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Notes -
It's unfortunate that our society so fully understands the necessity of this in some contexts, yet seems ignorant of it in others. We take a strong, appropriate stance on cases of financial fraud - witness SBFs 25 year sentence, or Madoff's effective life sentence. Yet in science and medicine we seem to let fraudsters play in a fake world with no consequences to their actions.
Perhaps it's simply an issue of legibility: it's easy to measure when money goes missing, but when studies fail to replicate and medicines fail to work, there are so very many explanations other than, "that man lied".
Great point.
Its also the fact that those financial fraudsters immensely benefit financially from their crimes. We can measure the benefit they got for causing harm to others, too.
As far as I know, most academic fraudsters, ironically, don't become fabulously wealthy, but may gain a lot of status and acclaim.
So it both makes it even less sensible why they'd commit fraud, and harder to articulate the nature of the harm. As you say, "that man lied, and as a result got dozens of speaking slots at conferences and became the envy of graduate students in his field of study, and was able to afford an upper-middle-class lifestyle" doesn't seem as legible as "that man lied and made $80 million."
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