Speaker 1: There is an alarming trend of increasing legal battles in science and it's particularly worrying because these legal battles happen after someone has been accused of lying, defrauding science and just outright fabricating data. That is scary. The first article I want to share with you is all about when scholars sue their accusers. Ultimately there is a scientist who has made headlines a couple of times because once when serious allegations of misconduct evolve in her work became public and then she filed a $25 million lawsuit against her accusers. That will make anyone double guess speaking out if they see something fishy in any scientific article, which is obviously the complete opposite of what we want. The lawsuit itself was met with a barrage of criticism from those who worried that, as one scientist put it, would have a chilling effect on fraud detection. I agree with this because at the moment we are absolutely relying on people donating their time and actually acting like a hobby when they are trying to find fabricated data. If we are giving them any reason to hesitate speaking out, science and research is in trouble. This is highlighted here. Would-be critics would self-censor, publishers would fail to correct the record and universities would protect fraudsters. If it is commonplace that scientists, once they have been called out for fabricating data, start suing people for $25 million, this is going to have a knock-on effect not only for science and research but also for the progress of certain fields of science. There are going to be issues like not being able to talk about certain results because it is under legal investigation. It is really going to affect discourse. This is only the tip of the iceberg. You should check out these other stories. They are mental. In this article, I love it, from Retraction Watch, which is one of my favourite places to go at the moment, an author threatened to sue publisher over retraction and then double whammy, they actually sued them to block the release of the emails that was talking about how they are going to sue the publisher. That is crazy. Why on earth would you do that? It is like, oh, no, I am definitely not guilty. I am so not guilty of this. I am going to sue you. This is one of the emails that she sent when she threatened legal actions against the publisher. I wish to reiterate legal recourse in event of aforementioned direction from your prior correspondence. I would also like a copy of the original accusations so that they can be dealt with accordingly in legal proceedings. She repeatedly threatened legal actions and called the decision to retract her article problematic and unlawful. Now, that is obviously not useful for any part of the scientific or research process. If we are talking about open discourse, we should not be worried about someone speaking up, especially a publisher. If publishers have found something bad about your work, they are well within their rights to retract it. It is up to you as the researcher to provide evidence that what you are talking about is not made up, is not fabricated and is real. The burden of proof lies with the researcher in this case. You can't just sue your way out of it. Researchers are not just content suing publishers and each other, they are taking on the government. Check out this one. A researcher sues the US government following a debarment, debarment, I don't know what that means, and misconduct finding. So this is all about Ivana Frech who engaged in research misconduct by intentionally, knowingly or recklessly falsifying and or fabricating. Now those are some big allegations. So therefore we should expect that anyone accused of this needs to be sort of held accountable for what they're actually saying. And because of this, she was barred from receiving federal funding for three years, starting on the 21st of August, making no mention of whether or not she agrees to the sanctions. And you know, I think that's absolutely fair. If you have been found to be falsifying data using public money, you should be barred from getting more of that money to make up more lies. You can't just sue the government to be like, no, I deserve this money. This last case is really interesting to me. Ultimately, there was a paper on a COVID-19 and jade amulet paper, yes, that sounds strange and it is strange, that sues employer for mental anguish and discrimination. Ultimately, there was this researcher who published a paper which proposed jade amulets may prevent COVID-19. Now that to me, sort of like sparks up my sceptic senses. Now this is a really interesting read. Once again, go to Retraction Watch, I'll leave a link in the description. But this article proposed that jade amulets may prevent COVID-19 by essentially just using this word soup down here. I'll try my best to read it. But ultimately it says, can traditional Chinese medicine provide insights in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic? Serpentinization induced lithospheric long wave magnetic anomalies in protozoic bedrocks in a weakened geometric field mediate the apparent transformation of biogenic molecules in COVID-19 via magnetic catalysis. Now that rightly was really challenged by a number of scientists, so much so that this researcher is saying they faced extreme bullying and harassment from people in their department. If you go down and check out all of the comments on this, it's a little bit of a minefield and a nightmare because you have the actual researcher talking about their own work. Down here they respond, the geomagnetic field activity is seasonal, it has semi-occulation, blah, blah, blah. Then you have all of these people arguing with the actual author on this article. This guy pops up, Richard Saunders. Now Richard Saunders is a skeptic from Australia. I recognize this name because I was deep into the skeptic movement a while ago. It is interesting that everyone's just weighing in. Obviously, with great claims, there needs to be great evidence to support what you're saying. Remember that the burden of proof is on the researcher. If they're going to make big claims, they need a lot of evidence and they just didn't provide it. But if people start criticizing your ideas, you can't just claim discrimination. Obviously, that's like a separate thing. If he has been discriminated against, clearly that needs to sort of be resolved, but you cannot use that as an argument for not talking about your work or not presenting enough evidence to support what you're saying. If we just immediately jump to suing people who disagree with us, that is going to have a massive impact on science and research. Here are my four biggest reasons why science and research is in such a horrible state at the moment, particularly if we're jumping to suing people that disagree with us. The first thing that we should be scared about is this is going to stop scientific and research discourse. It is going to put sort of like an arrow in the neck of anyone who wants to talk robustly and potentially very critically about any sort of research. You do not want to be threatened with being sued just because you disagree with someone or you've actually pointed out where they have purposely falsified information. Terrible. That's clearly not a good thing for science and research. The second thing is a drain on resources. Clearly, these scientists have got a lot on their plate. And the last thing all of these people need is extra things. Legal things tend to go for a long time. They require a lot of resources, a lot of time, a lot of money. And that's the last thing a system such as research needs because it's already under so much financial pressure, so much time pressure. The last thing we need to do is give it more things to worry about, especially the weight of the legal system. The third thing is that if we start locking ideas behind legal proceedings, it is clearly going to affect how quickly we can progress science and research. A terrible thing. And I think the last thing and arguably the worst thing that can come of this is the public's perception of science and research. We are at a time where arguably science and research is viewed unfavourably by the public. The last thing we need is all of this horrible, like, highly publicised, high monetary value legal suing system to get in the way of what people think about science. It should be seen as a place for open discussion, for people talking robustly about ideas, critically, and not just getting annoyed and saying, you know what, mate, I'm going to sue you. If you like this video, remember to go check out this one where I'm talking about Italian ministers' dirty little secret, faking data. It's well worth a watch. Go check it out. So there we have it. There's everything you need to know about the disgraceful state of academia and why enough is enough. It seems to only be getting worse. Let me know in the comments what you'd like to add. And also remember there are more ways that you can engage with me. The first way is to sign up to my newsletter. Head over to andrewstapleton.com.au forward slash newsletter. The link is in the description. When you sign up, you'll get five emails over about two weeks, everything from the tools I've used, the podcast I've been on, how to write the perfect abstract, and more. It's exclusive content available for free. So go sign up now. And also remember to go check out academiainsider.com. That's my project where I've got e-books, I've got resource packs, I've got blogs, I've got forums, and courses are coming soon. Everything is over there to make sure that academia works for you. All right, then I'll see you in the next video.