Biomedical Paper Retractions Have Quadrupled in 20 Years (nature.com) 26
The retraction rate for European biomedical-science papers increased fourfold between 2000 and 2021, a study of thousands of retractions has found. Nature: Two-thirds of these papers were withdrawn for reasons relating to research misconduct, such as data and image manipulation or authorship fraud. These factors accounted for an increasing proportion of retractions over the roughly 20-year period, the analysis suggests. "Our findings indicate that research misconduct has become more prevalent in Europe over the last two decades," write the authors, led by Alberto RuanoâRavina, a public-health researcher at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.
Other research-integrity specialists point out that retractions could be on the rise because researchers and publishers are getting better at investigating and identifying potential misconduct. There are more people working to spot errors and new digital tools to screen publications for suspicious text or data. Scholarly publishers have faced increased pressure to clear up the literature in recent years as sleuths have exposed cases of research fraud, identified when peer review has been compromised and uncovered the buying and selling of research articles. Last year saw a record 10,000 papers retracted. Although misconduct is a leading cause of retractions, it is not always responsible: some papers are retracted when authors discover honest errors in their work.
Other research-integrity specialists point out that retractions could be on the rise because researchers and publishers are getting better at investigating and identifying potential misconduct. There are more people working to spot errors and new digital tools to screen publications for suspicious text or data. Scholarly publishers have faced increased pressure to clear up the literature in recent years as sleuths have exposed cases of research fraud, identified when peer review has been compromised and uncovered the buying and selling of research articles. Last year saw a record 10,000 papers retracted. Although misconduct is a leading cause of retractions, it is not always responsible: some papers are retracted when authors discover honest errors in their work.
The problem-- (Score:3)
The worry isn't about the papers retracted; it is about papers not retracted.
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Actually, it's also about the papers retracted, because they are often still used as sources. This wouldn't matter as much if people were more careful about their references...but they aren't.
N.B.: This was true even in the 1950;s. See if you can find the Isaac Asimov article titled "The Sound of Panting". (The one referenced here: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/... [isfdb.org] , not the movie or the youtube or whatever. I think it was reprinted in one of his collections, but I don't remember which.)
Dr. David Goodstein predicted this in 1994 (Score:2)
when he was vice-provost at Caltech: https://www.its.caltech.edu/~d... [caltech.edu]
"The crises that face science [due to the end of exponential growth of science budgets while PhDs are still produced exponentially] are not limited to jobs and research funds. Those are bad enough, but they are just the beginning. Under stress from those problems, other parts of the scientific enterprise have started showing signs of distress. One of the most essential is the matter of honesty and ethical behavior among scientists.
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Though sometimes good results happen. Remember in the early days of COVID when a paper came out saying HCQ (hydrochloroquine) could be used to effectively treat COVID? And yet no one could replicate the results? Attention then shone on the author who wrote over 2000 papers and they started going over every one of his papers. Which turned out most to have been questionable at best.
Sadly, the author then became the hero anti-vaxxer,
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Remember in the early days of COVID when a paper came out saying HCQ (hydrochloroquine) could be used to effectively treat COVID? And yet no one could replicate the results?
Not being able to replicate the results does not necessarily mean there was fraud. It could simply be regression to the mean, which is a common problem in biomedical research due to small sample sizes and/or non-random sampling or other confounders. Just saying.
Do these retractions cascade? (Score:3)
If a retracted paper is referenced by a 2nd paper, will the 2nd paper's publisher automatically retract paper #2, or will they send a note to the authors, or simply do nothing?
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Re:Do these retractions cascade? (Score:5, Informative)
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Yeah and if one paper is hugely dependent on another paper, it is also doubling as a reproducibility test of the base paper. They will get "interesting" results.
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Idiot. What they've been hamstrung by the the "publish or perish" principle pushed by administrators, and the near obsolescence of the tenure track.
Once upon a time professors were hired to teach (profess to) the students.
Relative to Other Fields? (Score:2)
The problem is with academic (Score:2)
It’s
A simple fix (Score:3)
Not easy, but simple - get rid of the "publish or perish" imperative in science. Its companion - the "get useful, preferably profitable results or lose your job" culture - needs to go at the same time.
Scientific investigation is just that - investigation. We don't know what we don't know; avenues which appear promising sometimes lead only to the "this didn't pan out" list. Conversely, theories and notions that seem outright crazy sometimes result in very valuable outcomes. When we fail to take these realities into account, we only have ourselves to blame when some scientists take shortcuts or cheat because the alternative is losing the job that's probably still paying for the ruinously expensive education that preceded it.
The issue is more nuanced and complex than I've outlined, but my point stands: the threat of losing one's livelihood is NOT an incentive to conduct good, honest, ethical science. It IS, however, an incentive to cheat.
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get rid of the "publish or perish" imperative in science. Its companion - the "get useful, preferably profitable results or lose your job" culture - needs to go at the same time.
More public research funding would help this a lot, especially more funding to fund replication studies, which as you mentioned there is little incentive for that "boring" work.
Re: A simple fix (Score:1)
But what you propose is no incentive. It is already bad enough that most professors cannot be fired and already have a base salary, income from grants, teaching and papers are just bonuses for many faculty but the lowliest of research/assistant professors.
You clearly never worked in academia, what you propose is already the case. Putting no effort nets you a $120-200k salary, just having an RO1 adds another $100k to that, teaching a single class $35-50k, speaking at a conference or peer reviews nets you $1-
AI is going to be interesting (Score:2)
340ppm (Score:5, Informative)
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According to the CDC [cdc.gov], action levels for lead in drinking water are 1.3 ppm, but soil on playgrounds may be up to 400 ppm. Paint may be 90 ppm.
So if the analogy holds, it's OK to play with biomedical papers but you probably shouldn't cover your walls with them or mix them up in a cocktail and drink it.
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Europe (Score:1)
waiting (Score:2)
I'm waiting for the Nature paper about retractions to be retracted.