[janalsncm]

I am sympathetic to the fear that this would lead to scientists being thrown in prison for technicalities or even misunderstandings. Nobody wants that.

We also don’t want a cottage industry of performative, ladder climbing researchers siphoning funding from real ones.

At a minimum, the public could stop funding researchers with faked data or images. It’s unacceptable that the NIH keeps funding known frauds. If you doctor images, you’re done.

[nxobject]

Technically, sanctions are already applied by federal funders (e.g. multiple-year funding bans) [1]... although in practice retractions don't happen, so researchers still benefit if you don't do due diligence about your authors (which I don't think is easy anyway.)

[1] https://retractionwatch.com/2023/12/21/what-analyzing-30-yea...