LouDobbsAwaaaay: Just Another OC Homeless Guy: born_yesterday: CSB: When I was a grad student, the P.I. in the lab next to ours came under investigation for data fabrication. He had been fabricating data for grants, and it had worked; he was flush with funding. He was given two weeks, and his postdocs left up shiat creek, having to find new positions immediately or be deported.

I found out that this PI had another tenure-track position less than a month later. It was apparently not in the university's interest to report him, since they might have to return the grant money they had already received as overhead...and the new university apparently valued his funding more than they did his lack of ethics.

That was pretty much the nail in the coffin of any dream I had of going into academia. If an utter piece of shiat like that can be a success in every definition of the term (other than, you know, actually researching cancer), while honest hard-working scientists are told "they don't quite have what it takes", then fark the lot of them.

But this phenomenon, of course, totally does not apply to the Global Warming err... Global Climate Change err... Global Climate Disruption True Believers.

Not really, no. The history of scientific misconduct is paved with a thousand-thousand stories from biological science. The stakes are so much higher because of the millions changing hands for the research and the potential billions that hang in the balance for private industry. That kind of schwag rarely gets anywhere near a scientist working on something as mundane as climate.

I can see how someone who has no experience in research would simply see all fields as basically operating the same, so I'm not judging. Not until you come up with some reason to brush this explanation away and continue to embrace your more entertaining fantasy, anyway.

So let me get this straight. You are implying that climate science, currently having a smaller funding/grant gravy train (got stats on that, by the way?) than the biological sciences, is therefore immune to faked data and funding/grant fraud?

That's sort of like saying that liquor stores don't need to worry about hold ups since the bad guys are only targeting banks.

That's a pretty good brush there, Poindexter.