Another Slew of Science Papers Retracted Because of Fraud 186
schwit1 writes: A major scientific publisher has retracted 64 articles in 10 journals after discovering that the so-called independent peer reviewers for these articles were fabricated by the authors themselves. From the article: "The cull comes after similar discoveries of 'fake peer review' by several other major publishers, including London-based BioMed Central, an arm of Springer, which began retracting 43 articles in March citing 'reviews from fabricated reviewers'. The practice can occur when researchers submitting a paper for publication suggest reviewers, but supply contact details for them that actually route requests for review back to the researchers themselves." Overall, this indicates an incredible amount of sloppiness and laziness in the peer-review field. In total, more than a 100 papers have been retracted, simply because the journals relied on the authors to provide them contact information for their reviewers, never bothering to contact them directly.
And this is why people don't trust science (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
The same claim you make about wacko's having ammo works in both directions. People on the side you believe to have the better opinions use the same papers as their "proof" for what ever they want.
People quote mythical 'facts' regularly. Today I heard yet another bonehead talking about the alleged "Rape Culture" at college which uses a 40 year old bullshit study for it's statistics. Not because we can't do better studies, but because the numbers in that particular study favor the bullshit they want you to believe.
Not very much "Science" relates to pure black or pure white answers. In fact the majority of science is trying to figure out what shade of gray something is. The most difficult task is to figure out your own biases, and in a world that puts "feelings" over correctness.. we are getting what we should.
Re: Nonsense (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
As you noted, folks can ignore science and quote mythical facts or just deny science (climate change deniers). But that is their fault, not the fault of Science.
Re: (Score:3)
Today I heard yet another bonehead talking about the alleged "Rape Culture" at college which uses a 40 year old bullshit study for it's statistics. Not because we can't do better studies, but because the numbers in that particular study favor the bullshit they want you to believe.
There is a possibility that people who want to do those studies actually CAN'T do better studies.
CDC did a phone survey study on rape. Spent tens of thousands of work hours and several million dollars on it.
http://www.cdc.gov/violencepre... [cdc.gov]
And got "rates of sexual violence in the United States...comparable to those in the war-stricken Congo". [washingtonpost.com]
Their methodology was tainted at several steps, from framing the questions, through all survey takers being female (which totally can't alter their approach to asking q
Re: (Score:3)
You seem to be missing the obvious conclusion. Science is surely capable of yielding better results than the irrational numbers you demonstrated in your last paragraph (amazingly the same number as the BS study I referred to). The issue is that people are inherently manipulative, so they don't want better numbers. Studies use intentionally incorrect information, like you point out with male rape not being counted as rape. That study claiming one in five counted any unwanted sexual advance as rape. Eve
That sounds a bit like conspiracy theory to me... (Score:2)
The issue is that people are inherently manipulative, so they don't want better numbers. Studies use intentionally incorrect information, like you point out with male rape not being counted as rape.
Had they been manipulative they'd change the data and simply report inflated numbers - not use vague, badly worded definitions, prone to misinterpretation, or protocols and methodology prone to bias from both surveyors and surveyed.
You are describing a conspiracy where "studies use intentionally incorrect information".
I am describing a situation where confirmation biases of people designing and running the study, forces them to set goalposts so wide in order to get the results they are expecting - that the
Re: (Score:2)
Had they been manipulative they'd change the data and simply report inflated numbers - not use vague, badly worded definitions, prone to misinterpretation, or protocols and methodology prone to bias from both surveyors and surveyed.
I smell a troll. Manipulation does not require one form, it takes many forms. Similarly dishonesty is not simply a lie, but can also be withholding information or re-ordering information to present a false reality.
You are describing a conspiracy where "studies use intentionally incorrect information".
Yup, it's a troll. I never claimed there was a conspiracy, I claimed that people commonly call things "science" in order to manipulate the public and provided examples which are easy to find and validate.
Riiiight... let's hide behind the linguistics (Score:2)
I never claimed there was a conspiracy, I claimed that people commonly call things "science" in order to manipulate the public and provided examples which are easy to find and validate.
That "people" lying i.e. "call things science" in order to manipulate - that's a description of a conspiracy by definition. ANY definition.
If it walks like duck... Meeh... you know the rest.
As for examples "easy to find"... Go find me a James Bond movie I'm thinking off right now. Here's a hint: he kills a guy in it.
You provided vague anecdotes you only half remember as "examples" of your conspiracy theories about manipulators of the public calling non-science science - and you expect everyone else to know
Re: (Score:1)
Read what GP stated, then read what I wrote. To anyone that knows how to read it should be obvious that my comments regarding convenient 'facts' are related to him, and not TFA or it's summary.
I get that reading chronologically can be hard, but good grief... my commentary is directly below the post I commented on.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:And this is why people don't trust science (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That said, self-review is clearly not peer review, but peer
Re: (Score:2)
"Publishers, get your act together!"
No, it doesn't necessarily mean that people will mistrust science. It means that scientists need to stop trusting journals that promise illusory prestige in exchange for being overpriced.
Kill the market (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You are right, but you are also wrong.
There are many Scientists, even many in Academia, who don't Publish. I've got a co-author on a few Papers, but it never meant much in over three decades of Performance Reviews.
I was a Working Scientist. It's very much like being a Working Actor- a face seen briefly a few dozen times over a career, but never a Leading Role. Still, it paid the bills.
You are an utter asshole for promoting the "Publish or Perish" myth. It is simply not true.
But you are quite right about
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
You are an asshole for calling OP an asshole. Congratulations on finding a job that does not do that.
Re:Kill the market (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need to publish to work as a scientist, but it is something that is important to do in order to get tenure in many schools and as you said, is the way to be a leading scientist. And if you're working towards that sort of leading role, you're the type of person who would be publishing to begin with.
As you said, you didn't have to publish, and many don't, but the ones who do publish are often the ones under the most pressure to do so, for whatever reason. This means that the people who have an important part to play in the scientific world are also the most likely to have a reason to misrepresent their results or strive to be underhanded to avoid actual peer review.
What is the upside for a working scientist to misrepresent their results? A better review? Even then, you probably get reviewed more for your investigative technique or your experimental or apparatus design. Which means that you'd get just as good a review for being good at knocking down novel hypotheses as you would for sustaining them. In other words, you'd get a good review for being a good scientist.
A leading scientist is under a lot more pressure to offer something that they can publish which gets themselves or their labs more grant money so that research can continue. Like you, they are valued if they are good at science and falsifying hypotheses, but grants are usually offered for new, interesting science. Knocking over your own bad hypotheses is necessary, but you have to have something to offer in the meantime.
Some researchers end up with nothing they can offer, and they realize that, but they can't pay the bills with all negative results. So they peer review their own work to keep the grants coming. This is no doubt done in the hope that their faith in their hypothesis is rewarded and that they will be able to produce a return on investment, but there are certainly other reasons for that.
Publish or perish is real, it's just not real for everyone who calls themselves a scientist. However, it is a real problem for the scientific community, because grant money and prestige is what keeps academic scientists working. No doubt you would be fine, albeit at a different school or lab, but you and your ilk are not the problem, your bosses and senior researchers are the ones at risk.
I don't want to defend academic publishers here. I have heard many uncomplimentary things about them. The thing is, the middlemen aren't the ones falsifying the peer review recommendations, the scientists are. And there's really only one reason for that: they don't want to go through the peer review process. That's a *science* problem and it must be solved by *scientists*.
If the peer review process for journals does not work, then the scientists on the editorial boards need to stand up and work out a better method. An academic journal isn't worth wiping your ass with if the scientists involved with it refuse to endorse it. And that is what they need to do. Policy makers and laypeople tend to trust scientists in general in a manner that some trust their priests. In fact, these days, a lot more than priests.
However, that is all based on faith and trust, as they are not doing the experiments themselves. Scientists need to work at maintaining the trust they have in their field as a whole or it provides the ammunition to either distrust science or to encourage misrepresentation of results for certain unscientific aims.
Re: (Score:2)
What is the upside for a working scientist to misrepresent their results? A better review? Even then, you probably get reviewed more for your investigative technique or your experimental or apparatus design. Which means that you'd get just as good a review for being good at knocking down novel hypotheses as you would for sustaining them. In other words, you'd get a good review for being a good scientist.
Tenure is more or less dead. To get grants and even continue your ob in many places, you have to actually
These people... (Score:2, Insightful)
Should be placed in the center of a circle of fellow scientists; their pocket protectors should be yanked out; their labcoats torn off; and the backs of all gathered turned upon them.
Cuz this shit is why you get, "Hurr, climate change isn't reel". Because look - look at all the bad science and bullshit studies.
More like that's where hockey sticks come from (Score:3)
Cuz this shit is why you get, "Hurr, climate change isn't reel". Because look - look at all the bad science and bullshit studies.
Actually it's looking more and more like that's EXACTLY were we got "Hockey stick! We're all going to die! (Unless we give governments the power to regulate the economy back into the bronze age and Al Gore a carbon-credit market from which he can make billions in profits {even after paying for his movie}.)"
Which is really annoying, because if there REALLY IS a DANGEROUS climate
Re: (Score:2)
> "climate science" has been so discredited that it will no longer be possible to convince people this is the case.
Climate Science is only "discredited" in US. Its non-controversial science for the rest of the world. US citizens have *by far*, the largest carbon foot prints per capita - current and historical. So it is only natural for them to be in eager denial. If it wasn't this, they will look for something else to discredit inconvenient facts.
Re: (Score:2)
And your characterization is part of the problem.
we give governments the power to regulate the economy back into the bronze age
Pot, meet kettle.
-Rick
Re: (Score:2)
Should be placed in the center of a circle of fellow scientists; their pocket protectors should be yanked out; their labcoats torn off....
It's a pretty efficient way to terminate your academic career. I think at my former University you would be banned for 3 years...
That plus your name in google you career is pretty much over.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Calm down (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You can search the Springer page for the list:
http://link.springer.com/search?query=The+Publisher+and+Editor+retract+this+article+in+accordance+with+the+recommendations+of+the+Committee+on+Publication+Ethics+(COPE)&date-facet-mode=between&facet-start-year=2015&previous-start-year=1995&facet-end-year=2015&previous-end-year=2015 [springer.com]
More commentary at RetractionWatch: http://retractionwatch.com/2015/08/17/64-more-papers-retracted-for-fake-reviews-this-time-from-springer-journals/ [retractionwatch.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Um, I didn't see a non-Chinese name in that list....
*whistles uncomfortably*
Re:Calm down (Score:4, Informative)
It's not an uncomfortable observation, it's what's happening to the Chinese research/academic establishment about now. There's nothing racial or whatever about it, it's an artefact of the recent history of Chinese academia.
10 years+ ago, the Chinese research landscape was not very good. Getting academic jobs was easy, for example people straight out of PhDs at well known western universities would be offered lectureship jobs off the bat. Result it was big, flabby and staffed with many mediocre people. China is huge so naturally there were notable exceptions, but it's not the exceptions that matter here. Nonetheless, the jobs are/were still good in that the pay is good and they're well respected.
About 10 years ago the Chinese government decided it wanted to be a world leader in research. This meant there was going to have to be a tough, competetitive, results driven research environment of the sort that's more prevalent in other parts of the world. Being the Chinese government they want results fast and they want results now and they can exert a lot of pressure to make it happen.
The simple explanation now is there are a lot of deeply mediocre people who got their jobs when their jobs were easy to get and they're now under immense pressure to perform or lose their job. Being largely mediocre, they're not able to do this and they are frankly desperate.
There's a subtler point that having more good people around who care about the academic subject leads to a degree of policing of this sort of thing. It's far from perfect of course and there have been plenty of cases in the west, but we're talking trends and averages here. The universities staffed with large numbers of mediocre, desperate people don't have the inclination to do such things.
But basically it is very, very hard to go from more or less nothing to a world leading research environment in a short time and it's downright impossible without serious growing pains. That's all you're seeing here.
Re: (Score:3)
Journals have editorial and advisory boards. These are staffed by scientists. If they aren't, then they aren't actual scientific journals and scientists would be morons for accepting any work published by them.
If I opened a journal called Big Joe's Journal of Quantum Chromodynamics and started publishing papers to it from my friends, no one would give a shit because I am not a physicist or even a scientist, and neither are most of my friends.
If these publishers wanted to open a journal without scientists
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Republicanism is being practiced by most scientists now
Scientists now elect representatives to govern them? ZOMG THE HORROR!!! It's destroying science!!
This can all be disproved. (Score:5, Funny)
I have written a paper that conclusively proves that there is absolutely no fraud within the field of academic publishing within the biomedical field. It was peer reviewed by no fewer than sixty of my peers (who definitely aren't me making up names) and is absolutely concrete in its findings... provided you don't look too hard at my evidence. Clearly, anyone who says there is fraud within the biomed field is in fact fraudulent themselves.
Also, I take checks, Visa, and Mastercard, but no Amex.
How lazy can journals get? (Score:5, Insightful)
Academics submit articles to journals for free. Other academics provide feedback and do quality control for the submitted articles, also for free. Yet more academics peer review the submitted articles, you guessed it, for free. Logistics are handled by a board of volunteer academics. I guess the journal staff... typeset the cover and table of contents, print the journal, and maintain the website? The typesetting is probably automated, actually.
Out of curiosity I checked the pricing on the Journal of Algebra, probably the most prestigious journal in my field. An individual subscription is $291. A 5-person e-journal subscription is $2,070.67. An institutional paper subscription is $5,314.
I guess they're too busy raking in money hand over first to bother trying to find independent reviewers.
What are you talking about? (Score:2)
Academics submit articles to journals for free
Very few academics submit articles for free, especially in biomedical sciences. Many journals - even open access ones - charge $1-3k for publication. There are some cases where certain academics can submit for free if they are employed at sponsoring institutions, but those are the minority of researchers by a long shot.
Re: (Score:2)
I've never heard of someone having to pay for the privilege of letting a journal use your work for profit.
AFAIK there are no pure math journals that require a submission fee. Either universities have been sheltering me and paying these fees in secret (doubtful,) there just aren't any fees (less doubtful,) or I've never submitted to a journal prestigious enough to have a fee (pretty likely.)
Re: (Score:2)
Here [berkeley.edu] is a list of math journals and their submission price. It is a bit old but I doubt they are all free now.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You are right but I found a journal that has a publishing fee [ccsenet.org].
d) The authors revise paper and pay publication fee (300USD).
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They call themselves "Journal of Mathematics Research"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Use of suggested reviewers is terrible (Score:2)
Aside from fraud, this practice does not lead to good reviews. When I am asked to suggest reviewers to the editor, I am not able to suggest my friends, because they would not be able to provide objective reviews. Therefore, I must suggest a reviewer who I do not know much about. If the editor simply follows my suggestions, nothing has been done to ensure the reviewer is an expert in the field. Editors' primary responsibility is to know who the appropriate reviewers are. They should not cede that respon
Re: (Score:3)
It's not terrible. Turns out that according to editors I've spoken to, the harshest reviews often come from the suggested reviewers "friends", as those are the ones with most knowledge of the field and therefore closest.
Also, I've sometimes been listed as a suggested reviewer by someone I've never met simply because I'm quite well known (still, even though I'm no longer in academia).
Re: (Score:3)
Editors' primary responsibility is to know who the appropriate reviewers are.
So the editor must know the credentials and area of work of every possible reviewer in the world. That seems to be a tall order.
If the editor simply follows my suggestions, nothing has been done to ensure the reviewer is an expert in the field.
That is the problem. The editor should check the credentials of the suggested reviewers and filter them for expertise and conflict. A good editor would also add at least one reviewer not on the list.
Re: (Score:2)
Editors are specialized. They should know the reviewers within the speciality.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Editors have subject specialities, and (hopefully) read a lot more papers than authors do. Typically they are senior academics, while authors are usually students. Editors are picked from among the most successful authors. So actually the editor should know better than authors.
Fraudulent "Science" (Score:1, Interesting)
One wonders if any of the fake peer reviews supported anthropogenic global warming claims.
Re: (Score:2)
One also wonders if this Anonymous Coward is a wife beating rapist pedophile. What, I'm just asking the question, not making any accusation or anything! I'm just saying, we don't know you're not.
But, in case anyone else is actually wondering what the papers really are about (as opposed to mister AC who is asking a loaded question in an attempt to create doubt where none exists), it's a mix of biomedical stuff [springer.com]. Probably boring stuff unless you're in the field (but I don't know enough about biology/medicine
Now that science is wrong.... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I guess Christianity is true, by process of (now perfectly valid) non-scientific reasoning.
I asked Jesus to review your assertions, but I haven't heard anything back. Anyone have better contact info?
Bullshit (Score:3, Insightful)
Overall, this indicates an incredible amount of sloppiness and laziness in the peer-review field.
That is more anti-science FUD - which is not a surprise coming from the deeply conservative "failure machine" samzenpus. They said that 64 papers were retracted. The volume of papers published in any given year is so high that 64 papers isn't even a rounding error. Yeah, some errors will be made but that is pretty well unavoidable. This kind of error rate is so low that even Toyota looks at it with admiration.
Which is why you need to... (Score:2)
... Question, Audit, Check, Recheck, and remain open minded as to whether X actually equals Y.
There's something of a cult these days of people that say "well newspaper M said X=Y so it must be true!"... and anyone that so much as remains skeptical about that is anti science. Because after all, science is about dogmatic acceptace of authority and slavish memorization and repetition of whatever your betters tell you it is...
Oh wait, that's religion.
Cue a horde of douchebags that will tell me I'm being anti sc
Re: (Score:2)
Nothing goes over my head. My reflexes are too fast. I would catch it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
I beg to differ. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a slew. Not even statistically significant. (Score:3)
If we were to assume that all 64 of those papers were published in the same year - which the article does not specify - it still would not be significant. Even if we assumed them to all be in the same year and roughly related - which again we don't see stated in the article - it still would not be significant.
For a good point on this, let's look at one popular field in biomed. A lot of work in done under the term "proteomics" currently. Pubmed shows nearly 6300 papers in 2014 under this term. Hence if all 64 of these papers were published last year and were proteomics papers, that would be barely 1%.
How many industries have recall rates below 1%? Not many. Sure it would be better for it to be zero, but there are bad actors in any industry and academia is not the shangri-la stress-free hippy paradise that conservative commentators make it out to be.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Pretty much every one. That's why recalls are such big news - they're actually pretty rare compared to the volume of products. And recalls for products that simply don't work (the equivalent of faked papers) as opposed to one or more features not working are practically non existent.
Re: (Score:2)
How many industries have recall rates below 1%?
Pretty much every one.
That is not an example. Do a little research before making such an extravagant claim.
That's why recalls are such big news - they're actually pretty rare compared to the volume of products.
No. Safety recalls - such as the airbag recalls that are effecting almost every car made in Japan in the past 5 years - are huge. There are tons of smaller recalls for products all the time that don't make the news. To stick with my example of the automobile industry, I'm not aware of a car on the market today that hasn't been recalled for something in the past 2-3 years. A lot of recalls are pretty benign - things r
Re: (Score:2)
Don't hold me to a standard you refuse to hold yourself to mate.
Ah, I see that you're unaware that cars are only a very small part of "industries". Or, you're trying to retroactively limit your former claim of "what industries?" to "what automobiles?". No dice.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not aware of a car on the market today that hasn't been recalled for something in the past 2-3 years.
Ah, I see that you're unaware that cars are only a very small part of "industries".
I was referring to cars as a product of the automotive industry. I asked you to provide an example of an industry so we could discuss its recall rate, and you provided no example. I, however, did live up to that very simple request and provided one.
And when discussing the automotive industry, it is natural to discuss the automobile as the product of that industry. Sure, you can buy parts or hats or shirts or wallets from Toyota but their ultimate product is the automobile itself. Hence the recall r
It's mostly a problem in medical fields (Score:2)
I've noticed that these stories about retractions of peer reviewed papers are nearly always about medical research. I wonder why.
Re: (Score:2)
Also every single name on the retracted list sounds Chinese.
Re: (Score:3)
Also every single name on the retracted list sounds Chinese.
Up until about 5 or 10 years ago, Chinese medicine was famous for fraud.
There was one Chinese neurosurgeon who was doing effectively lobotomies with the claim that it would cure all kinds of mental diseases. Families gave him their life savings, and their relatives turned out worse than they were before, if they survived.
It's also still popular in China for doctors to give monthly intravenous antibiotic infusions, to healthy patients, as a "tonic." As you might expect, this produces antibiotic resistance, m
Consequences? (Score:3)
people don't understand peer review (Score:2)
Peer review exists to help a journal editor to decide whether an article is worth publishing in their journal, not whether the article is true. In principle, a peer reviewer for "The Journal of Irreproducible Results" would have to determine not whether the submitted article is true, but whether it is sufficiently irreproducible and funny to be published there (the JIR doesn't use peer review AFAIK, but it's just to illustrate the point). A low-end, high acceptance journal may not use very rigorous peer rev
Re: (Score:1)
Definitely not the review process. When you write an exam paper in college, do you provide name and contact details of the examiner?
Re:When you can't trust scientific journals (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a big deal. I submit articles to these publishers, and this is outrageous. The idea that I would give email addresses to editors that came back to me in order to review my own papers not only never occurred to me, it seems like it would require a researcher with absolutely no ethics or morals whatsoever. The entire peer review process needs to be revamped from the ground up, and I think it would benefit science to have an open comment period on submitted articles or something similar. Authors should not be able to suggest reviewers, and both authors and reviewer should know who each other are, and interact as the paper goes through review. The absurd situation now where the reviewer knows who the authors are, but not visa versa, and where there is extremely limited interaction, mostly in the form of reviewer critiques that are often off-base but nonetheless accepted by editors, is not acceptable. A more interactive system is required, possibly with crowd-commenting for a limited time. The idea that the reviewers on high end papers were giving "reviewer contacts" to editors that went back to them is insane. I guess this is what money and desperation does to people.
Re: When you can't trust scientific journals (Score:5, Interesting)
The review system is deeply flawed as it stands now. Cronyism, favoritism, and punitive harassment run rampant. Since experts in your field are often people who review your papers its not uncommon to be rejected out of spite or to let a competitor publish first. The competition isn't just fierce it's underhanded and extraordinarily wasteful in terms lost money and lost brainpower.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
This is a big deal. I submit articles to these publishers, and this is outrageous. The idea that I would give email addresses to editors that came back to me in order to review my own papers not only never occurred to me, it seems like it would require a researcher with absolutely no ethics or morals whatsoever.
It depends on the journal. I review for a number of CS journals, and none of them would ever allow this, there's a predefined pool of vetted reviewers who get sent papers, the submitters have no control over who reviews them, or even know who the reviewers are, it's all anonymous and blinded. Conversely, I've reviewed for an MIS journal where the submitters suggest the reviewers (which included charming notes like "please don't send them to X, Y, or Z, because they've given us bad reviews in the past"). I
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, this is all journal dependent. Recently we have stopped even suggesting possible reviewers when we get to that stage in the submission process. We stopped listing negative reviewers a long time ago. The process is broken, and needs to be revamped from the ground up. I think that each journal maybe should even consider having an open comment period on submitted manuscripts, and that back and forth discussions occur between the authors and the commenters and reviewers. Many papers would probably end up b
Re:When you can't trust scientific journals (Score:4, Interesting)
The idea that I would give email addresses to editors that came back to me in order to review my own papers not only never occurred to me, it seems like it would require a researcher with absolutely no ethics or morals whatsoever.
Well, true; a certain proportion of any group are likely to be liars, cheats, parasites etc. I'm not sure about the complete lack of ethics or morals, though - it is not difficult to imagine a path from 'excusable inaccuracies' to full blown fraud, and when you're measured on the volume of articles rather than the quality of your research, then it isn't surprising that you may occasionally start taking shortcuts to make your results look better. The thing is, when you have taken the first step down that slippery road, it quickly becomes impossible to turn back without your whole career exploding in your face - so you carry on.
I think we need not just a better way to manage reasearch results - peer review comes from a time when scientists were few and far between, and when most of them came from the upper crust of society, where concepts like honour were literally beaten into them at school with a blunt instrument. I don't suggest a return to that, of course, but I think a rigorous course in ethics for students of science would be a place to start. Not so much to instill some sort of unthinking adherence to a code of conduct, but to teach people to reason and think critically about these issues before they are in a situation where the pressure tempts them to make the wrong decision.
Re: (Score:2)
The Republican Party.
Re: (Score:2)
Biomed....You can draw your own conclusions, but my conclusion is that Biomed is irretrievably corrupted.
What is the basis for your conclusion? TFS is talking about 43 "bad" papers over an unknown (at least to me) timeframe. How many biomed papers in total were produced during the timeframe? Do the "bad" papers constitute 10%? 1%? .1%? .01% of the total?
Fraud is everywhere. Always has been, always will be. Are you going to reject the research of an entire field of study because of the misdeeds of a few researchers?
Furthermore, this misconduct was identified and rectified. Sounds to me like the system is
Re: (Score:2)
The assumption you're making here is that those 43 papers represent all of the fraudulent papers. That's foolish. It could very well be more.
When you see one roach...
Re: (Score:2)
I've made no such assumption. I simply asked a question.
But OK, instead of 43 papers, let's say it's 430 papers. Or let's say it's 4,300 papers. I still have the same question: why should anyone conclude that "Biomed is irretrievably corrupted" as GP claims? If there was 43,000 papers submitted during the timeframe in question, 10% of papers are questionable. Is that enough?
IMO, there has to be something more than a few anecdotal reports of fraud before I'll write off an entire field of study as bein
Re: (Score:2)
Here's the problem.
this misconduct was identified and rectified. Sounds to me like the system is working as intended.
See, the system is, quite clearly, not working as intended. That's what allowed those particular instances of fraud to happen in the first place! Worse, these few were caught only because Curtis thought the contact details for the reviewers looked a bit off.
Further, look at your reasoning here. If no fraud is noticed, you go "Look how great things are, no fraud spotted." When fraud is found, you go "Look, we rooted out the fraud, the system works." You are simply incapable of acknowle
Re: (Score:2)
You are simply incapable of acknowledging any problems.
Not at all. There's certainly a problem. Research integrity has been a problem since Academia was born. That's why every research university has an "Office of Research Integrity" or somesuch.
But as I've said (repeatedly), I want to know the magnitude of the problem. Do you think that ONE fraudulent biomed paper is enough to conclude the entire field is "irretrievably corrupted"? Do 43 fraudulent papers vilify the field? Because that's the ridiculous claim I'm challenging. If one isn't enough, how ma
Re: (Score:2)
Part of the problem is that we have no viable way of determining the magnitude of the problem. Yes, that means everything is tainted to some degree.
Some one here made an analogy some time back. If you had a bag of m&m's and I told you one of the candies was deadly, would you still eat a few? What if it were 100 bags? 1000? Of course not. Every piece is suspect.
Making excuses for these journals or outright denying the problem as "the system is working as intended" (when it clearly is not) isn't hel
Re: (Score:2)
Making excuses for these journals or outright denying the problem as "the system is working as intended" (when it clearly is not) isn't helpful.
Clearly to who? Evidence (non anecdotal) please.
Re: (Score:2)
See the article linked in the summary.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
http://scholarlyoa.com/2014/11... [scholarlyoa.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Knowing that a large number of reviewers think an article is worth reading is good enough.
Even better: there should be a way to find the article score in various demographics, like they have on imdb. That way when an article is rated 8.4 by females age 18-29 and 6.4 by males 30-44 (like Divergent on imdb), I will know better than read it.
Re: (Score:3)
On the other hand, the media is often sensationalizing a few outlying cases. A single research group was caught falsifying global warming data? A few dozen others were publishing real data.
In this case, 100 papers were retracted for fraud. The most recent two issues of the planetary astronomy journal I frequently publish in which few of you have even heard of comprised 100 articles total. 100 articles retracted is a *tiny* tiny percentage of the reliable peer reviews published.
Fraud is bad. When found,
Re: (Score:2)
Over time the models got better and we now know that the climate will change.
Everyone who looks out the window now and again knows the climate changes. Only a few fanatical climate change deniers claim the climate didn't change before humans came along.
Some places will get hotter and some places will get cooler, but over all the trend is towards more heat and climate change.
That'll be why the models continue diverging from reality unless we continually 'adjust' the temperature record to make them a better fit.
Re: (Score:2)
That'll be why the models continue diverging from reality unless we continually 'adjust' the temperature record to make them a better fit.
I'm always amused by statements that say things like that without applying any rigorous science to back it up.
Blame the journals, research and employers. (Score:3)
Journals are there to filter out the bad science. If they don't check the credentials and conflicts of reviewers they are not doing their jobs. It is not an all or nothing situation. Journals should be blamed for not checking reviewers. Researchers should be blamed for bad research. Employers should be blamed for allowing bad research. The blame is shared.
Re: (Score:2)
I got a PhD recently. I find this news shocking. I'd known of people making up figures or fudging data, but I thought, "Well, there is so much pressure in academia, sometimes people lose the ability to make proper judgements." Not that that makes it ok, of course.
But this is... just downright evil. How do you even get a bunch of co-authors to get on board with something like this? What institution do these people come from?
Damn, I'm definitely not taking any institution seriously when this kind of stuff hap
Re: (Score:2)
Personally I find that the whole i
Re: (Score:2)
> It was clearly a load of Bat Guano to claim that all 60 were principals who researched and wrote the article.
You are missing the point. Its that authorship credits should not be just limited to just the principals. You haven't seen the article about the one with 5154 authors?
http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
You better have a lot of valid arguments before dissing one of the top journals in the world (not an opinion - going by impact factor).