A principal investigator (PI) outlines her theory for a certain effect to her graduate student who is involved in acquiring data to confirm or refute the theory. The PI explains her anticipation of finding experimental data having these values. The graduate student generates the experimental data with approximately the anticipated values. The data are published, the PI garners recognition, her grant is renewed, and the graduate student receives his Ph.D.
The next student working on this project, however, has difficulties reproducing the data. After further investigation, it is found that the first graduate student chose in cases of ambiguity of the data those values that came closer to the expected values, emphasizing a trend in the data that was not present in general.
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