Charles Piller
speaker
984 appearances
4 recordings
4 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard 17 Apr
Charles Piller’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Apr 2026 with 1.
Appearances
I think all of those are possibilities. I think also sometimes people deserve a second chance. I think it depends to some degree on the extent of the possible image manipulation, how long it went on, how seriously it might have damaged thinking in the field. Those are things that...
they can be hard to measure, but when you, let me just give you an example from my own reporting, this guy at university of Southern California, who I mentioned, uh, Zlakovich, he, um, There was evidence that he had been doctoring images in ways that had an effect on drug development, that had an effect on scientific thinking for many, many years.
And ultimately, he wasn't able to stay in his job. He's been put on indefinite leave by the university. or he's accepted indefinite leave. It's a little bit ambiguous how they characterize it. But the point is that it's very hard to recover from a pattern of misbehavior that goes back decades.
It's very hard to support the idea that a person like that maybe made a mistake and should be allowed to learn from their mistake and improve their behavior. On the other hand, I'm very sympathetic to junior scientists
and people who are drawn into either misconduct knowingly or maybe even unwittingly in some of these labs because they're beholden to powerful supervisors, professors, who dictate the future of their young scientists within their lab. And so I think those people deserve a lot of sympathy and a lot of support.
And I've talked to many of them, and it's sometimes heartbreaking, the stories you hear about how difficult it was for them knowing that to talk to me could jeopardize their reputation and their career, even though they were kind of trapped in a training situation where they witnessed wrongdoing.
But I'm thankful to say some of them stepped forward because they believe deeply in the integrity of science.
We talked about the peer review process improving. Do you think institutions like the major institutions of the world that are performing the scientific research should be also put on notice that they need to improve some things?
Yeah, I mean, I think really you have the The institutions that regulate, fund, publish, and administer science, you've got universities, journals, regulatory agencies like the FDA, funders like the NIH, and foundations that fund important scientific research, they're all guilty of complacency. They're all guilty of not keeping up with the times, not keeping up with the reality,
that there are pervasive problems in image doctoring and related kinds of falsification of research. So I think taking it seriously is step one. Not just paying lip service, but really developing
methods that are routinely applied in all of those institutions to be able to show the public that they care deeply about honest research research that can be used to move the society forward and not just drug development but other forms of science forward and so yeah i would say you got to hit those institutions hard the institutional authorities of science are behind
They need to improve their game, get their game going on this.
Yeah, I think the incentive structure is a good place to start because right now a lot of these institutions are heavily incentivized to just produce massive amounts of research right or wrong, especially if, almost like roulette, it lands on the right number. They can become incredibly wealthy as a result. You mentioned the advancement of science. You write for Science Magazine.
Trust the science was a statement that was mentioned quite often over the last five years. People have lost trust in science. What do you think science means to the average person these days? And how can we improve that notion?
I think one part of it is to move science out of this realm of the great experts, the great brilliant people who are smarter than all the rest of us. And to remember that people can understand these ideas. Scientists, if anything, one of the skills that they don't have, aren't the best at, is communicating. And I think some of the great work being done is not well understood by the public.
And so when they hear of scandals or difficulty in the field that is maybe slowing down progress, they tend to generalize that to things that maybe should be supported and that are actually very important. And so what I would say is these institutions need to stop feeling so proud of themselves and start thinking about how to convey important messages to the public.
The second thing is sort of an interesting thing. I'm sure you're familiar with this as a doctor, is that it's been shown over and over that
Medical mistakes, of course, happen, but when one happens and the institution, like a hospital or a doctor who might be responsible for having made the mistake, cops to it and apologizes or explains it to the person who may have been victimized by that mistake, the response is negative.
And hopefully institutes a new process to prevent the mistake from recurring.
There you go. An important next step. But they've also found that people are able to accept that and respond in ways that instead of going to endless litigation for malpractice, to basically treat it like a human problem that we're all struggling to solve. And like you say, to get better, to improve.
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