>Students say that Dias gave them an ultimatum: remove their names, or let him send the draft. Despite their worries, the students say they had no choice but to acquiesce. “I just remember being very intimidated,” one student says. The student says they regret not speaking up more to Dias. “But it’s scary at the time. What if I do and he makes the rest of my life miserable?”
Indeed it is scary, because as a student your PI can in fact ruin your life and ruin your career, without much recourse in most cases. This behind-the-scenes is a good insight into the bad incentives and lack of accountability for PIs in academic research. I suspect this kind of thing happens all the time in smaller fields, and never gets discovered because it's not a headline-grabbing topic like room-temp superconductivity.
I had a bioengineering PhD friend who said she spotted obviously fraudulent papers all the time in her field--publications claiming they grew such-and-such bacteria in so-and-so medium, when she knew damn well that said bacteria cannot grow in said medium.
Indeed it is scary, because as a student your PI can in fact ruin your life and ruin your career, without much recourse in most cases. This behind-the-scenes is a good insight into the bad incentives and lack of accountability for PIs in academic research. I suspect this kind of thing happens all the time in smaller fields, and never gets discovered because it's not a headline-grabbing topic like room-temp superconductivity.
I had a bioengineering PhD friend who said she spotted obviously fraudulent papers all the time in her field--publications claiming they grew such-and-such bacteria in so-and-so medium, when she knew damn well that said bacteria cannot grow in said medium.