The Latest Peer Reviewed Science Scandal

Hello ATS

First off, if you have an inkling to flag this thread, don't. Instead, flag Skurtle's intoduction thread called "How little we know." He posted the source there a few hours ago. I felt that it deserved its own thread.

That being said, I have a genuine distrust of mainstream science, so, this article is not much of a surprise to me. I believe the extent of deception goes well beyond what most of us are willing to believe.

I know this has been discussed before, but I was just wondering what ATS currently has to say about peer reviewed science in light of this latest scandal.

Finally, I understand there are some ethical scientists/researchers out there. I apologize in advance

“The problem of fake peer reviewers is affecting the whole of academic journal publishing and we are among the ranks of publishers hit by this type of fraud,” Patel of BioMed’s ethics group wrote in November. “The spectrum of ‘fakery’ has ranged from authors suggesting their friends who agree in advance to provide a positive review, to elaborate peer review circles where a group of authors agree to peer review each others’ manuscripts, to impersonating real people, and to generating completely fictitious characters. From what we have discovered amongst our journals, it appears to have reached a higher level of sophistication. The pattern we have found, where there is no apparent connection between the authors but similarities between the suggested reviewers, suggests that a third party could be behind this sophisticated fraud.”

www.washingtonpost.com... may-affect-other-journals/

www.the-scientist.com.../articleNo/42553/title/Mass-Retraction/

a reply to: Tucket

I did read the link from their introduction thread and found it intriguing. That's why it's ever so important to develop and hone your own critical thinking and interpretation skills.

a reply to: Tucket

This is a look at the problem from 2006.

I think this linked information supports your assertion that peer review is compromised. We don't know how deep it does.

a reply to: Tucket

Thanks for the insight. Being involved in an Industry reliant on scientific "peer reviewed" studies, many if not most realize that this has been going on for a long time, and certainly not just by the Asian community. The modern world affords numerous opportunities as well as incentives to do this sort of thing, Big Ag and Big Pharma have been doing this sort of thing to hold back reasonable scrutiny from interfering with "profit at any cost" for many years. However they arrived much earlier to the dance and now have people well placed in Government to assure that their Peer reviewed dribble is the accepted axiom for truth..whatever the subject they are profiting from at the time.

originally posted by: Tucket
Hello ATS

First off, if you have an inkling to flag this thread, don't. Instead, flag Skurtle's intoduction thread called "How little we know." He posted the source there a few hours ago. I felt that it deserved its own thread.

That being said, I have a genuine distrust of mainstream science, so, this article is not much of a surprise to me. I believe the extent of deception goes well beyond what most of us are willing to believe.

I know this has been discussed before, but I was just wondering what ATS currently has to say about peer reviewed science in light of this latest scandal.

Finally, I understand there are some ethical scientists/researchers out there. I apologize in advance

www.washingtonpost.com... may-affect-other-journals/

www.the-scientist.com.../articleNo/42553/title/Mass-Retraction/

It would be interesting to know the subject matters, I missed the other thread but connection is very bad here tonight, but thanks for the heads up.

Here is another link.

Major publisher retracts 43 scientific papers amid wider fake peer-review scandal

Washingtonpost
I saw the OP had it but link did not work for me.

a reply to: Tucket

The idea that popular opinion should have any effect on scientific conclusions is on its face absurd.

Experimental reproduction assuring consistent results is the only valid vetting process.

I think "peer review" became fashionable when unscientific professions gained institutional respect and wished for some mechanism to impart validity.

originally posted by: greencmp
a reply to: Tucket

The idea that popular opinion should have any affect on scientific conclusions is on its face absurd.

Experimental reproduction assuring consistent results is the only valid vetting process.

I think "peer review" became fashionable when unscientific professions gained institutional respect and wished for some mechanism to impart validity.

Thanks for the reply. Ive seen the term "peer reviewed science" come across my perusal of the board several times, so I was curious how credible ATS deemed peer reviewed content.. Your comment gives me a better idea.

I taught Research Methods in a college.

I have been warning people on ATS about this for awhile.

There are those who think all scientific studies are like pages of a bible floating down from heaven, not to be challenged, but to be venerated.

When I pointed out the extreme abuse of the peer review system I saw during my years of teaching, some of the people went nearly apoplectic at the "heresy" I was spouting that the peer review system is broken.

I must also point out that that statistics can be played with to appear to get the desired results. That is so widespread that I doubt it will even create a fuss in the academic community if someone tried to expose it. All researchers know this is true.

There are very very very few social science studies that can really be considered valid. Validity in the social sciences needs at least 3000 participants (not happening with most budgets for studies); unbiased wording of questionnaires or anything written (doesn't happen in reality); etc.

Hard sciences are better but still have their issues that can be brushed over with creative statistics.

So to me this is old news, and I doubt the science worshipers will actually read this thread because the title is so tame and they won't believe it anyway.

Peer reviewing is just another way for vested interests to get top billing.

It's an important part of the Academic/Science/MSM complex.

The captives become Stockholm Syndrome Zombies.

originally posted by: eisegesis
a reply to: Tucket

I did read the link from their introduction thread and found it intriguing. That's why it's ever so important to develop and hone your own critical thinking and interpretation skills.

Precisely!

This is why, in threads on ATS, you will generally see me reading the source publication, if I can get it. Plus similar studies. Who said this was true? What data did they have? Does it make sense at all? Was it a reasonable study? What do other people who are more expert than I in that niche have to say about it? Is there widespread consensus by people who should know, or is this the first study of its kind? Who reviewed it? Was the journal one that tends to print crap? Has it been replicated, especially by someone who would be happy to see it fail? Was the paper written by, or is the journal it was printed in, some sort of affinity group? In other words, was it a paper on the health benefits of dip written by the Tobacco Institute?

Peer review is a good thing, if it's actually done well. It gives a false sense of validity when not. In order to judge who probably is and is not doing a good job on that, you have to consider the author, journal and peer body.

In this case, the journals in the articles being pro-active and retracting the papers and publishing that the papers are not trustworthy is a good thing. They should have been a bit more circumspect about them to begin with. And IMHO you should have some sort of auditing body that reviews the peer review of papers and rates the validity of publications. Your journal, whatever it might be, would be a bit more enthusiastic about getting that vetting process down if they knew they were going to be dragged into the light for using third party reviewers who weren't real.

originally posted by: xuenchen
Peer reviewing is just another way for vested interests to get top billing.

It's also a good way to pre-filter out crapola like "A Study on Vortex Energy Nodes and the Tachyonic Nature of Ghosts" or the like.

No point not cutting out the bull# right up front. And in fact, the issues discussed here are that they're not doing a good enough job of that, not that they should do less.

originally posted by: Tucket

originally posted by: greencmp
a reply to: Tucket

The idea that popular opinion should have any affect on scientific conclusions is on its face absurd.

Experimental reproduction assuring consistent results is the only valid vetting process.

I think "peer review" became fashionable when unscientific professions gained institutional respect and wished for some mechanism to impart validity.

Thanks for the reply. Ive seen the term "peer reviewed science" come across my perusal of the board several times, so I was curious how credible ATS deemed peer reviewed content.. Your comment gives me a better idea.

Well the thing is, it is pretty obvious that the Biomed retractions are centered around 'electronique' clique communications

www.biomedcentral.com...[TI]&txtSearch2=retraction&drpPhrase2=&drpField3=[AU]&txtSear ch3=&drpPhrase3=&drpField4=&txtSearch4=&drpPhrase4=&excludeField1=&excludeSearchText1=&excludePhrase1=&

Amazing if that link works entirely, but if so it is about retractions by Biomed in their field of research, and many of those about cancer research.
Something to be said about written or personal communication then, where any peer review should include any replication seemingly already presumed in the email communications.
BTW, on a side note, anyone notice recently media advice about going to your chemist for advice on some 'mild' complaint or other, as if not to bother the GP? there's more to that than meets the eye, GP's intranet does not always comply to chemist's intranet, and you may get a GP's script for a patient..aka yourself, that a Chemist's computer is saying that there is a drug conflict, should you be on other medication, and that's not even necessarily related to what your GP might know about your personal allergies, whatever.

The concept of science and peered reviewed papers are perfect on paper, but add humans to the mix and you get the same results as with any other system humans use: corruption, cheats, shortcuts.

Lying and corruption is how certain humans live to survive. And some of those humans are scientists.

How can we stop it? The only way to stop it is to teach and lead by example the young to be honest and integral in their and others' works.

Test all things, in the dark the truth will be revealed by a bright mind who will challenge and question with an honest heart.

Well, you can't trust almost anything these days: watch this TED talk . The MSM does not necessarily lie to us, but it deliberately leaves out a whole lot of info.
But you think/wish you could trust science - nope!
Here's a guy who has an interesting new model of physics. I have watched the lectures two times now and cant debunk it!
He has some interesting side lectures on topics such as climate change and the fractional reserve banking system (all worth watching) but this video will explain the what the OP was on about.
Cheers
ps any electrical engineer or physicist - please watch these lecture and debunk them

originally posted by: bitsforbytes
The concept of science and peered reviewed papers are perfect on paper, but add humans to the mix and you get the same results as with any other system humans use: corruption, cheats, shortcuts.

Lying and corruption is how certain humans live to survive. And some of those humans are scientists.

How can we stop it? The only way to stop it is to teach and lead by example the young to be honest and integral in their and others' works.

Test all things, in the dark the truth will be revealed by a bright mind who will challenge and question with an honest heart.

Possibly but, I am of the opinion that experimental reproducibility is a requirement for consideration of hypotheses much less theories.

Peer review appears to only be relevant in pseudo sciences for which no proof is possible.

I completely agree that people, given opportunity and motivation, will readily falsify their results and justify their conclusions.

This all happens almost exclusively with the best of intentions, no malice in needed.

Here is a problem with these fake peer reviews. Some of these papers may be real but the way they are reviewed makes them be discreditied. Why they would use deceitful practices to back a real article is beyond me, but that does happen also.

I ran into one article that was discredited because of sort of a similar issue that should not have been discredited. Sometimes you got to wonder if those profiting by us not knowing being involved in killing the info sometimes.

a reply to: Tucket


For me ,it goes much further then needing trust ...It's the need to see integrity and transparency .Probably one of the easiest fields of science to find the lack there of is ,climate science . Not that there is a lack of integrity and openness but the foxes are running the chicken coup .Climate Audit as well as other blogs shine some light on the industry . The scary part is, what is happening beneath the surface in conjunction with science ,politics and religion . The new beast is called Technocracy . We are ever so slightly ,inch by inch moving to a system that someone somewhere with the click of a button can make up =down where what ever law you want to change is open to do so .

Patrick Wood was interviewed by John B. Wells . The interview is quite long only because he spends a lot of time with the history to this beast . It actually goes back to 1930 . The pal review or peer review is where you can find one of it's tentacles in . the vid can be found here www.augustforecast.com...

originally posted by: Tucket
Hello ATS

First off, if you have an inkling to flag this thread, don't. Instead, flag Skurtle's intoduction thread called "How little we know." He posted the source there a few hours ago. I felt that it deserved its own thread.

That being said, I have a genuine distrust of mainstream science, so, this article is not much of a surprise to me. I believe the extent of deception goes well beyond what most of us are willing to believe.

I know this has been discussed before, but I was just wondering what ATS currently has to say about peer reviewed science in light of this latest scandal.

Finally, I understand there are some ethical scientists/researchers out there. I apologize in advance

“The problem of fake peer reviewers is affecting the whole of academic journal publishing and we are among the ranks of publishers hit by this type of fraud,” Patel of BioMed’s ethics group wrote in November. “The spectrum of ‘fakery’ has ranged from authors suggesting their friends who agree in advance to provide a positive review, to elaborate peer review circles where a group of authors agree to peer review each others’ manuscripts, to impersonating real people, and to generating completely fictitious characters. From what we have discovered amongst our journals, it appears to have reached a higher level of sophistication. The pattern we have found, where there is no apparent connection between the authors but similarities between the suggested reviewers, suggests that a third party could be behind this sophisticated fraud.”

www.washingtonpost.com... may-affect-other-journals/

www.the-scientist.com.../articleNo/42553/title/Mass-Retraction/

I've been thinking on a more general subject lately that may include reasons/justifications for this behavoir.

While society has always had it's liars, cheats and thiefs, it has become systemic to our business and leadership models. Add to that economic hard times, it's just plane hard to make an 'honest' living. Being afraid for your very survival will make you do the most irrational things. Our entire system of doing business is corrupt (it used to be that you could honestly work on the fringes, but with downward mobility - any job is a luxury). Perhaps it will be a good motivator to build a new system or not - but it's going to take time.

I think scientists need funding to feed their families and to get that funding they need to please their paymaster and hence fudge the results in the 'prefered' directions

Do I think it's appalling - yes. Would I do it - I'd like to say no, but if I needed the work to survive - yes, I probably would especially if I was responsbile for others.

Our system demands that we lie and cheat and steal from others - in order to be good corporate resources.

a reply to: greencmp

Exactly, some humans are like that at some point in their lives. I do believe that honesty and hard work does make good science.

Honesty is the part science cannot account for.