<p>Dishonesty apparently doesn't always lie in the youth and uneducated in this country. This unfortunately damages MIT's reputation for ahving sound judgment when hiring profs. Can someone like Ben please care to clarify some of the facts in this case, besides what has already been reported?</p>
<p>To what are you referring?</p>
<p>I don't think there's too much to report, other than what's already been reported. Van Parijs was a rising star in immunology, and faked data on a grant application and in at least one paper in a major journal. He was outed by some of his postdocs, MIT investigated, and he was [url=<a href="http://www-tech.mit.edu/V125/N50/50van_parijs.html%5Dfired%5B/url">http://www-tech.mit.edu/V125/N50/50van_parijs.html]fired[/url</a>]. Voila, the system works.</p>
<p>Incidentally, I don't think the incident reflects on the environment at MIT (or MIT's judgement in hiring... what, they're supposed to be psychic now?) so much as it reflects on the extremely competitive world of academic biology. Some people just cave under the pressure.</p>
<p>It's too bad, really... prior to his academic misconduct, he was quite a well-liked professor. One of my friends actually used to UROP in his lab.</p>
<p>Why do people do this??</p>
<p>Sheez...If people cite your paper, you end up screwing yourself and others.</p>
<p>They do it because they want to become full professors, and the only way to become a full professor is by publishing research in high-impact-factor journals, and the only way to publish in such journals is to have awesome results... and sometimes in science you don't get awesome results.</p>
<p>I understand what you're saying, though. It's hard for me to really get why someone would risk everything in that way -- this is science. Somebody's going to repeat your experiment, and if they can't replicate your claim, they're going to be suspicious. Lots of suspicion leads to investigations... and Van Parijs' career is over, just like that. Poof.</p>
<p>Hmmm. I wanted to be a prof at MIT when I grew up. But I am realizing more and more that this is an ultra high stakes job that is extremely competetive. The pressure seems enormous.</p>
<p>I am just imagining that guy from A Beautiful Mind, looking for something to do his PhD on.</p>
<p>Truth be told, </p>
<p>You really shouldn't care about what people expect from you.</p>
<p>What do you care what other poeple think?</p>
<p>HAHAHAHA.....I wish Feynman was still alive....</p>
<p>I agree with mollie that it doesn't reflect negatively on any university -- a small fraction of cheaters will seep into any system. And the competetive pressure virtually guarantees cutting of corners. There may well be much more fraud than anybody knows about, I think. But since science is so obsessed with verification, these frauds rarely do any serious damage to the whole enterprise.</p>
<p>So, evil<em>asian</em>dictator, chill. You aren't knocking Harvard because one of their star University Professors, Laurence Tribe, copied passages from another author's book without attribution. There is no need for hysterics and calling for explanations over something that is an unfortunate but not all that rare part of academic practice.</p>