151–160 of 363 posts
We are dealing with 5+ papers that are fraudulent and another 5+ newer papers that are most likely fraudulent, too. That is, there have been 20, 25+ reviewers looking at those papers. Their job was to carefully read them and double check the numbers. All of them gave those papers a pass. I am at a loss here. The authors' behaviour is outrageous, but this story is also about a broken reviewing process, partly due to w…
"Peer-reviewed" by whom?...
The model of science that worked from Newton to Landau seems to be falling apart in today's scale. There are millions of people whose livelihood depends on publishing, so they will publish anything they'll get away with. The amount of noise is beyond any researcher's ability to pick through. True incremental improvements in all areas are drowned in a steady flow of bad research. Top tier institutions seem to survive…
> There are millions of people whose livelihood depends on publishing, so they will publish anything they'll get away with. This is also the problem with the iOS App Store and the Google Play store. They are modeled off Linux repositories, and those do not cause major problems. The phone app stores are riddled with problems, because you can charge for apps in those stores. If you're willing to pay people to lie to yo…
We are dealing with 5+ papers that are fraudulent and another 5+ newer papers that are most likely fraudulent, too. That is, there have been 20, 25+ reviewers looking at those papers. Their job was to carefully read them and double check the numbers. All of them gave those papers a pass. I am at a loss here. The authors' behaviour is outrageous, but this story is also about a broken reviewing process, partly due to w…
That's the theory. The reality is that there is no in-depth review. You're lucky if a reviewer actually reads the paper all the way through, let alone checks the numbers and applies a level of critical thought to the methodology, analysis and conclusions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is not to test everything ever published, its that when you want to do X, you look for papers on X understanding that they are likely flawed but better than starting from scratch.
This still don’t make sense. For example, I want to paint my house with a less toxic paint. I can’t trust any academic research. I have to now research what is toxic in paint? Then I have to find ways to measure various chemicals and gases? Etc... This seems like a complete utter waste of time. In real life most life impacting academic research is much more right than wrong. You are far better served assuming so. Unl…
So it’s more like suppose you want to paint your house green, and you read that somebody says you can mix red and blue paint to make a really cool green paint. Instead of immediately going out and buying enough red and blue paint to cover your whole house, first buy a small amount of red and blue paint, mix them together, and see if you get that neat green paint.
It’s common sense, but the window dressings of academia can lead you to burn time and money on things that are totally silly because somebody important-sounding said they did it once.
Where people get burned is that there’s an enormous power imbalance—-junior scientists can end up stuck trying and failing to make green paint out of red and blue paint because nobody senior is going to take them seriously if they can’t make green paint. This presents a serious ethical challenge if making green paint is impossible.
The article mentions Brandolini’s Law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.” It's the first time I've heard it, but it's a very appropriate observation in today's world where misinformation travels faster and wider than correct information. If you're just making stuff up, it's much faster than looking up sources.
I read retraction watch every day, so I’m used to seeing stories like this. But I’m always surprised the effort people go through over articles published in garbage journals. You’re never going to even make a dent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My own, rather bitter, experiences with academic research in the early 1990s led me to suspect that by trying to "manage" academic research at a large scale was utterly counter productive and was optimising for all the wrong things (publications, career progression, money, politics) and was actually dramatically reducing the amount of actual science being done. I left, co-founded a startup and never regretted it for…
What does conservative mean in this context? Could you explain it a bit? Thanks!
In graduate school, in my lab there was a grad student who was kind of an unlikely "professor's pet". He was tall and had surfer's long hair with a bit of a hippie aesthetic. Anyways, he was also really completely clueless about how to do science correctly, but also, I guess, really good about playing politics (there was a time when he asked me to put some bacterial plasmid DNA on my mammalian cells. I told him "it d…
I'm sorry but this saddens me to no end, even I did better science during my BSc and MSc; it's not just disheartening, it's frightening. Reading this almost made me feel ill to my stomach. I don't know what else to say at the blatant disregard for scientific ethics and sense of duty. And we complain that the public at large doesn't trust us "educated" folk, well I can't see why...
The article mentions Brandolini’s Law: “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it.” It's the first time I've heard it, but it's a very appropriate observation in today's world where misinformation travels faster and wider than correct information. If you're just making stuff up, it's much faster than looking up sources.
You're absolutely right - the big question of the day is not just "how do we counter disinformation?" but "how do we counter it at scale?" The bad-faith actors of the world have realized how incredibly cost effective disinformation is in an online world that can massively amplify messages, and which algorithmically selects for divisiveness and "engagement" rather than factually and utility. We need a CAPTCHA for trut…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh, this is not a China thing. I've had a paper have a bunch of reviewers suggest a bunch of references each. Every bunch had every paper share at least one author. Every bunch was pairwise disjoint in the author sets. Draw your own conclusions. Edit: just to be clear: I didn't at the time read that as "submission tax". More of, trying to be helpful and using things they personally were familiar with. Most, if not al…
More and more evidence that the magazine based publication route is a net negative to science.
Dr. Elizabeth Bik is making efforts to detect image fraud in scientific papers and reading her findings has made me quite worried about not only the general accuracy of the data from lesser-known universities, but how difficult it is to retract/correct those through journals. Check out her Twitter if you’re interested in the topic: https://mobile.twitter.com/microbiomdigest
Not sure why you’re particularly worried about lesser known universities? These issues seem to have more to do with the state of science and the review process than the prestige/fame of any particular university. I’m pretty worried about the well known universities as well, in particular the expectations and pressure to perform can affect people’s work and decision making.