There are a number of interesting things happening in the world of science (understatement of the year) that pertain particularly to poor results being altered, modified, or just misinterpreted as positive and useful. I won't spend a lot of time talking about them, as there are a number of very good summaries available, but I do want to point out to people who read my blog several other blogs and news outlets that have some useful information on the topic.
Well, both stories are discussed and reviewed by In The Pipeline, one of my favorite blogs relating to science and industry news. There is a good summary of the news items in each of his last two posts, along with the requisite links to the stories. I'll give you the links, plus my view on the matter.
The first story revolves around a PhD student who apparently falsified nearly all of her research over the course of her PhD and only relatively recently was caught for the amount of false data she fabricated. While the story is older (she "got" her PhD in 2005) there are a number of new documents that have surfaced in the public further damning her for her efforts. It's a very interesting story about how someone can so easily deceive her labmates and PI, despite the problems that came with others trying to reproduce her work. As someone who has been trying to generate a lot of data, I find it somewhat hard to believe just how much effort one could put into falsifying results, especially considering it probably took more work than just, well, getting the results, but some people are just crazy enough to do it. It seems that they're finally catching her and bringing her to "justice" (in whatever sense of the word that means... I guess retracting papers and taking away her doctorate, not allowing her to do research, etc.), so hopefully this can serve as a lesson to all of us not to cheat our way out of doing the work and suffering the foibles of obtaining a PhD.
The second story is a lot more troublesome, as it not only affects the people of a laboratory but also a whole slew of folks. It appears that a lot of research being done looking into biomarkers for medicine, stretching from the lab to the clinic, was - while not fraudulent like the first story - poorly done and analyzed, causing many folks to be treated rather poorly for cancer. It's been interesting to read more into the story because it highlights just how little we know about the genetics of cancer and ways to detect exactly what kind of cancer (and other disease, for that matter) any given patient is dealing with. In reading about epigenetics, it's clear that there's a lot more going on than just the genetic sequence, making it much more difficult to truly tell, without a shadow of a doubt, what exactly each individual is dealing with. There's also a good discussion of "personalized medicine", something I believe is a possibility as a medical treatment but requiring a lot more work to become plausible. While the Duke study has gone awry, hopefully future work will produce better, more meaningful results that don't lead to the same kinds of problems that were encountered here.
On a positive note, I've actually been finding some encouragement at work recently. I was writing about being in a funk on the research front, and recently some fruitful discussions with the boss have produced some interesting things to think about and examine. I'm hoping to continue pushing for positive results here as the summer progresses, and then by the fall into the winter have a good amount of material for publications and thesis writing. It's about as positive as I've felt about lab work lately, so hooray for that!
Finally, the dog has settled into our lives and we're doing fine with him! I'm getting more walks in that I would have under other circumstances (and he is as well!) and I'm learning what it's like to be up at the crack of dawn every day. So far - not bad!
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