major Fraud Problem

For decades, scientists were above reproach. Not any more. Joe Nocera investigates the murky world of fraudulent research, and the sleuths exposing dishonest science.

www.thefp.com

Here's the beginning and the end:

Not long after he arrived on the Stanford University campus in 2022 as a 17-year-old freshman, Theo Baker received a tip about the school’s president, the neuroscientist Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Baker, the son of two prominent Washington, D.C., journalists, had joined the staff of The Stanford Daily and was looking for a story he could dig into. And here it was: On a website called PubPeer, a forum for discussing scientific papers, critics were claiming that papers coming out of Tessier-Lavigne’s lab contained manipulated and fraudulent data. And that it had been going on for years.
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The ramifications of scientific fraud go well beyond a researcher who cheats to get ahead. It causes an already skeptical public to further lose trust in scientific findings. It causes scientists to spend years trying to build on findings that turn out to be wrong. Most importantly, it sets back the effort to cure diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Every profession has its share of cheats and charlatans. But with science the stakes are simply higher, which is why it is so important to change the culture of science, to create new and better incentives—and to do it now.

 

[Exhausted]

Science Has a Major Fraud Problem

For decades, scientists were above reproach. Not any more. Joe Nocera investigates the murky world of fraudulent research, and the sleuths exposing dishonest science.

www.thefp.com

Here's the beginning and the end:

Not long after he arrived on the Stanford University campus in 2022 as a 17-year-old freshman, Theo Baker received a tip about the school’s president, the neuroscientist Marc Tessier-Lavigne. Baker, the son of two prominent Washington, D.C., journalists, had joined the staff of The Stanford Daily and was looking for a story he could dig into. And here it was: On a website called PubPeer, a forum for discussing scientific papers, critics were claiming that papers coming out of Tessier-Lavigne’s lab contained manipulated and fraudulent data. And that it had been going on for years.
...
The ramifications of scientific fraud go well beyond a researcher who cheats to get ahead. It causes an already skeptical public to further lose trust in scientific findings. It causes scientists to spend years trying to build on findings that turn out to be wrong. Most importantly, it sets back the effort to cure diseases like Alzheimer’s.

Every profession has its share of cheats and charlatans. But with science the stakes are simply higher, which is why it is so important to change the culture of science, to create new and better incentives—and to do it now.

My subscription to The Free Press has been good for me in that I read several well written, well defended articles which challenge my opinions regularly. We all need a little more of that.

 

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My subscription to The Free Press has been good for me in that I read several well written, well defended articles which challenge my opinions regularly. We all need a little more of that.

I definitely don't agree with everything I've read, and often can find other conflicting reporting, but it challenges you and the world you think you live in. There's value in that.