And I’d like Science doping analogies for $1000, Alex.

Once again, shamelessly leeching off DrugMonkey’s brainwaves….

Science doping confessions I’m afraid we’ll be hearing:

Yeah, I fudged stuff. I withheld some data that was relevant, that kinda disproved my hypothesis to begin with. So it a got a coupla papers published, but there was nothing false in any of them. I mean not a thing was technically untrue. OK, so I more than fudged stuff --- maybe a coupla times I kinda made up stuff. What? Fabricated data? Noooo, that sounds so harsh, dude. Just, you know, kinda extended the results beyond the limits---to, in my mind, the logical conclusion that people were too dumb to see yet. But hey, I never did it in a paper, OK? Or even a conference. Just in some grant apps, y’know. Just to tide me over---it looked like some grants may not be renewed so I just got a little help to get back on the field, man. I mean, there were people counting on me---students, postdocs, techs, admins…..the pressure was tremendous….the responsibility I felt was enormous. Besides, these grant apps were reduced to like 12 pages, so it all basically came down to my resume. It wasn’t like there was even room to provide prelim results to give the reviewers a proper eval of the data even if we had them. It was my word against some rookie’s, and I KNEW in my heart we were correct so does that really count as cheating? And you know the fans loved me. So all I had to do was provide enough stuff for them to continue to like me. I mean, the system was set up for me to be a star, man…..who was I to go screw that up? I mean, I'm not that arrogant….just a guy who’s doing his bit for the greater good, y’know? That’s all, man. I just did it to stay in the game, to get the grants. I never faked it in the papers, man, never. Because I’m pretty sure the stuff I made up was true anyway. I mean, I didn’t really need the fabrication --- just saved some time and got me back in the game y’know. Just couldn’t afford to have funding gaps there, guys. Too many people depending on me. Way too much pressure.

So in summary, I’m really sorry for my transgressions but I hope that you will agree it wasn’t really pertinent to my overall body of work. This has nothing to do with my upcoming candidacy for the NAS or the Lasker or even the Nobel prize. I just feel bad having kept my family in the dark about this minor misdemeanor I had in the grant app process (which was, ultimately, for the greater good, in my opinion, because of my opinion of the importance of my contribution---just so you don’t lose sight of all that) and I thought it was time I came clean. I think it is important for aspiring scientists to know that fraud doesn’t pay. I’ll be happy to reply to all comments from Stockholm.

Update: I can’t understand why my confession has generated such a kerfuffle and fuss. I mean, people are bandying about my name with ‘fabrication’ and stuff and it was never like that. We just enhanced our results a bit for the grant apps, made sort of a ‘proposal enhancement data’ (PED) set if you will---think of it as supplements, man. But the PED don’t run gels or generate spectra or clamp any freaking patches (haha they certainly don’t do any real work---c’mon that’s funny in layers, admit it!) or write any grants or navigate Grants.gov (or help you deal with the Pure Edge crap back in the day) for you, you know? You still need the hand-eye coordination and God-given talent to do that. And why pick on me? People have been using all kinds of ‘supplements’ for ages. I mean, I know for a fact that many a grant proposal or paper has been written under the influence of mfing Jameson, or a hot cup of sake, or maybe even a toke of the hippy lettuce. What of those performance enhancers? I mean, is it OK if your grants and papers were sativa-ed as long as the source was Oryza or Cannabis? I was just part of the era of strangulation of funding (I mean, it’s a doc eat doc world out there and I was wearing R21 underwear) and I did what I needed to, to keep myself and my team in the game.

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