I can't help but think some of this relates to this: <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about...</a><p>The pressures that we put researchers under to deliver nothing but positive results is terrible. There is an overhead to research. There is an overhead to progress. Why do we try to eliminate it with such prejudice, when the consequences seem so obviously dire?
I would trace this to the same root as the reason the largest banks are allowed to walk away from open corruption and money-laundering. We have inculcated into our society a servile deference to power. Nobody of any importance is held accountable for their actions, even if they would be universally recognized as wrong.<p>While it may be shocking that a laboratory director is more concerned with the reputation of his institution than that it does good science in an ethical and responsible; I doubt anyone is terribly surprised.<p>We know this, but to face it requires us to acknowledge our own complicity in the lie that things are alright, that we live in a stable society that is not on the verge of collapse. Our institutions are visibly failing, and we don't know what we would replace them with.
The crux of this sort of issue was laid bare relatively early in this article: results and papers are more important than good science, which leads to an increased incidence of fraud and related misconduct. If good science were actually valued, one scientist wouldn't have been driven to suicide by the fact that his research (assuming it was not fabricated to begin with) was being questioned and the colleague who raised valid questions wouldn't have lost his job. I can't imagine that this is all that uncommon a scenario.
Curiously, the data is publicly available: <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE29662" rel="nofollow">http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE29662</a>
<i>"Deceased respondents no longer pose a risk," the letter said.</i><p>- classic! Yes, science stops when the scientist is dead, says the US government ...
This is one side of a story of guy that had just been fired and is filing a lawsuit. What exactly is the criticism of the paper since the paper is available? If the only argument is the threshold to consider something a hit or not on the screen, there is a ton of followup in the paper looking at those genes more closely. Am I missing something?