[VSerge]

A scientist that causes, through willful fraud, the death of people seems to be guilty of something like manslaughter. Using fake data is a pretty clear-cut example of willful fraud, and a reasearcher fudging data over such a life and death question should 100% be held accountable.

Scientists making errors in good faith should on the other hand be insulated from any kind of liability.

[auggierose]

You cannot insulate scientists making errors in good faith from any kind of liability, if you make the wilful frauds liable. Because there is no 100% way of distinguishing the two.

[zug_zug]

There are cases where people have doctored images in their research data, or completely fabricated data to meet a significance threshhold.

There may be ambigious cases but there are non-ambiguous cases too.

[bluGill]

You don't need to be 100%. We assume innocent until proven guilty in other contexts. At least some criminals are known to go free because we cannot prove beyond a shadow of a doubt they really did it. However we get a lot of them. It isn't perfect, but it is a standard.

[tines]

Not that I'm in favor of the proposed measure, but saying because we can't identify wilful frauds 100% of the time then we can't protect the non-fraudsters, is just a bit silly, no? You have this kind of problem detecting any kind of fraud.

One test is, is there written communication between people about committing the fraud? If so, there you go.

[oneshtein]

In science, 3 independent scientific organisations must reproduce the effect. Otherwise, it's not a science at all. It's just authority.