Fake Research Papers: How Did More Than 120 'Gibberish' Computer-Generated Studies Get Published?

Two journals have plenty of tough questions to answer for after it was discovered that 120 published research papers were computer-generated and essentially "gibberish." The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and Springer, a publisher of scientific journals and research, agreed to remove more than 120 fake studies following an investigation by Cyril Labbe of Joseph Fourier University.

Labbe spent two years analyzing research papers and discovered that more than 120 conference proceedings, as well as research papers attached to specific conferences, were published in 30 different journals, reports Nature. This occurred over the course of five years, from 2008 to 2013, and 16 studies were published in Springer journals and in journals published by the IEEE.

According to Slate, the source of the problem is a prank devised in 2005 by students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. MIT students created a program, SCIgen, that could create fake research papers as a way to test the review process for conferences. The program is free and can be downloaded by anyone to create a fake research paper.

Fake Research Papers: How Did More Than 120 'Gibberish' Computer-Generated Studies Get Published?

Faked Research Papers Found in Scientific Journals

Ouch a lill blow to the credibility of peer reviewed magazines but really who read congress stuff, you just pay the fee and go to the congress, the abstract usually have to be send with month in advice and at the end they have small relation to what is presented in the congress, everyone that goes to a congress also knows its just a paid vacation

Researchers also submit a SCIgen (or similar program) paper as a way to expose and raise awareness of unsound procedures. Open-access journals accept a fee for publication and that could lead to fake research articles being published as long as they receive payment. One such example occurred in 2009, when a graduate student submitted a computer-generated paper that was accepted after the author paid the $80 submission fee, reports Nature. It turns out that, despite claims of oversight, many conferences accept these research papers and Labbe's investigations have led to serious questions about the approval process.

People should start to go to physics congress to push the electric universe theory just pay the fee and let the program generates the content.

In reality I have seen how peer reviewed publications are fabricated with bunch of lies and omissions, but when science is funded based on the number of papers a group have its the system that fails, most scientist don't try to solve a problem or make the world a better place, they just try to get their next grant .
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Nature Article

Among the works were, for example, a paper published as a proceeding from the 2013 International Conference on Quality, Reliability, Risk, Maintenance, and Safety Engineering, held in Chengdu, China. (The conference website says that all manuscripts are “reviewed for merits and contents”.) The authors of the paper, entitled ‘TIC: a methodology for the construction of e-commerce’, write in the abstract that they “concentrate our efforts on disproving that spreadsheets can be made knowledge-based, empathic, and compact”.

That is just broken English

reply to post by Indigent


Why do you think I never publish my theories in any journals? At one point, it's some much gibberish, people just turn away and papers are read by a select few. So, only a selected few investigates.

It's better to talk slowly and be understood than to talk fast and be misunderstood.

Anyway, this is just shocking. All this just for money. S&F for bringing it to my attention.

the solution is a software reviewer.

any part in science that can be automated , should.

This is why i believe we need to have some other form of scientific review process.

Clearly the current one is flawed as we all know. We need something that can't have money thrown at it and obviously wont let fake papers in.

reply to post by dude1


Maybe you're right. But this takes the fun out of it.

Besides, to be automated, there will have to be assumptions. And whose assumptions will be judged as "right" and "wrong"? I see potential for a bias here.

How many people will actually spend more than 5 mins to speed read through an article and at the most a few people may whip out a calculator and test the addition at the bottom of a row of numbers or two and if it doesn't stand out as stupid or in a contentious area it'll probably just get overlooked.

And peer reviewed doesn't really help much when your mates at a few other universities are in on it and write in saying that it seems fine

reply to post by AzureSky


A review is a review. It's the best we have. People have to review and see if it makes sense. Imagine that a guy posts a theory that "everyone has a tail, but only when everyone is not looking". A human reviewer would recognize the ludicrous character of the theory and block it. But a computer would only see logic and let the theory pass. Computer have logic but no sense of continuity - ever tried translating a French text to and english text using a computer's automated translation softwares? The result is in-between a nightmare and a comedy.

This kind of stuff might be funny in one sense .While allowing garbage to go in it seems that the pal review process lets the garbage go out .The term settled science must be true then .They just have to rename it garbage or Mannisiam ..take your pick ..

This things happens in congress because congress are the bottom of the food chain when it comes to scientific publishing, in papers reviews are made by "experts" on each field, even if the reviewer is truly an expert the research most of the times is original data, its impossible to someone to know if its faked or not in short time, unless is something like what is presented in the op, you can publish things that will never be questioned because they are not relevant to question, those are the easy to fake, if you claim faster than light speeds there will be 1k groups trying to replicate your findings in a week and that cannot be faked as it wont hold water pretty quick.

Indigent
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Nature Article
That is just broken English

Most of the papers were in China or from Chinese or Chinese-affiliated authors:

Labbé does not know why the papers were submitted — or even if the authors were aware of them. Most of the conferences took place in China, and most of the fake papers have authors with Chinese affiliations.

That explains a lot, not that you can't get a fake paper through elsewhere, but they have plagiarism detecting software and could use fake-detecting software too if they wanted, which i suspect we may eventually see more of.

I'm not sure if the real driver is pressure to publish, or just pranking or testing to see if bogus stuff can get published...probably some of each.

all you have to do to get published is include the words "global warming" in the title or synopsis.

I'm not entirely clear on peer review and maybe I'm wrong but shouldn't the peers reviewing be held accountable, maybe lend a signature ? It irks me that important research is never published because of its 'controversial' nature and peers won't touch it, but gibberish gets published because why ?

reply to post by hurdygurdy


The peer review process isn't a mystical operation although people generally have a misunderstanding of what it is all about. When you send of a paper to be peer-reviewed, they will check the format and structure of the paper to make sure all the author's ducks are in a row to weed out any flaws that will kill the paper dead in the water. They will also check the methodology described and also make sure that work isn't being repeated, making sure that all of the related literature has been discussed and put into the proper context. The peers (referees) will be picked for their expertise in the area in question so that they can spot flaws such as a lack of novelty, bad structure, questionable methodology, insufficient surveying of related works and so on. Once they have performed their reviews they will send their feedback back to the authors who can then use this to improve the paper if it was rejected. They may need to shop the paper around to lesser journals if the work isn't up to snuff as the more prestigious journals are very strict on quality control.

The peer review is not the final step of the scientific process, it is the first. Once the paper has been published, the wider scientific community will pick apart the results and attempt to replicate the work, pointing out any discrepancies in the paper that the author will need to address. This is where the real scientific work begins. A single paper published on a topic means nothing in isolation, it's the follow up work that will sink or swim an idea.

The peers aren't gatekeepers, they will accept papers that are properly researched and presented, even if the results turn out to be wrong. If some crank comes along and dribbles out a load of badly presented pseudo-scientific nonsense and ends up being rejected they will crow about suppression and the "cult" of mainstream science when the sober truth of the matter is that the paper was neither novel nor properly researched and presented.

reply to post by GetHyped


Yeah the reviewers do:

1. See if the paper is original
2. See the relevance of the information
3. Recomend corrections
4. Recomend to publish or not

reply to post by GetHyped


Thank you for taking the time to explain it to me. I still don't understand how the jibberish got past the peers, though. In theory, the review process should work if everyone stops up to the plate with integrity.

reply to post by Indigent


This is being discussed on another site concerning the New England Journal of Medicine. It's from 2009 but relevent, maybe.

NEJM editor: “No longer possible to believe much of clinical research published”

reply to post by hurdygurdy


This is not in peer reviewed papers is in congress publications that then are publish as part of magazines (the abstracts for example)

hurdygurdy
reply to post by GetHyped

 

Thank you for taking the time to explain it to me. I still don't understand how the jibberish got past the peers, though. In theory, the review process should work if everyone stops up to the plate with integrity.

It's important to point out that these gibberish papers are part of the conference proceedings which are NOT peer-reviewed (except in computer science, but that is a completely different ballgame). Conferences will generally accept anything as the whole point is to present ideas and works in progress in an open forum to springboard ideas off with other researchers. One does not cite works published in conference proceedings (again, except in computer science) so they're not really considered scientific works, making the articles feel sensationalized for the sake of a good story.

ETA: Both articles call IEEE and Springer journals when they're not, they are publishing companies. I would be skeptical to put too much weight behind the specifics mentioned in these articles.

Maxatoria
And peer reviewed doesn't really help much when your mates at a few other universities are in on it and write in saying that it seems fine

Most peer reviews are double blinded.

hurdygurdy
reply to post by Indigent

 

This is being discussed on another site concerning the New England Journal of Medicine. It's from 2009 but relevent, maybe.

NEJM editor: “No longer possible to believe much of clinical research published”

Interesting link, thanks for sharing it. I can't say I'm surprised by the statement, but I'm a little surprised by the prominence and candidness of the author. Whenever research is linked to big corporation profits, there is reason for skepticism. There was a time when big tobacco companies denied adverse health effects of their products and they paid people to lie about the adverse effects. Now we have a similar situation in medicine where some folks ignore adverse effects of more dangerous and more profitable drugs when there are less dangerous and less profitable drugs available, as described here:

Doctor’s kiss and tell tale: “My 1-Year Career as a Wyeth Drug Rep”
I think if a research paper points to a drug as a solution to a problem, which can lead to big profits for big pharma, it would be irresponsible to take the research paper at face value. What's scarier still is that even doctors don't seem to be able to discriminate between what is biased and what is not biased, because the bias is so prevalent.

Since most of the papers referenced in the OP had ties to China, it's also worth noting that China is certainly not the place to find good ethical standards in the medical profession either:

In Industry Rife With Bribes, GSK Probe Continues

Bribery is the lubricant that helps keep China’s public hospitals running, and the health system would struggle to function without illegal payments to poorly paid doctors and administrators, say medical practitioners and industry experts.

The bribery is rampant in the US too, but it's made in "legal" but unethical forms, like speaking fees, which are only awarded if you say good things about the drug but fail to mention adverse side effects.