After making a good-faith effort to cancel the service, which could include a snail mail letter, could a person dispute the charges, either to your credit card company or through one of the three credit reporting agencies?

It doesn't have to be fraud to dispute a charge.

Scholars are "at each other's throats" all the time with respect to the interpretation of data and conflicting theories.

On the other hand, 3rd-party audits of whether a lab is faking data are rare. Your peer scientific investigators take you at your word if you say that you ran a particular experiment and observed a set of measurements.

The idea that "3rd party review" should be commonplace is like the idea that the police should break your door down at their discretion to make sure you are not hiding any illicit drugs. I mean, what is the problem with such "spot checks", especially if you don't use nor traffic illicit drugs, so you have nothing to hide?

Yeah, yeah and yeah, there are bad actors who abuse this trust just as there are criminals who demand their Constitutional Rights in the U.S. system. But yes, the scholarly enterprise is based on mutual trust, and it hence it is such a big deal when someone is caught cheating.

As far as a room-temperature superconductor, as soon as someone announces such a thing, everyone and his brother is running to their lab trying to replicate this result, not just because they are skeptical but also because if this works, they want to "get in on this", maybe writing their own papers if they discover other materials or other ways to get this to work. There was such a gold rush climate with the announcement of liquid-nitrogen temperature superconductors, there was almost immediate confirmation, there was a long period where it was thought not to be practical for engineering applications, but because of the concerted effort of further research over time, such "high-temperature superconductors" have found practical use.

Here, just like with "cold fusion", no one is able to replicate the result. Just like with cold fusion, the people who can't reproduce the result are being charitable, blaming the initial hype on sloppy experimental technique and wishful thinking rather than pointing a finger accusing fraud.

I once got scolded by an associate editor of a journal for responding to a reviewer by offering to show "source code" to a simplification of a formula using symbolic manipulation software.

The whole scholarly enterprise operates on trust and taking a scholar at their word. I may have misinterpreted what the reviewer was asking for. The request for clarification may have had to do that they never heard of Mathematic or Maple before and didn't know that machine simplification of algebra "was a thing." The associate editor took umbrage that I was interpreting the reviewer's remark as questioning my truthfulness that I should "show source" in the particular circumstance. Instead of "how dare you question my integrity" it was a "how dare you interpret that an anonomyous reviewer is questioning your integrity by you offering to show more of the intermediate steps." Sort of a meta-questioning of integrity.

On the other hand, getting caught faking something pretty much destroys a person's career, even if it is a small thing not particularly relevant to the conclusions. It is the legal principle "false in one thing, false in all things", but in a court of law, witnesses "shade" their testimony all the time and being convicted of perjury is rare, and a judge will instruct a jury that they are to use their "common sense judgment" and "everyday experience" to weigh the truthfulness of a witness. In science, if you are known to have falsified even a little bit, it is like the guy in the telling of a joke who complained that he had relations with a goat only one time.

So an independent third-party audit is not business-as-usual in science. You take a scientist's word until there is a compelling reason not to. Essentially, there has to be some level of "probable cause" or claims from whistleblowers in someone's lab to trigger such a thing.

Plagiarism and data fabrication?

There is a Far Side cartoon where the parents return home to be greeted by a woman who looks like a fairy-tale witch. Flabergasted by what has happened, they scold this baby sitter with, "You cooked and ate both our children" as if she had limited herself to devouring only one child, it would have been less of a concern.

So, if you are going to fake your data, can't you at least cite prior faked-data studies by other investigators taking shortcuts?

Mainly the legal system protecting land owners.

US and UK have a similar legal system that is different from almost everywhere else in the world.

Isn't there that California HSR line from LA to San Francisco? Isn't it well along under construction?

What am I missing?

Texas is just awful.

They all drive around in pickup trucks with gun racks attached to the back window. The way they speak you can't understand a word they are saying, either.

The place has terrible extremes of hot and cold weather.

And they had, as you suggest, hundreds of people left to freeze and die.

And their governor is this right-wing immigrant-hating maniac who like to elicit sympathy for being in a wheelchair, in contrast with the suave, hip, articulate and able-bodied Governor of California with his artfuly styled hair and taste for fast-food restaurants paying below the prevailing wage.

If you live in California, for gosh sakes, don't even think of moving to Texas!

If he were of full cognitive ability, he would be nagging you about getting a Mac.

But what tempts you? The salty snack?

I think not. Your's is a sweet tooth.

You will always return to your Dark Master.

The cocoa bean!

speaks to the 'tude of the Linux community?

Go ahead. Mark me Troll. Make my day.

pretty much.

Is this the gaming PC version of you find a dental floss that you really like, but if you want to buy more, you have to pay 10X price on Ebay?

Get off the quadrangle in front of the building!

Everybody around here has gotten so earnest and serious.

I was telling a joke. Laugh.

Seriously, that a Mexican drug cartel was forcing residents of a town to subscribe to their internet service was discussed on Slashdot. A lot of the comments were that the fee the cartel was charging for this was a sweet deal compared to what those of us in the U.S. are getting stuck for by our telco or cable company.

OK, alright already, maybe the fees were quite high on a purchasing power parity basis considering wage differentials between the two countries.

There was some also speculation that the cartel was offering some kind of wireless connection, probably wi-fi, and maybe the data rates weren't anything spectacular. Yeah, like, try and complain to the local cartel boss that your downloads are taking too long.

So my joke that Mexican organized crime could provide internet at lower cost than the US government subsidizing one of our telcos left someone butt-hurt.

I heard (on Slashdot!) that one of the Mexican drug cartels offers a great price on internet service.

Of course, you are required to subscribe to it at the point of a gun. But what government program doesn't involve some level of compulsion directed at somebody?