Fake studies in academic journals may be more common than previously thought

a reply to: flice

I encouraged by your point about researchers being human beings.

I don't fault the effort, I never have.

Ultimately, I fault the the human ego... it seems to be the well-spring from which all systemic flaws manifest. Any future ethics must address this directly.

originally posted by: Maxmars
a reply to: flice

I encouraged by your point about researchers being human beings.

I don't fault the effort, I never have.

Ultimately, I fault the the human ego... it seems to be the well-spring from which all systemic flaws manifest. Any future ethics must address this directly.

Researchers always were human beings....the issue is that in the past, most humans used to have self-driven MORALS AND RESPECT FOR TRUTH

originally posted by: M5xaz

originally posted by: Maxmars
a reply to: flice

I encouraged by your point about researchers being human beings.

I don't fault the effort, I never have.

Ultimately, I fault the the human ego... it seems to be the well-spring from which all systemic flaws manifest. Any future ethics must address this directly.

Researchers always were human beings....the issue is that in the past, most humans used to have self-driven MORALS AND RESPECT FOR TRUTH

See thats the point... and the problem with consolidated wealth. Money buys influence. It just took a little before science got corrupted.

There should be a wealth ceiling and scientific research and achievement should belong to the public as a whole, not to investors and individual interests.

Profit only cares about profit, not moral, honesty and integrity.

There are no decent people amongst billionaires... only asocial people or sociopaths.

originally posted by: flice

originally posted by: M5xaz

originally posted by: Maxmars
a reply to: flice

I encouraged by your point about researchers being human beings.

I don't fault the effort, I never have.

Ultimately, I fault the the human ego... it seems to be the well-spring from which all systemic flaws manifest. Any future ethics must address this directly.

Researchers always were human beings....the issue is that in the past, most humans used to have self-driven MORALS AND RESPECT FOR TRUTH

See thats the point... and the problem with consolidated wealth. Money buys influence. It just took a little before science got corrupted.

There should be a wealth ceiling and scientific research and achievement should belong to the public as a whole, not to investors and individual interests.

Profit only cares about profit, not moral, honesty and integrity.

There are no decent people amongst billionaires... only asocial people or sociopaths.

Communism is not the solution - over 100 million dead over the past century
And I don't trust the government or politicians to decide who is "too rich"

Morals and integrity has nothing to do with wealth or poverty.


Morals is a societal issue
As a society, we have to decide that we want out of the moral decline we are in, laziness is not ok, lying is not ok, cheating is not ok, perversion is not ok, stealing is not ok. TRUTH, OBEDIENCE, FAITHFULNESS, HARD WORK, CIVILITY are goals we must want to strive for.

Christianity, like it or not, maintained a relatively more virtuous society for MILLENNIA
The attack on Christianity by "progressives" replaced the church with nihilism and depravity - Progressives wanted to be gods themselves, with the result we have today

a reply to: Maxmars

Whether more academic journal articles are fake than previously thought depends on who is thinking about them.

Really it depends on the peer reviewers and the journal editors to keep things honest, and this isn't always easy.

Furthermore, some legit articles don't get published because of common-wisdom biases in a field and the naysaying of a person of prestige in the field.

There's also the matter of sponsored research, and how such articles aren't given more scrutiny.

The remedy is to remove funding issues. If a scientist is funded by a praticular body, he/she is expected to produce the required results, in general. Scientists have to suck up to obtain funding. And several journals receive funding from certain pharmaceutical companies. Its just asking for corruption. Take the money out, and we will again be able to do actual science.

Peer review aint all that either. ome peer reviewers will reject a paper becuase their own work has not been referenced in the paper. Others, it would seem (see the surgisphere debarkle) take payment. Science is in no way as pure as it should be. However, there are some good scientists out there beavering away every day trying to find out real facts and improve the world, that should not be forgotten.

Indeed some papers have been found to be fraudulent but still end up changing the world.

Ask Michael Mann

originally posted by: Maxmars
Fake studies in academic journals may be more common than previously thought

While I have similar reservations about the NPR as a 'journalistic" source... I make an exception here because it is a transcript of an interview (I believe the audio is available) about a subject which is of interest to me.

I offer some disclosure here... I once served (many eons ago) in the Office of Federal Grants Management of a major research university (aren't they all nowadays?) So I have some sensitivity to the state of "research" as an 'enterprise of commerce.' I will offer few reactions in that regard as the subject of this OP is simple:

Published research is now a 'corrupted collection' of documents.

The interview participants: NPR's Ayesha Rascoe and neuropsychologist Bernhard Sabel, a German psychologist who heads the Institute of Medical Psychology at the Otto-von-Guericke-University Magdeburg.

NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with neuropsychologist Bernhard Sabel about his study estimating that more medical papers may be made up or plagiarized than previously thought.

The conversation can best be summarized, in my opinion, as a kind of revelation. As it would appear from what Professor Sabel asserts, while it was always a certainty that some published research was in fact "fake" - as in fraudulently presented, not factual, ... made up data, non-existent 'authorship,' no actual research done... etc. This reality was a 'given' in the world of those who regularly access and review research materials published into the scientific record. But apparently, there's more... a lot more... than anyone seemed to grasp.

Here's an except from the interview:

RASCOE: So what is going on here? Like, why are all these fake papers ending up in academic journals? Like, how does that happen?

SABEL: Scientists are often judged by the number of papers they publish, and that is quite common practice everywhere around the world. And all this pressure creates anxiety and fear to not being promoted, to lose the job and so on. And so the best way to solve that, given they have no capacity to do the research, is, as if you're buying a T-shirt in the shop, you can buy a paper for it to be published in the scientific journal.

RASCOE: So how does that work? These are papers, like, with fake data, or these are papers that other people have done research for and then someone else is buying them, or is it all just completely fabricated?

SABEL: Well, all of the above. There is quite a variety in the kaleidoscope of ways of faking. You can now go online, and you can see a title advertised, sign up here. Pay this and that much for it. There are papers that have fake photos. They have fake text. I presume many are automatically produced by artificial intelligence. And there are agencies who are specializing in this business, which creates a lot of junk in the scientific literature at a scope that is just unbelievable.

Bear in mind that what follows is my opinion...

We can rest assured that "fake" research has monetary motivation... A substantial document recounting the thesis and experimental results behind it pursuit must be robust and conform to what "research" in the appropriate field look like. Someone is getting compensated for its creation... Science journal editors such as Prof. Sabel must be fooled at first glance that this material offered for publication is worthy and valid upon it's surface. So it takes some understanding of the process and product to mimic a research effort.

One might think this would narrow down the potential "who" is perpetrating this cumulative poisoning of the well of scientific research. I haven't heard of anything in that regard though, right now the conversation is restricted to the existence of fake research, not who is making it.

But my angle here is a bit more conspiratorial... of course, because what we can also be certain of is that 'fake' research can also be motivated by ideology, politics, and even faith. Fake research can be made for the purposes of "convincing" and 'serving narratives' and maybe even more subtle motivations.

Here at ATS we often find ourselves bombarded by "research" passed off as some manner of "authoritative" and we are often willing to accept that possibility because up until this conversation at least, we may have thought that "If it's published it has to have been vetted."

That is apparently ill-advised. And often one can see the most damage when we observe how many times that research has been cited as contributory to other research, i.e. how far has the poison spread.

As an example I offer this noteworthy example in Retraction Watch - although I feel obliged to mention that is is a bit of a rabbit hole... if you care at all about 'truth' as a principle - it's bound to be a bit of a teeth grinding exercise.

I will now remind myself that the research I see being cited must never be simply accepted... especially if it is in defense of something I maintain. But I dare say some of us are in love with calling upon 'research' as some kind of weapon of truth... turns out that nothing is ever that easy.

Thanks for reading the links!