Fraudulent Scientific Papers Are Rapidly Increasing, Study Finds (nytimes.com) 74
For years, whistle-blowers have warned that fake results are sneaking into the scientific literature at an increasing pace. A new statistical analysis backs up the concern. From a report: A team of researchers found evidence of shady organizations churning out fake or low-quality studies on an industrial scale. And their output is rising fast, threatening the integrity of many fields.
"If these trends are not stopped, science is going to be destroyed," said LuÃs A. Nunes Amaral, a data scientist at Northwestern University and an author of the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday. Science has made huge advances over the past few centuries only because new generations of scientists could read about the accomplishments of previous ones. Each time a new paper is published, other scientists can explore the findings and think about how to make their own discoveries. Fake scientific papers produced by commercial "paper mills" are doubling every year and a half, according to the report. Northwestern University researchers examined over one million papers and identified networks of fraudulent studies sold to scientists seeking to pad their publication records. The team estimates the actual scope of fraud may be 100 times greater than currently detected cases. Paper mills charge hundreds to thousands of dollars for fake authorship and often target specific research fields like microRNA cancer studies.
"If these trends are not stopped, science is going to be destroyed," said LuÃs A. Nunes Amaral, a data scientist at Northwestern University and an author of the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday. Science has made huge advances over the past few centuries only because new generations of scientists could read about the accomplishments of previous ones. Each time a new paper is published, other scientists can explore the findings and think about how to make their own discoveries. Fake scientific papers produced by commercial "paper mills" are doubling every year and a half, according to the report. Northwestern University researchers examined over one million papers and identified networks of fraudulent studies sold to scientists seeking to pad their publication records. The team estimates the actual scope of fraud may be 100 times greater than currently detected cases. Paper mills charge hundreds to thousands of dollars for fake authorship and often target specific research fields like microRNA cancer studies.
Re:Time to close the doors? (Score:5, Interesting)
No. The *correct* way to fix this is to resolve the root cause:
How funding is awarded.
Currently, the paradigm is 'publish or perish', because science funding is only handed out to 'rockstars' by politicians who dont understand the fundamental value of boring replication work.
It is the toxic combination of 'I can only do work if I publish first and publish often!', and 'There is nobody checking my work anyway; nobody has the funding to do verification! that leads to this perverse outcome.
Further restriction to 'vip rockstars only!' Is a gross misunderstanding of the root problem, and would be heaping jetfuel on top of the dumpsterfire.
Turns out, you actually need non-rockstars--Lots of them.
And to have them, you have to fund them and their laboratories.
Oh, how awful! You cant have 'only cream'. /s
The sooner this is realized in policy, the better.
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This is how you get the likes of Darth Fauci.
Were you born a clown, or did you have to go to clown college?
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Texas needs to secede from this vile shitstorm
Texas is the vile shitstorm. The gov having arrest warrants issued for lawmakers who are doing what he has done to avoid prosecution in the past is the cherry on the shit sundae.
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It isn't like they have to bow down do Abbot and kiss his pinky ring.
The question is why you're kissing his O-ring.
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Did someone shit in your coffee again?
Some coward is proud to shit on facts, and they can fuck off.
Re: Time to close the doors? (Score:1)
Re:Time to close the doors? (Score:4, Insightful)
No. The *correct* way to fix this is to resolve the root cause: How funding is awarded.
This is a big problem and it's going to take a multi-pronged approach to fix it. Your suggestion is good, but the OP's suggestion of an "accrediting agency" is also quite good (and somewhat easier to implement than yours).
Journals are already "ranked" according to their "impact factor", which is a number calculated based on how often their articles are cited by other articles; it would make sense to also calculate a "credibility factor", based on the number of (known or suspected) instances of fraud. Ideally, you would want to calculate three different credibility factors for each article: one based on the journal, one based on the institution they're from, and one based on the primary author. (Maybe add a fourth based on the secondary authors).
The beauty of that suggestion is that it wouldn't cost a fortune to implement-- you could set up a nonprofit agency to do it with only modest funding. Scientists would be falling all over themselves to work for that agency. Some of them would probably volunteer their time for free.
Of course, it would be nice to fix scientific funding as well, but that's going to take much more money and time (it ain't happening under #47).
A *third* potential strategy would be to start imposing criminal penalties-- both on the individual scientists and on their institutions-- for instances of outright fraud.
Not Needed: Good Journals Known (Score:3)
Journals are already "ranked" according to their "impact factor", which is a number calculated based on how often their articles are cited by other articles; it would make sense to also calculate a "credibility factor"
Impact factor generally is a credibility factor or at least I do not know of any journal in my field where there is a low-credibility journal with a high impact factor, although there are some specialist journals - e.g. instrumentation - which are highly credible but with a low impact factor. Generally speaking though anyone in the field worth their salt will know which the good journals are and where a paper is published generally does have a large impact on how we regard its quality.
I do not see a goo
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Impact factor generally is a credibility factor or at least I do not know of any journal in my field where there is a low-credibility journal with a high impact factor, although there are some specialist journals - e.g. instrumentation - which are highly credible but with a low impact factor. Generally speaking though anyone in the field worth their salt will know which the good journals are and where a paper is published generally does have a large impact on how we regard its quality.
Impact factor seems like more of a measure of "this is important and consequential", rather than "this is free of fraud". Anyway, there have been multiple instances of fraudulent papers coming out in high-prestige journals with extremely high impact factors (Nature, for one).
I do not see a good way for a "credibility factor" to be calculated in an objective manner that would not have significant negative repurcussions e.g. counting the number of retractions would be bad since it would encourage journals never to retract papers.
Right, that's why retractions shouldn't count against you. If anything they should boost your score (if done in a timely/responsible fashion).
I don't know exactly how to "measure" fraudulent research or what criteria should be used--
Re:Time to close the doors? (Score:5, Informative)
No. The *correct* way to fix this is to resolve the root cause:
How funding is awarded.
Currently, the paradigm is 'publish or perish', because science funding is only handed out to 'rockstars' by politicians who dont understand the fundamental value of boring replication work.
Politicians? Try college faculty administrations. No publish, no tenure. That goes whether the researcher or the school is getting a government grant or not. This is an academic culture problem, not a political problem.
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This is an academic culture problem, not a political problem.
One does not preclude the other here.
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Currently, the paradigm is 'publish or perish', because science funding is only handed out to 'rockstars' by politicians
That is utterly wrong. As a scientist who has sat on several grant review boards there are no politicians involved at all in deciding who gets funding. The politicians set the size of the pot we have to give out but grant applications undergo rigorous, multi-stage peer evaluation. Even in the US where a single expert program officer has a lot of control over a grant program (or at least they used to) peer evaluation was still critical to the process. The only exception to this are "mega-projects" where the
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Currently, the paradigm is 'publish or perish', because science funding is only handed out to 'rockstars' by politicians
That is utterly wrong. As a scientist who has sat on several grant review boards there are no politicians involved at all in deciding who gets funding.
Unfortunately, this isn't the case in Australia. The Australian Research Council recommends to the Federal Minister for Education projects that should be funded. The Minister ultimately decides who and what to fund.
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Impact score is literally the number of times a paper is cited by other papers.
Instead of pretending it's magic, instead realize what happens when studies are *not* replicated.
A single study is conducted, and because it is the seminal paper, it gets lots of citations in related works.
Assuming an academic forger is smart, and does not make outlandish claims that break ancillary studies, they can go undetected for decades.
Like the work behind the amyloid hypothesis.
The methodology currently employed grants aw
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The politcians I mention provide an insufficient financial resource to provide for the degree of replication needed, replication scientists dont get near the impact scores of seminal paper authors
W
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In many cases, the reason you cant do that, is because of the requirements of the seminal study in the first place.
Things like lifetime cohort studies, for instance, (where are you going to get another 5000 people to track for a lifetime study of a once in a lifetime event? A time machine?) or where very specialized equipment that costs a small fortune to produce (like the stuff at CERN) are at play.
Think about what you are actually saying, and then think more critically about the replication crisis, and t
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where are you going to get another 5000 people to track for a lifetime study of a once in a lifetime event?
Probably the same place the first study found its 5,000 people. The population is not shrinking that fast! However, why do you have to replicate the first study? Perhaps you can test a hypothesis from the first study using a smaller, targetted study or by specific analysis of previous studies? That's my point: exact replication does not teach us anything new, you learn a lot more from testing the claims of previous papers using better data or different approaches.
or where very specialized equipment that costs a small fortune to produce (like the stuff at CERN) are at play.
As a particle physicist who worked at CERN
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Currently, the paradigm is 'publish or perish', because science funding is only handed out to 'rockstars' by politicians
That is utterly wrong.
Mod up parent, the GP has no clue on how science funding works.
I work for a funding agency, and organise or participate in the organisation and management of national and international (European) thematic (i.e. top-down on a specific theme, as opposed to bottom-up where researchers can submit any topic) research calls.
We decide on rubrics for external expert panels to use during their deliberation, such as excellence of the proposal, expected impact of the research (on different levels: academic public
Re:Time to close the doors? (Score:5, Interesting)
Sadly, it's not that simple.
Consider this case from Australia: The cancer drug, the faked data and the superstar scientist [archive.is]. A top research, backed by many prestigious institutions, faked his data and his mouse tests. Did people know this? Yes. Did they risk (and in many cases, end) their careers by blowing the whistle? Yes. Did the institutions do anything? No; they protected him because he brought in so many research dollars.
Yes, paper mills are a curse. But forcing an accreditation agency to vet all papers isn't the way. That's called peer review, and Mark Smyth passed all peer review.
Yet he still pumped out fake papers; hundreds of them, polluting scientific knowledge with fake data.
I am no fan of big pharma, but I realize they are the ones who take the commercial risk to create new drugs. Drugs such as Nelistotug, an anti-cancer drug that turns the bodies immune system against cancer. Or is supposed to; Nelistotug is build directly upon research done by Smyth, and all the underlying data is faked; the papers have been pulled. GSK is left holding the bag on this one, because they have invested so much into bringing the drug to market and starting human trials. The trials are showing that there are no ill-effects from the drug, because - surprise! - it does nothing. Millions and millions of dollars wasted. Over 42 million dollars has been poured into this fraudsters research, money that other researchers won't see.
Sure, we could prevent publication by the institutions Smyth has worked at... but that would end the careers of so many legitimate researchers, too.
It's a massive problem, and simple solutions unfortunately are not up to the challenge.
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There's a middle ground here. Require institutions that have supported too many fraudulent papers to see external confirmation of results as part of the peer review process before allowing publication, and not from sister-institutions under their own umbrella.
Honestly I wouldn't mind seeing an industry of what are essentially escrow services for this sort of thing. Institutions of what essentially are skeptics who nevertheless will look at testing and/or replicating original research while being disintere
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Peer Review (Score:3)
That's called peer review, and Mark Smyth passed all peer review. Yet he still pumped out fake papers; hundreds of them, polluting scientific knowledge with fake data.
Peer review is not the same as a fraud investigation. When we review papers we start from the assumption that the data in the paper was collected "honestly" i.e. that the researcher accurately reported to the best of their ability what they did and the data they collected. We then look at that data to ensure it looks consistent with what they did and that the method did not contain anything that might cause misleading data. Then we check that the conclusions in the paper are consistent with the data and an
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No, the only way to deal with this is to kill the "publish or perish" treadmill for good. This will kill the absurd market for publications and the problems it creates.
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The same as it always was, peer review. No need to confuse one with the other.
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Re:Time to close the doors? (Score:5, Insightful)
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The only way to deal with this stuff is to ignore the paper mills completely, and allow only places that passed muster have their research considered as legit. If some research institution starts making fraudulent papers, they get their plug pulled.
Basically an accrediting agency. This is probably the only way to deal with this for now. Of course, who watches the watchers, but at least this will close the gates a bit.
This is fine and dandy... but who controls the accreditation agency? We have seen plenty of times in the past where junk science was pushed as part of the dictatorial takeover of Russia, Germany, China, and North Korea. At first, it's to help swing the populace to the side of the rising dictator... but once in power, it's about "the official story" to keep them there. Go against that official story and you could end up in a lot more than hot water.
What needs to be fixed is the lackadaisical peer review p
No way! (Score:2)
Really?
Red Dragon Analogy (Score:3)
Once upon a time there was a turn-based in-browser social video game where you built your kingdom and invaded others. To develop your kingdom you needed many things - land, buildings of specific designations, farmers to provide food, blacksmiths to provide weapons... and scientists. However, the number of scientists you needed was a fraction of a fraction of your entire population. Most people had to labour daily to produce goods and services needed to run and advance your kingdom.
See where I'm going with this?
Re:Red Dragon Analogy (Score:5, Informative)
No, we don't. What did the "scientists" in your game do? Did you, the gamer, know in advance the scientific "discoveries"? Did you decide what gets researched with your godly understanding of how stuff works in the game? If yes, then your analogy is completely pointless, as real discoveries don't work like that.
Re:Red Dragon Analogy (Score:4, Interesting)
Umm, no?
When scientists in the kingdom next valley over came up with better tools, improved weaponry, superior agriculture, and that kingdom's emissaries showed up at your kingdom's gate to parlay, you should have known right then you were boned.
Re:Red Dragon Analogy (Score:5, Funny)
Re: Red Dragon Analogy (Score:3)
For those commenting above, the problem is that we have too many scientists.
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To be fair a world where blacksmiths are prevalent and relevant historically has not been one where scientists are.
In the game had this kingdom gone through an industrial revolution?
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So your conclusion about there being fake scientists publishing fake research is that we have too many real ones?
Too many for what?
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Well if a turn-based in-browser social video game says that, it's good enough for me (typing this on my magic keyboard).
Goodhart's law strikes again (Score:5, Interesting)
First applied in Economics, this states that once something becomes the thing that is measured, it rapidly loses its ability to reflect what is actually going on. Academics are assessed by the number of papers they publish, so of course they are incentivised to produce many but of little quality. Goodhart law suggests that you've got to find something else to measure and stop pretending that the current measurement is adequate.
A possible partial solution lies in scoring more points for the location of the research - Cambridge v Deadwood Community College - and the status of the publication: Nature v National Enquirer. Beyond that: institutions need to be sanctioned for allowing fake papers from their labs; a senior head should roll...
Re:Goodhart's law strikes again (Score:5, Informative)
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quality is measurable (Science Citation Index for example)
This too can be gamed.
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Academics are assessed by the number of papers they publish, [...] Cambridge v Deadwood Community College
By the way... Cambridge is based in the UK, which is evaluated under the rules of the REF, where broadly speaking you get to submit your best 4 papers over the last 5 years. This is not without its problems, but it's better than misplay spamming the world with infinite papers.
As you say, Goodhart's law always applies and there are both interesting and awful ways of gaming the REF which is of course now a
Economics isn't really a science (Score:3)
In real science, the kind of science that made it possible for you to write that comment, the entire point is to understand that we have biases and to do absolutely everything in our power to minimize how those biases affect the results.
That's the real scientific revolution. It's eliminating those biases.
One last thing d
Define 'science' - and be more grateful (Score:2)
The measure of the achievement of economics is the massive growth rate of China for the past 40 years as well as the fact that the events of 2008 resulted in a mild recession not a massive depression. No- economics isn't perfect, but it's vastly better than it was 100 years ago when the Wall Street Crash triggered a painful collapse in the world's economy. Like medicine economics sometimes sees 'deaths', but that's no reason to give up on modern medicine.
I'm not convinced this isn't overblown (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't have the journalistic chops or time to dig into the study but I do know for sure that human beings are fundamentally wasteful creatures and that's okay.
Science is not going to be destroyed by a bunch of bad papers. What's Going to destroy science are the billionaires like Peter thiel spending tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars discrediting it so that they can maintain their power and prestige.
Techno feudalism is going to destroy science.
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Who is John Galt?
Re:I'm not convinced this isn't overblown (Score:5, Informative)
There is a growing push to discredit science...
No there isn't. There is a "growing push" to discredit junk science. You mistake it for real science however because that narrative aligns with your agenda.
And it's way more prevalent than you believe. It's worked it's way into the senior academia at prestigious universities such as Harvard and Duke University.
Just googling the phrase "university professor fake data" gets you a list of scandals from different universities as well as other scientific institutions that got caught faking data for an agenda.
There is very little oversight in the academic fields and the only oversight is from other academics double-checking their peers. And the back scratching and quid-pro-quo has given rise to peer review mills that claim to, but do not publish fake peer reviewed papers.
Which is a whole 'nother issue.
Go watch some professor Dave explains (Score:2)
There's a huge push to bring junk science into the mainstream on a level we haven't seen since the seventies but without the amazing Randy or Carl Sagan to save us.
Just the fact that you are so knee-deep in right-wing propaganda that you would write a comment like that tells me we are probably too far gone. But if you ever decide you're sick of being lied to dapper dinosaur and professor Dave are
And mainstream media is to blame (Score:3)
Lack of journalism standards at all levels the media, especially among the "scientists" quoted in the media.
Stupidity and ragebait gets more clicks than intelligence and reason.
Most people never see this science however (Score:3)
Not sure it is a serious problem (Score:3)
Journal standards are poor (Score:2)
They have always been poor.
Even the best journals do several things poorly. Specifically, they are a) unlikely to publish studies that have a 'negative' result, and b) unlikely to publish debunking studies on the grounds that it is not 'new'.
Repetition and negative results are key parts of science. If you do not publish these kinds of studies, you are not doing science, you are doing PR.
fraudulent (Score:2)
Fraudulent articles about fraudulent scientific papers are increasing.
Is this a problem? (Score:2)
I'm not sure this is a problem. Who reads these papers? The general public doesn't even know these papers exist, and if they tried to read them, they wouldn't understand them. I suppose there are some underinformed journalists who might find a particular paper and sensationalize a misleading conclusion, but that's a problem with the journalist that would still exist even without these low quality papers.
The experts in the field that read research papers aren't fooled by low quality papers. Papers in non
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The Journals can do their job (Score:3)
If journals claim their high fees are needed because they guarantee a high quality and provide the means to find relevant papers, they should at least do that. I mean spamming arxiv is probably not hard, but if Elsevier fails to catch such things they prove once more that they cost more than they are worth.
GOVERNMENTS NEED TO STEP UP (Score:2)
There is no glory in recreating experiments and checking studies unless you find something significantly wrong on a paper that people cared about. This is the foundational work that nobody is interested in doing that governments needs to fund.
Since papers involve real people's names and reputations, having them get discredited in public should be enough... along with obviously verifying identities of submitting humans. Actually, the journals are a big scam that are totally out of date - we should be helpi
Thank god... (Score:1)
...that none of these fraudulent papers got past peer-review.
Peer-review fixes everything.
Right?
let them eat cake (Score:1)
I suppose that's one way to defeat the fraudulent nature of the publish or perish system - just let it degenerate into actual fraud! It's not like the capitalists running the thing actually want you knowing the truth, able to think, or articulate.