"Compromised science" news/opines (includes retractions, declining academic standards, pred-J, etc)

[C C]

Study gets to the heart of controversial chelation therapy

Christopher Labos: Study gets to the heart of controversial chelation therapy

A recent trial refutes earlier results that showed a cardiovascular benefit to the treatment, which involves medications that bind to heavy metals and allow them to be excreted by the body.

montrealgazette.com

EXCERPTS: Chelation therapy [...] can be life saving in certain circumstances, like a child with acute lead poisoning and neurological symptoms. But chelation therapy is marketed far beyond its limited medical scope.

[...] Given the lack of benefit, a large randomized trial was commissioned to investigate the issue [...which...] surprised many by claiming there was indeed a benefit for cardiovascular outcomes.

[...] The journal editors had a number of concerns with the paper, but ultimately decided to publish it with all those caveats in place.

[...] Hence, the TACT2 trial was launched to verify the results of TACT, and its results were recently published. There was no cardiovascular benefit... (MORE - missing details)
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[C C]

If the health authorities did have a continuing "see no evidence, hear no evidence, speak no evidence" attitude about fluoridation research, as the 2020 paper seems to hint...

Joseph Heller: "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't after you." --Catch-22

Variation: "To use what nutjobs endorse -- as a benchmark for judging what's fact and what's not -- is to apply for membership in another such club ourselves."

Or: "If the nutjob community endorses an _X_, then it automatically can't be true."
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(2024) Too much fluoride might lower IQ in kids, a new federal report says. The science (and debate), explained.

Should we think twice about fluoride?

Too much fluoride might lower IQ in kids, a new federal report says. The science (and debate), explained.

www.vox.com

EXCERPT: Fluoride in our drinking water has inspired conspiracy theories for generations. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who is also a prominent anti-vaxxer and Covid-19 skeptic, is one of the most vocal proponents of banning fluoridation to protect children from neurodevelopmental problems. This, though, isn’t a conspiracy theory.

Scientists have spent decades trying to figure out what level of fluoride strikes the best balance between oral health and healthy brain development. The NTP’s new 324-page report reviews results from over 500 experiments, lending more weight to the idea that fluoride can be connected to brain problems than, say, a single fraudulent, now-retracted study linking vaccines to autism... (MORE - details)

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(2020) Controversy: The evolving science of fluoride: when new evidence doesn’t conform with existing beliefs

Controversy: The evolving science of fluoride: when new evidence doesn’t conform with existing beliefs - Pediatric Research

Over the past 75 years, health authorities have declared that community water fluoridation—a practice that reaches over 400 million worldwide—is safe. Yet, studies conducted in North America examining the safety of fluoride exposure in pregnancy were nonexistent. When a Canadian study reported...

www.nature.com

EXCERPTS: We typically fret about subtle biases, like recall bias and unmeasured confounding, but confirmation bias, the tendency to ignore or debunk data that does not conform to what we believe, is arguably a much larger problem. Failure to act on consistent evidence that indicates safety risks could amount to enormous costs at the population level. [...] We describe the challenges of conducting fluoride research and the overt cognitive biases we have witnessed in the polarized fluoride debate. The tendency to ignore new evidence that does not conform to widespread beliefs impedes the response to early warnings about fluoride as a potential developmental neurotoxin. (MORE - details)

Dr Strangeglove clip

 

[C C]

Swiss medical association accused of forcing publishing subsidiary into insolvency

Swiss medical association accused of forcing publishing subsidiary into insolvency

A Swiss medical publisher has ceased operations, including shuttering nationally prominent journals, after its parent organization, the Swiss Medical Association FMH, allegedly forced it into bankr…

retractionwatch.com

A Swiss medical publisher has ceased operations, including shuttering nationally prominent journals, after its parent organization, the Swiss Medical Association FMH, allegedly forced it into bankruptcy.

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‘The PubPeer conundrum:’ One view of how universities can grapple with a ‘waterfall of data integrity concerns’
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/09...ties-can-grapple-with-challenges-to-research/

PubPeer has played a key role in a growing number of cases of misconduct, allowing sleuths to publicly shine light in shadowy corners and prompting action by many universities. But that has also meant that universities can feel overwhelmed by a deluge of PubPeer comments.

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Faked data prompts retraction of Nature journal study claiming creation of a new form of carbon

Faked data prompts retraction of Nature journal study claiming creation of a new form of carbon

The journal Nature Synthesis has pulled a high-profile article describing the creation of a new type of carbon after a university investigation found some data were made up. “The authors of the ori…

retractionwatch.com

The journal Nature Synthesis has pulled a high-profile article describing the creation of a new type of carbon after a university investigation found some data were made up.

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Exclusive: Editor resigns after he says publisher blocked criticism of decision to retract paper on gender dysphoria

Exclusive: Editor resigns after he says publisher blocked criticism of decision to retract paper on gender dysphoria

Michael Bailey A Springer Nature journal has rescinded the acceptance of a paper criticizing the publishing giant’s controversial retraction last year of an article that surveyed parents of c…

retractionwatch.com

In the canceled commentary, which contained several instances of opinion and conjecture, Michael Bailey, a psychology professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and a coauthor of the 2023 paper, argued that retractions are “increasingly a vehicle for scientific censorship.” He laid out the details of how his work was withdrawn and speculated about the publisher’s motivations.

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Journal to retract two articles more than six months after VA said they had fake images

Journal to retract two articles more than six months after VA said they had fake images

The Journal of Cellular Physiology, a Wiley title, will retract two articles by an arthritis researcher the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs found to have engaged in research misconduct, Retract…

retractionwatch.com

The Journal of Cellular Physiology, a Wiley title, will retract two articles by an arthritis researcher the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs found to have engaged in research misconduct, Retraction Watch has learned.
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[C C]

link: Headline-making report full of mistakes: Coal better than gas?

INTRO (Sabine Hossenfelder): Last year, a group of about 170 climate scientists signed an open letter to US President Joe Biden to cancel plans for a gas export terminal. One of the major reason was a new paper claiming that the climate impact of natural gas is even higher than that of coal, especially when exported to other countries. It turns out that this paper was riddled with mistakes...

 

[C C]

link: Cat becomes well-cited scholar with new scam method

VIIDEO EXCERPTS (Sabine Hossenfelder): Citations mean research grants, which mean money. The more often your papers get cited by other researchers, the more important your research seems to be.

[...] It only makes sense that if papermills are already producing gibberish publications, they might as well sell the citations. And this is indeed where part of the citations on sale came from.

So here’s how the citation boost works. Upload nonsense papers with custom citations to Research Gate, wait for google scholar to index them, and voila, suddenly you are a well-cited researchers.

[...] Nick and Reese tested this by setting up a Google scholar profile for a cat who they called Larry Richardson. They computer-generated a bunch of gibberish papers with the cat as author, and more gibberish papers that cited the cat’s papers. And voila, two weeks later the cat had 12 papers, 132 citations, and an h-index of 11...

 

[exchemist]

link: Cat becomes well-cited scholar with new scam method

VIIDEO EXCERPTS (Sabine Hossenfelder): Citations mean research grants, which mean money. The more often your papers get cited by other researchers, the more important your research seems to be.

[...] It only makes sense that if papermills are already producing gibberish publications, they might as well sell the citations. And this is indeed where part of the citations on sale came from.

So here’s how the citation boost works. Upload nonsense papers with custom citations to Research Gate, wait for google scholar to index them, and voila, suddenly you are a well-cited researchers.

[...] Nick and Reese tested this by setting up a Google scholar profile for a cat who they called Larry Richardson. They computer-generated a bunch of gibberish papers with the cat as author, and more gibberish papers that cited the cat’s papers. And voila, two weeks later the cat had 12 papers, 132 citations, and an h-index of 11...

I don't quite understand this. Researchgate is a social networking site for scientists, like LinkedIn or Facebook. It is not a peer-reviewed publication source. So why does Google Scholar treat stuff it finds on Researchgate as if it is peer-reviewed science?

This seems to be yet another example of how so many of the IT aids sold to us by Big Tech prove to be fairly shitty in construction, lack quality control and therefore end up misleading people.

Actually I do think that the internet is degrading information quality in almost every facet of life these days, not to mention creating vast opportunities for fraud.

 

[Write4U]

If there's one sacred place in the entire universe, free from corruption, you'd think it'd be within science.

There is, the language used in that abstract (sacred) place (condition) that is absolutely free from corruption is a description of the logical function that is based on mathematical values. "Diffrential Equations"

Is spacetime wholly a mathematical construct and not a real thing? [closed]

Finally, let’s get to the meat of the question: Is spacetime real, or is it a mathematical construct?

Short answer: Yes to both. https://physics.stackexchange.com/q...-mathematical-construct-and-not-a-real-thing#

 

[exchemist]

I don't quite understand this. Researchgate is a social networking site for scientists, like LinkedIn or Facebook. It is not a peer-reviewed publication source. So why does Google Scholar treat stuff it finds on Researchgate as if it is peer-reviewed science?

This seems to be yet another example of how so many of the IT aids sold to us by Big Tech prove to be fairly shitty in construction, lack quality control and therefore end up misleading people.

Actually I do think that the internet is degrading information quality in almost every facet of life these days, not to mention creating vast opportunities for fraud.

Just to build on this a bit, I quote below some of the caveats in the Wiki article about Google Scholar:

Google Scholar is vulnerable to spam.[44][45] Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley and Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg demonstrated that citation counts on Google Scholar can be manipulated and complete non-sense articles created with SCIgen were indexed within Google Scholar.[46] These researchers concluded that citation counts from Google Scholar should be used with care, especially when used to calculate performance metrics such as the h-index or impact factor, which is in itself a poor predictor of article quality.[47] Google Scholar started computing an h-index in 2012 with the advent of individual Scholar pages. Several downstream packages like Harzing's Publish or Perish also use its data.[48] The practicality of manipulating h-index calculators by spoofing Google Scholar was demonstrated in 2010 by Cyril Labbe from Joseph Fourier University, who managed to rank "Ike Antkare" ahead of Albert Einstein by means of a large set of SCIgen-produced documents citing each other (effectively an academic link farm).[49] As of 2010, Google Scholar was not able to shepardize case law, as Lexis could.[50] Unlike other indexes of academic work such as Scopus and Web of Science, Google Scholar does not maintain an Application Programming Interface that may be used to automate data retrieval. Use of web scrapers to obtain the contents of search results is also severely restricted by the implementation of CAPTCHAs. Google Scholar does not display or export Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs),[51] a de facto standard implemented by all major academic publishers to uniquely identify and refer to individual pieces of academic work.[52]

From this is clear that anyone treating Google Scholar as an authoritative indicator of the quality of a piece of research is a mug. I am sure that this will be widely understood among professional researchers. What's for sure is the ability to fool a commercial IT search tool like Google Scholar is not evidence of corruption in science. It just means the tool is a very blunt instrument.

 

[James R]

Moderator note: Write4U has been warned (again) for trying to hijack a thread to discuss (yet again) one of his pet topics. Due to accumulated warning points, he will be taking another short break.

 

[C C]

The Rise of the Science Sleuths

The Rise of the Science Sleuths

When an Alzheimer’s paper came under scrutiny, correcting the scientific record meant battling much bigger problems.

undark.org

EXCERPTS: . . . But a decade and a half later, some sleuths noticed problems with crucial images in that paper. Core data appeared to be fake. Scientists in the field debated about the importance of the paper after the concerns emerged. Some believed that a landmark finding supporting the hypothesis was now unreliable. Others insisted the paper had never been used as proof.

No one could deny, though, that thousands of other publications had cited the research. And, in the sleuths’ eyes, the paper’s popularity made investigating any tampering that much more important...

[...] the questions raised about the work revealed cracks that have been slowly eating away at scientific integrity for years. And the sleuths asking those questions would find themselves not just seeking a minor correction but fighting for a greater truth. ... David Bimler, a retired perceptual psychologist from New Zealand, wrote: “We are all idealists and united by a wish for the ideals of science to be more like what they used to be.”

Whether they can do anything about it, though, is another question... (MORE - details)
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[C C]

Nobel prize-winner tallies two more retractions, bringing total to 13

Nobel prize-winner tallies two more retractions, bringing total to 13

Gregg Semenza A Nobel prize-winning genetics researcher has retracted two more papers, bringing his total to 13. Gregg Semenza, a professor of genetic medicine and director of the vascular pr…

retractionwatch.com

A Nobel prize-winning genetics researcher has retracted two more papers, bringing his total to 13.

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‘Stealth corrections’: when journals quietly fix papers

‘Stealth corrections’: when journals quietly fix papers

René Aquarius Last March, René Aquarius noticed some overlapping patterns in a figure about a 2016 study on the blood-brain barrier. So he took to PubPeer, an online site where scientists often dis…

retractionwatch.com

Last March, René Aquarius noticed some overlapping patterns in a figure about a 2016 study on the blood-brain barrier. So he took to PubPeer, an online site where scientists often discuss papers, to raise his concerns.

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Penn State prof earns second retraction, faces third following university probe

Penn State prof earns second retraction, faces third following university probe

Deborah Kelly A professor of biomedical engineering at the Pennsylvania State University today lost a government-funded study in Science Advances, marking her second retraction. The researche…

retractionwatch.com

A professor of biomedical engineering at the Pennsylvania State University today lost a government-funded study in Science Advances, marking her second retraction.

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Former Harvard cancer researcher plagiarized data, federal watchdog says

Former Harvard cancer researcher plagiarized data, federal watchdog says

A former research fellow at Harvard Medical School faked data and used images from another scientist without attribution in a published paper and two grant applications, according to findings from …

retractionwatch.com

A former research fellow at Harvard Medical School faked data and used images from another scientist without attribution in a published paper and two grant applications, according to findings from the U.S. Office of Research Integrity.

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Pakistan university’s pharmacy department chair notches two retractions

Pakistan university’s pharmacy department chair notches two retractions

Kashif Barkat Kashif Barkat, who heads the Department of Pharmacy at the University of Lahore in Punjab, Pakistan, has had two of his studies retracted and two more corrected, all for issues relate…

retractionwatch.com

Kashif Barkat, who heads the Department of Pharmacy at the University of Lahore in Punjab, Pakistan, has had two of his studies retracted and two more corrected, all for issues related to images in the papers. Several more of his studies are flagged on PubPeer for similar reasons.
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[C C]

Court clears researchers of defamation for identifying manipulated data

Court clears researchers of defamation for identifying manipulated data

Harvard, however, will still face trial over how it managed the investigation.

arstechnica.com

KEY POINTS: The report became public because the researcher had filed a lawsuit that alleged defamation on the part of the team of data detectives that had first identified potential cases of fabricated data, as well as against Harvard Business School itself.

The "detectives" had every allegation against them thrown out. The fact that the accusations involved evidence-based conclusions, and the researchers presented their accusations in the cautious language typical of scientific writing, ended up protecting them from accusations of defamation. Along with providing links to the data sources they'd used to draw their conclusions.

Ultimately, it's probably good for the scientific community that these suits are unlikely to succeed. Harvard, however, will still face trial over how it managed the investigation. (MORE - missing details)
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[C C]

But don't panic or worry about this being a heavy blow to decolonization of science. The moral imperative will prevail in the end ("OUGHT shall righteously overcome IS" could almost be the defining motto of the contemporary mindset.) <sarcasm>
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How scientists debunked one of conservation’s most influential statistics

How scientists debunked one of conservation’s most influential statistics

The factoid about biodiversity and Indigenous peoples spread around the world, but scientists say bad data can undermine the very causes it claims to support

www.theguardian.com

INTRO: The statistic seemed to crop up everywhere. Versions were cited at UN negotiations, on protest banners, in 186 peer-reviewed scientific papers – even by the film-maker James Cameron, while promoting his Avatar films. Exact wording varied, but the claim was this: that 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity is protected by Indigenous peoples.

When scientists investigated its origins, however, they found nothing. In September, the scientific journal Nature reported that the much-cited claim was “a baseless statistic”, not supported by any real data, and could jeopardise the very Indigenous-led conservation efforts it was cited in support of. Indigenous communities play “essential roles” in conserving biodiversity, the comment says, but the 80% claim is simply “wrong” and risks undermining their credibility... (MORE - details)
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[C C]

Just as career pressures can fray ethical standards and lead to compromised research papers, similar seems to play a role in undermining conduct commitments to crisis abatement. Not that every academic is a crusader or activist (even in guarded or private thought orientation), but many if not most give outward lip-service to _X_ issues slash agendas. Ergo, the self-prescribed "hypocrisy" assessment below.
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Academics say flying to meetings harms the climate — but they carry on

Academics say flying to meetings harms the climate — but they carry on

A survey at one of the biggest UK research universities finds that staff often end up flying to meetings despite a preference to avoid air travel.

www.nature.com

EXCERPTS: An overwhelming majority of survey respondents at a top research university agree that air travel contributes to climate change, but many — especially professors and PhD students — often fly to conferences anyway, according to a study published last month in Global Environmental Change.

[...] “We fly lots, and we say that we shouldn't,” says Jonas De Vos, a transport geographer at University College London (UCL) and the first author of the latest study. “We are hypocrites.”

Studies disagree on whether flying to meetings helps researchers to achieve academic success. ... “People who still have to build up their career probably need a bit more budget than senior people.”

Scientists pushing for reductions in air travel acknowledge the benefits of attending meetings in person — and few want to end such travel entirely.

[...] Although individuals can make better travel choices, academic culture still needs to change to reduce its carbon footprint.. (MORE - details)
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[C C]

Yah, it's not like this was unexpected, they've done it before. As Jerry Coyne and others have endlessly pointed out over the years, SciAm became a platform for critical-theory derived politics some time ago. And scientist activism is increasing in general. The public becoming more and more aware of this (and arguably unrelated invalid science issues plaguing the human-focused sciences) is not necessarily a good thing, however. As whatever "trust" there formerly was in high standards/practices and impartial administrations and policies regulating science may never be recovered.
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Scientific American endorses Kamala Harris. Here's why that's a good thing

Scientific American Endorses Kamala Harris. Here's Why That's a Good Thing

This week, Scientific American urged readers to "Vote for Kamala Harris to Support Science, Health and the Environment." It's a senseless, shortsighted move that will inflame America's disdain for science. The upside is that it could incentivize needed reforms in our ideologically slanted...

www.acsh.org

EXCERPTS: Several high-profile scientists blasted SciAm for once again endorsing the Democratic nominee for president. “A science magazine should not be endorsing presidents,” evolutionary biologist Colin Wright tweeted. “This is why you have lost all credibility. And yes, I'd be equally critical if you had endorsed Trump.” Behavioral scientist Gad Saad was less gentle: “Authoritarian Leftist partisanship has hijacked everything: academia, science, journalism, medicine, business, law, entertainment, culture, Justice system, etc.”

[...] The unfortunate reality is that mainstream science–the existing cohort of academic journals, universities, popular publications, and regulatory agencies–is ideologically corrupt to the core. Scientific American’s endorsement of Harris is a clear indicator of this devolution, but there are many others worth highlighting...

[...] The takeaway, then, is quite simple: the science community should be as partisan as it likes. Keep endorsing political candidates. Keep pretending that biological sex “exists on a spectrum.” Insist that schools “Teach Indigenous knowledge alongside science.” Tell the public that science is actually a platform to advance bizarre partisan causes. Say it loudly and say it proudly.

Just remember that your political campaigning could have serious consequences as the public's faith in you continues to decline. (MORE - missing details)
_

 

[exchemist]

Yah, it's not like this was unexpected, they've done it before. As Jerry Coyne and others have endlessly pointed out over the years, SciAm became a platform for critical-theory derived politics some time ago. And scientist activism is increasing in general. The public becoming more and more aware of this (and arguably unrelated invalid science issues plaguing the human-focused sciences) is not necessarily a good thing, however. As whatever "trust" there formerly was in high standards/practices and impartial administrations and policies regulating science may never be recovered.
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Scientific American endorses Kamala Harris. Here's why that's a good thing

Scientific American Endorses Kamala Harris. Here's Why That's a Good Thing

This week, Scientific American urged readers to "Vote for Kamala Harris to Support Science, Health and the Environment." It's a senseless, shortsighted move that will inflame America's disdain for science. The upside is that it could incentivize needed reforms in our ideologically slanted...

www.acsh.org

EXCERPTS: Several high-profile scientists blasted SciAm for once again endorsing the Democratic nominee for president. “A science magazine should not be endorsing presidents,” evolutionary biologist Colin Wright tweeted. “This is why you have lost all credibility. And yes, I'd be equally critical if you had endorsed Trump.” Behavioral scientist Gad Saad was less gentle: “Authoritarian Leftist partisanship has hijacked everything: academia, science, journalism, medicine, business, law, entertainment, culture, Justice system, etc.”

[...] The unfortunate reality is that mainstream science–the existing cohort of academic journals, universities, popular publications, and regulatory agencies–is ideologically corrupt to the core. Scientific American’s endorsement of Harris is a clear indicator of this devolution, but there are many others worth highlighting...

[...] The takeaway, then, is quite simple: the science community should be as partisan as it likes. Keep endorsing political candidates. Keep pretending that biological sex “exists on a spectrum.” Insist that schools “Teach Indigenous knowledge alongside science.” Tell the public that science is actually a platform to advance bizarre partisan causes. Say it loudly and say it proudly.

Just remember that your political campaigning could have serious consequences as the public's faith in you continues to decline. (MORE - missing details)
_

Yes, sad to see the short-sightedness of the editors. The effect is to make science seem to take sides in the USA's beastly culture war, which will devalue it in the minds of those of the other political persuasion. That is a recipe for disaster, whether it be climate change, or vaccine safety, or any other public issue with a scientific dimension.

 

[C C]

Penn State barred embattled professor from doing research

Penn State barred embattled professor from doing research

Deborah Kelly The Pennsylvania State University in May blocked a prominent professor at the school from doing research and making presentations on its behalf, Retraction Watch has learned. Th…

retractionwatch.com

The Pennsylvania State University in May blocked a prominent professor at the school from doing research and making presentations on its behalf...

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Exclusive: Editorial board member quits over journal’s handling of plagiarized paper

Exclusive: Editorial board member quits over journal’s handling of plagiarized paper

Dirk H. R. Spennemann An architecture journal’s “failure to act in a timely and proactive manner” in a case of plagiarism in a now-retracted review article has sparked the resignation of a member o…

retractionwatch.com

An architecture journal’s “failure to act in a timely and proactive manner” in a case of plagiarism in a now-retracted review article has sparked the resignation of a member of its editorial board...

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Exclusive: Providence VA hires scientist previous employer found had harassed mentees

Exclusive: Providence VA hires scientist previous employer found had harassed mentees

Kaikobad Irani The University of Iowa found a cardiology researcher violated multiple of its policies, including harassing his former mentees when they tried to leave his lab to establish labs of t…

retractionwatch.com

The University of Iowa found a cardiology researcher violated multiple of its policies, including harassing his former mentees when they tried to leave his lab to establish labs of their own...

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First paper retracted in string of studies using the wrong medication name

First paper retracted in string of studies using the wrong medication name

Tara Skopelitis A scientific sleuth and a mother who nearly lost her daughter to a hormonal condition teamed up in January to flag a series of papers that misnamed a medication for pregnant women. …

retractionwatch.com

A scientific sleuth and a mother who nearly lost her daughter to a hormonal condition teamed up in January to flag a series of papers that misnamed a medication for pregnant women. They have recently started to see the fruits of their labors: one retraction and three corrections.

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Exclusive: One university’s three-year battle to retract papers with fake data

Exclusive: One university’s three-year battle to retract papers with fake data

Richard Eckert In 2021, the provost of the University of Maryland, Baltimore sounded the alarm about a troubling batch of papers from the lab of Richard Eckert, the former chair of the Department o…

retractionwatch.com

In 2021, the provost of the University of Maryland, Baltimore sounded the alarm about a troubling batch of papers from the lab of Richard Eckert, the former chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the institution. But more than three years later, the results of those alerts are mixed...
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[C C]

Homeopathy for cancer paper extensively corrected after watchdog agency requested retraction

Homeopathy for cancer paper extensively corrected after watchdog agency requested retraction

A paper that claimed to show a homeopathic intervention improved quality of life and survival for people with advanced lung cancer has received an extensive correction two years after a research in…

retractionwatch.com

A paper that claimed to show a homeopathic intervention improved quality of life and survival for people with advanced lung cancer has received an extensive correction two years after a research integrity watchdog asked the journal to retract the article over concerns about manipulated data, Retraction Watch has learned. The two scientists who sounded the alarm on the paper are not satisfied with the correction, they told us...

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Publisher adds temporary online notifications to articles “under investigation”
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/09...otifications-to-articles-under-investigation/

Some journal articles on the Taylor & Francis website now bear a pop-up notification stating the papers are “currently under investigation.” The publisher began adding the notices to articles such as this one in June, according to a spokesperson, as a way to inform readers about an ongoing investigation “so that they can exercise appropriate caution when considering the research presented.”

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1 in 7 scientific papers is fake, suggests study that author calls ‘wildly nonsystematic’

1 in 7 scientific papers is fake, suggests study that author calls ‘wildly nonsystematic’

James Heathers In 2009, a now highly-cited study found an average of around 2% of scientists admit to have falsified, fabricated, or modified data at least once in their career. Fifteen years…

retractionwatch.com

In 2009, a now highly-cited study found an average of around 2% of scientists admit to have falsified, fabricated, or modified data at least once in their career. Fifteen years on, a new analysis tried to quantify how much science is fake – but the real number may remain elusive, some observers said.
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[C C]

Bret Weinstein, would-be Galileo: The calm-voiced biologist has evolved into an ivermectin-pushing science contrarian and conspiracy theorist. What happened?
https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/covid-19-critical-thinking/bret-weinstein-would-be-galileo

Many scientists, like Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz and Dan Wilson, have taken Weinstein and Heying to task on their health-related misinformation; but their refutations can be ignored by many DarkHorse fans. They come from “pharma shills” or “bad faith actors.” Other fans are still hoping Weinstein will address these concerns properly. Maybe one day. Over years of pumping out incredibly long, weekly podcast episodes, Weinstein and Heying have “hypothesized” a number of truly staggering things, both in the sciences and outside of them...
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[C C]

Transparency and integrity risks in China's research ecosystem: A primer and call to action
https://researchsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/CRSITransparencyIntegrity_web.pdf

EXCERPTS: Governments and research institutions in liberal democracies espouse and stress the importance of values such as academic freedom, transparency, integrity, and reciprocity concerning the conduct of research and international research collaboration. [...] However, party-state organs and research institutions of the People’s Republic of China routinely violate these norms and values that are critical to beneficial research collaboration. No efforts have been made by liberal democracies to systematically identify, catalog, and characterize (or assess) China’s practices in a manner that can be shared across the international research community and used to support risk assessments and mitigation. This study seeks to address these deficiencies within the research community...

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A harm reduction approach to improving peer review by acknowledging its imperfections
https://www.facetsjournal.com/doi/10.1139/facets-2024-0102

ABSTRACT: This candid perspective written by scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds is intended to advance conversations about the realities of peer review and its inherent limitations. Trust in a process or institution is built slowly and can be destroyed quickly. Trust in the peer review process for scholarly outputs (i.e., journal articles) is being eroded by high-profile scandals, exaggerated news stories, exposés, corrections, retractions, and anecdotes about poor practices. Diminished trust in the peer review process has real-world consequences and threatens the uptake of critical scientific advances.

The literature on “crises of trust” tells us that rebuilding diminished trust takes time and requires frank admission and discussion of problems, creative thinking that addresses rather than dismisses criticisms, and planning and enacting short- and long-term reforms to address the root causes of problems. This article takes steps in this direction by presenting eight peer review reality checks and summarizing efforts to address their weaknesses using a harm reduction approach, though we recognize that reforms take time and some problems may never be fully rectified.

While some forms of harm reduction will require structural and procedural changes, we emphasize the vital role that training editors, reviewers, and authors has in harm reduction. Additionally, consumers of science need training about how the peer review process works and how to critically evaluate research findings.

No amount of self-policing, transparency, or reform to peer review will eliminate all bad actors, unscrupulous publishers, perverse incentives that reward cutting corners, intentional deception, or bias. However, the scientific community can act to minimize the harms from these activities, while simultaneously (re)building the peer review process. A peer review system is needed, even if it is imperfect.
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