Hacker News Reader

Comment by iLoveOncall | Hacker News Reader

A guaranteed, long, prison sentence is the only long term solution to avoid the problem

They cost society billions if not trillions of dollars in follow up research, industry investments and consumers spendings. Some of them cost lives. Some thousands if not much more.

View on HN

>A guaranteed, long, prison sentence is the only long term solution to avoid the problem

I'm leaning towards this solution concerning all breaches of pubic trust (e.g., Boeing, Sacklers, etc)

I'd prefer a system where all experiments are replicated by another independent party. This would prevent fraud but also all other kinds of wrong results through mistakes or incompetence. This would essentially close to double the cost of research, but I think it would be worth it.

Yes, deterrence does require both sufficient certainty and severity of punishment. But, those can pull against each other and it seems quite likely that universities and individual academics would stonewall if cooperation could lead to a colleague being imprisoned for years.

A more fitting punishment is firing and blacklisting from future research posts.

> it seems quite likely that universities and individual academics would stonewall if cooperation could lead to a colleague being imprisoned for years.

Obstruction of justice is a crime too.

And I'd argue that if they're willing to protect someone faking research they're no better and should follow them in jail.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com