"99.99% of us are honest but the dishonest 0.01% can cause serious, repeated damage."
My experience is that this is much more like a 50/50 split at elite schools, at least when you look at people who succeed at making it to faculty positions. BMJ estimates 20% of publications are based on fabricated data:
That sounds about right for what I've seen at MIT. Note that 20% of publications being based on fabricated data is in-line with my 50/50 split figure. Researchers who cheat only do it part of the time, and often in ways which don't involve direct data fabrication. Critically, the numbers go up significantly for high-impact publications -- they types that make the news and make scientific careers. By the time MIT's PR machine picks up a publication, and the press picks up from there, the odds of it being fraudulent are much higher than 50/50.
"99.99% of us are honest but the dishonest 0.01% can cause serious, repeated damage."
My experience is that this is much more like a 50/50 split at elite schools, at least when you look at people who succeed at making it to faculty positions. BMJ estimates 20% of publications are based on fabricated data:
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2021/07/05/time-to-assume-that-hea...
That sounds about right for what I've seen at MIT. Note that 20% of publications being based on fabricated data is in-line with my 50/50 split figure. Researchers who cheat only do it part of the time, and often in ways which don't involve direct data fabrication. Critically, the numbers go up significantly for high-impact publications -- they types that make the news and make scientific careers. By the time MIT's PR machine picks up a publication, and the press picks up from there, the odds of it being fraudulent are much higher than 50/50.