Devil’s Advocate is appreciated. Your argument that it’s not that bad - I agree with as of 20 years ago. Unfortunately, it really has gotten that bad.
Identity politics is now top priority at all levels of the academy, merit be damned. Grants are won by studying the opinions of those on the funding committees, catering to their preferences, and imitating the form of previous successful grants. This is also how top tier papers are crafted - narrative first, then the PI orders their people to collect the appropriate data. When the students are foolish enough to collect the “wrong” results, they are told the experiment failed and to repeat it. I’m not exaggerating. These people understand that careful work and replication is a waste of time and that cutting corners (cheating) is the only way to compete. PIs are no longer scientists, they are slick salespeople and shoddy managers for the Fake Science machine.
I’ve learned this all firsthand. Look upon these works and despair.
I am not sure about the numbers, it's hard to get a good estimate for me, but I've seen there is a lot out there as well. I know many labs where people are forced to repeat something until it "works", and had such an experience in my postdoc. Actually my boss then was sloppy and a bit arrogant or deluded on the topic, rather than malicious, probably. I was brought in to do a few "minor things" to finish off a big publication and found the entire thing was flawed because I added more controls from my own initiative, wasted a big chunk of time for years to keep looking with slightly different ways instead of accepting the negative result. And I was treated like I couldn't do the experiments right. I think the boss was not doing it intentionally because when I gave the negative results in tightly controlled experiments she said she couldn't sleep at night. If I had gone with the setup and helped them publish the exaggerated results, it probably would have been a high impact paper in the 20s or so, which would quickly be criticized online and led to us having a bad reputation. And I imagine, from everything taken together, the boss and others would have blamed me for lack of controls if that happened, and continued on without difficulty.
One of the nice things we have now are things like pubpeer where misconduct can be highlighted. It did lead to some changes. Astoundingly, though, there are some cases where the same lab head is found to have fraudulent data again and again, and is still welcomed to publish questionable findings in Nature and other high level journals. Actually for the one that I have the most surprise with, it involved HIV. Sequencing of the HIV genome was done, and they quietly mentioned in their Methods they altered the sequencing read length, and consequently their entire phenomenon can be produced from random data, or any alternative genome of similarly small size. They didn't need to retract, perhaps because the investigator is an HHMI PI. This had been on a journal allowing online comments, and comments were deleted. The journal also had a standard of publishing the reviewer comments, and a reviewer had pointed out the serious flaws with their method and past work that showed this was likely all an artifact, yet this PI was able to publish.
So from places like open peer reviews and things like pubpeer, you see many examples of how alive and well critical evaluations are with individual research papers. Most scientists I know are distrustful and ask tough questions, and welcome tough questions to themselves. But as the above anecdote illustrates, some people play by different rules. That's why I feel we have a big mixture out there. Altogether we can't trust anything we read from journals or scientsts, but there are definitely plenty of good ones out there. Regardless, I mostly agree with you. Things are going downhill rapidly.
The identity politics seemed to be a recent thing. I was applying to be a professor for the goal of being an independent researcher a while ago, and had an offer and interviews. When applying, I looked at poor publication records for new department hires that I could browse, and it tracked well with ... "diversity, equity, and inclusion" goals. I had to write a DEI statement, at minimum, almost everywhere, and the places I got return interest from were ones where that was less emphasized. The statements were outrageous. Naturally, if you were an underrepresented group, you could make use of your identity to pass the barrier. I wrote antiquated ideals of non-discrimination values, instead, and the value of teaching science as a tool of objectivity that can be equally and fairly used by all identities. I feel that did not help, but oh well. After a while, I decided the current identity politics environment is not for me, and went to a pharma company and have been free of identity politics there (so far). Happy to also say, we haven't run from any of our problems, like adverse drug toxicity, in preclinical work done by us our academic collaborators.
Altogether the greater University system lost its way, despite having a lot of merit, still. I think identity politics are going to bring down a lot of norms with Universities and research will be among them. Fewer people need to go to University for most pursuits, IMO, and I also always thought the graduate student system was like abusive slavery that was unsustainable.
That’s one hell of a post! I appreciate all points made and the interest to share. I’m generally familiar with all of this.
Your experience as a postdoc joining the project as finisher is very similar to one episode I had in cancer research. I could not replicate previous results from a newly minted PhD, or demonstrate further anticipated results. Then I started testing (with a fancy nested PCR assay) the lab’s archived cell lines and determined they were widely contaminated. Those cell lines used for the project in question had the most potent mycoplasma signal. The PI basically stopped communicating with me after that, out of embarrassment and a passive shoot the messenger attitude.
The lab described above was overrun with undergrads without proper training or supervision. I was capable, motivated, and could have helped improve the lab in all manner of activity and mentorship. But no, this was a Cargo Cult where everyone was expected to individually imitate the high impact publications and hot narratives. I found myself in labs like this not once, but 4 different times.
My latest efforts to work with the best were rather successful, but I’ve still given up hope for my science career. Now I know from the inside that HHMI is as woke as it gets, and they have jumped straight off the cliff. The constant DEI propaganda and prominent role in promoting the Plandemic shattered the last shreds of respect.
Stories like that are so depressing. I can't say leaving is a bad choice. There are still some good people in there interested in science, at the moment, but I wonder what is coming in the future when those become fewer and the corrupting influences take greater hold. I wish there were some alternatives, outside of the academy, for people to get started in a biology-related career. It's tough now because of the expectation of slaving away at PhD and postdoc positions. For now I'm skeptical that going to industry first gives enough opportunities to lead to a position for much innovation, unfortunately.
Our stories are more similar than you thought. In my role as a finisher, I first started using the lines then got the "bad" (real) results, then found they had mycoplasma (and not just for that project, it was every single line in the lab, which they kept using). Unfortunately, the PI, and member who had been working on the project a while, thought that the mycoplasma was the explanation for the bad results so they wasted more resources on it. Also, it was the same situation. There was almost no one formally trained on the basics and the PI traveled non-stop and rarely ran the lab, beyond pressuring everyone to have good results from afar.
Devil’s Advocate is appreciated. Your argument that it’s not that bad - I agree with as of 20 years ago. Unfortunately, it really has gotten that bad.
Identity politics is now top priority at all levels of the academy, merit be damned. Grants are won by studying the opinions of those on the funding committees, catering to their preferences, and imitating the form of previous successful grants. This is also how top tier papers are crafted - narrative first, then the PI orders their people to collect the appropriate data. When the students are foolish enough to collect the “wrong” results, they are told the experiment failed and to repeat it. I’m not exaggerating. These people understand that careful work and replication is a waste of time and that cutting corners (cheating) is the only way to compete. PIs are no longer scientists, they are slick salespeople and shoddy managers for the Fake Science machine.
I’ve learned this all firsthand. Look upon these works and despair.
I am not sure about the numbers, it's hard to get a good estimate for me, but I've seen there is a lot out there as well. I know many labs where people are forced to repeat something until it "works", and had such an experience in my postdoc. Actually my boss then was sloppy and a bit arrogant or deluded on the topic, rather than malicious, probably. I was brought in to do a few "minor things" to finish off a big publication and found the entire thing was flawed because I added more controls from my own initiative, wasted a big chunk of time for years to keep looking with slightly different ways instead of accepting the negative result. And I was treated like I couldn't do the experiments right. I think the boss was not doing it intentionally because when I gave the negative results in tightly controlled experiments she said she couldn't sleep at night. If I had gone with the setup and helped them publish the exaggerated results, it probably would have been a high impact paper in the 20s or so, which would quickly be criticized online and led to us having a bad reputation. And I imagine, from everything taken together, the boss and others would have blamed me for lack of controls if that happened, and continued on without difficulty.
One of the nice things we have now are things like pubpeer where misconduct can be highlighted. It did lead to some changes. Astoundingly, though, there are some cases where the same lab head is found to have fraudulent data again and again, and is still welcomed to publish questionable findings in Nature and other high level journals. Actually for the one that I have the most surprise with, it involved HIV. Sequencing of the HIV genome was done, and they quietly mentioned in their Methods they altered the sequencing read length, and consequently their entire phenomenon can be produced from random data, or any alternative genome of similarly small size. They didn't need to retract, perhaps because the investigator is an HHMI PI. This had been on a journal allowing online comments, and comments were deleted. The journal also had a standard of publishing the reviewer comments, and a reviewer had pointed out the serious flaws with their method and past work that showed this was likely all an artifact, yet this PI was able to publish.
So from places like open peer reviews and things like pubpeer, you see many examples of how alive and well critical evaluations are with individual research papers. Most scientists I know are distrustful and ask tough questions, and welcome tough questions to themselves. But as the above anecdote illustrates, some people play by different rules. That's why I feel we have a big mixture out there. Altogether we can't trust anything we read from journals or scientsts, but there are definitely plenty of good ones out there. Regardless, I mostly agree with you. Things are going downhill rapidly.
The identity politics seemed to be a recent thing. I was applying to be a professor for the goal of being an independent researcher a while ago, and had an offer and interviews. When applying, I looked at poor publication records for new department hires that I could browse, and it tracked well with ... "diversity, equity, and inclusion" goals. I had to write a DEI statement, at minimum, almost everywhere, and the places I got return interest from were ones where that was less emphasized. The statements were outrageous. Naturally, if you were an underrepresented group, you could make use of your identity to pass the barrier. I wrote antiquated ideals of non-discrimination values, instead, and the value of teaching science as a tool of objectivity that can be equally and fairly used by all identities. I feel that did not help, but oh well. After a while, I decided the current identity politics environment is not for me, and went to a pharma company and have been free of identity politics there (so far). Happy to also say, we haven't run from any of our problems, like adverse drug toxicity, in preclinical work done by us our academic collaborators.
Altogether the greater University system lost its way, despite having a lot of merit, still. I think identity politics are going to bring down a lot of norms with Universities and research will be among them. Fewer people need to go to University for most pursuits, IMO, and I also always thought the graduate student system was like abusive slavery that was unsustainable.
That’s one hell of a post! I appreciate all points made and the interest to share. I’m generally familiar with all of this.
Your experience as a postdoc joining the project as finisher is very similar to one episode I had in cancer research. I could not replicate previous results from a newly minted PhD, or demonstrate further anticipated results. Then I started testing (with a fancy nested PCR assay) the lab’s archived cell lines and determined they were widely contaminated. Those cell lines used for the project in question had the most potent mycoplasma signal. The PI basically stopped communicating with me after that, out of embarrassment and a passive shoot the messenger attitude.
The lab described above was overrun with undergrads without proper training or supervision. I was capable, motivated, and could have helped improve the lab in all manner of activity and mentorship. But no, this was a Cargo Cult where everyone was expected to individually imitate the high impact publications and hot narratives. I found myself in labs like this not once, but 4 different times.
My latest efforts to work with the best were rather successful, but I’ve still given up hope for my science career. Now I know from the inside that HHMI is as woke as it gets, and they have jumped straight off the cliff. The constant DEI propaganda and prominent role in promoting the Plandemic shattered the last shreds of respect.
Stories like that are so depressing. I can't say leaving is a bad choice. There are still some good people in there interested in science, at the moment, but I wonder what is coming in the future when those become fewer and the corrupting influences take greater hold. I wish there were some alternatives, outside of the academy, for people to get started in a biology-related career. It's tough now because of the expectation of slaving away at PhD and postdoc positions. For now I'm skeptical that going to industry first gives enough opportunities to lead to a position for much innovation, unfortunately.
Our stories are more similar than you thought. In my role as a finisher, I first started using the lines then got the "bad" (real) results, then found they had mycoplasma (and not just for that project, it was every single line in the lab, which they kept using). Unfortunately, the PI, and member who had been working on the project a while, thought that the mycoplasma was the explanation for the bad results so they wasted more resources on it. Also, it was the same situation. There was almost no one formally trained on the basics and the PI traveled non-stop and rarely ran the lab, beyond pressuring everyone to have good results from afar.