In my naïve early years as a phd student (doing experimental organic chemistry), I tried to replicate some promising results.
I'm a poor experimentalist (so poor I later switched to computational chemistry), but these procedures were absolutely impossible to follow once you got down to the details.
My advisor told me "yeah. we don't try to replicate anything that comes out of that lab." and left it at that.
Sobered me up real quick to the realities of how widespread these bullshit cheating practices are.
You are right. I remember I read an article about a PhD student struggling to reproduce experiment results despite he performed them hundreds of times. And when he talked about his worries to his friends, they told him they were in the same situation. So everyone had to write in his/her paper the results the mentors wanted. I wish I could find that article. He was into biology.
I'm a poor experimentalist (so poor I later switched to computational chemistry), but these procedures were absolutely impossible to follow once you got down to the details.
My advisor told me "yeah. we don't try to replicate anything that comes out of that lab." and left it at that.
Sobered me up real quick to the realities of how widespread these bullshit cheating practices are.