How much research is fraudulent?

Discussion in 'Science' started by Jack Hays, Jul 11, 2021.

  1. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Oh,please.

    There was nothing even slightly opaque about what I posted.

    If something confused you, then ask.
     
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  2. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    I have no idea what "prooting" is, and I don't see the point of adding & dividing papers, or whatever. It seemed like a rant.
     
    Last edited: Dec 7, 2021
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  3. Hoosier8

    Hoosier8 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    They are required to churn them out so often are not very good.
     
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  4. Hoosier8

    Hoosier8 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You can actually find peer review papers on this problem.

    A group went out to prove how bad peer review was by creating machine generated nonsense papers using phraseology used in them and some passed peer review.
     
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  5. Polydectes

    Polydectes Well-Known Member

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    Academic world is publish or parish. So a lot of it is people trying to hold on to their jobs.
     
  6. Hoosier8

    Hoosier8 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Exactly.
     
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  7. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Typo: Was supposed to be "promoting". You aren't actually promoting the improvements in process that Dr. Curry advocates.

    The reason for the division is that if you add up all the papers you complain about and then divide by the number of published papers it turns out you are complaining about ZERO percent of papers.

    I don't argue that there are papers that should not have passed review. Of course there are. And, Dr. Curry even argues that MORE questionable papers should be allowed - for example by creating a standard mechanism for airing papers that haven't been reviewed and are significantly contrarian to the point of being highly doubtful.

    But, you aren't promoting improvements in methodology. You're just using your miniscule sample to promote that science can not be seen as a valid source of information and that your contrarian views are actually correct.
     
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  8. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    That is a false statement.
     
  9. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Here's a sign of healthy ferment and vigilance in the scientific community.
    Researchers sound alarm on ‘predatory’ rankings
    [​IMG]

    Hey, researchers and universities, want to be included in a new ranking scheme? No problem, just pony up some cash.

    Tanvir Ahmed, a postdoc at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, says this year has seen a rise in news stories— for example from Bangladesh, Kashmir, and Nigeria — reporting so-called predatory rankings. These come to light due to the lack of knowledge about rankings at universities and the media in certain countries, he says.

    Ahmed is referring to AD Scientific Index, which charges $30 USD for an individual researcher to be included in the ranking and an unspecified sum for institutions wishing to be ranked.

    Continue reading
     
  10. Moi621

    Moi621 Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Funding needs to be anonymous for
    HONEST science.

    I have witnessed 2 V.A. sites altering
    results to support a pharmaceutical company
    "study".


    Moi
    :oldman: M.D., ret.




    canada_pirate.png
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2021
  11. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    Let's say I want to be ranked, so I send them $30. (Not likely, as I'm an engineer, not a scientists.)

    So, I give them all my publications, etc., according to their web site.

    But, I don't see the criteria by which I might actually be ranked.

    Is the issue here simply that these people want my $30 just to be listed on one more of the many many lists of scientists?

    That does sound scammish. But, I don't see how it corrupts science.

    But, again I don't see their method of ranking.
     
  12. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    ". . . “This is clearly a money-making scheme,” concludes Kyle Siler, a meta-science researcher at the University of Montreal in Quebec, Canada, who has previously written about predatory publishing. “This is a new innovation in predation.”

    Whenever such rankings are published, some researchers tend to make a big deal out of them, says Saleh Naqib, a physicist at the University of Rajshahi in Bangladesh. These rankings have been widely reported in newspapers and promoted extensively on social media, adds Naqib, who completed his doctorate at the University of Cambridge, UK.

    Naqib says rankings become the primary focus in places that don’t have a mature research culture or a strong focus on ethical research. “If you don’t really understand bibliographic indices then you are in trouble,” he said. . . ."
     
  13. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Nope! I agree with willreadmore. The minuscule number of papers you have identified do not affect the overall validity of the entire body of science. Even I’df they are allowed to stand they do not affect outcomes because outcomes are decided on poooled data from multiple sources
     
  14. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Recently? A lot of this has changed after the VIOXX disaster.
     
  15. Bowerbird

    Bowerbird Well-Known Member

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    Which has ZERO standing in the scientific community and is essentially a scam. Does the existence of scams make the banking industry suspect?

    Rankings are actually the bugbear of the incompetent - those who lazily post dodgy “scientific’ papers in suspect journals - articles that validate a certain world view. And there are valid ranking metrics

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_ranking

    In fact most of the scamming seems to be coming from the denialist side - not truly surprising given the amount of money funding denial
    https://www.theguardian.com/environ...e-journals-a-new-frontier-for-climate-deniers
     
  16. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    This does look like a money making gimmick.

    But, you presented this as a knock on science.

    I don't see any way for this to affect scientific research.
     
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  17. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Whatever you say.
    Retraction Watch – Tracking retractions as a window into the ...
    https://retractionwatch.com


    There are now more than 31,000 retractions in our database — which now powers retraction alerts in EndNote, Papers, and Zotero. And have you seen our ...
    Retraction Watch Database User Guide · ‎The Retraction Watch Leaderboard · ‎FAQs
     
  18. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    You should be able to discuss the question without taking a "side."
     
  19. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Not presented as a knock on science. Presented as part of the defense of science. Your partisanship has overmastered your judgment.
     
  20. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    This is in opposition to any point YOU are trying to make.

    What it shows is that there IS policing going on.

    And, the numbers of cases reported here is just pathetic compared to the size of science.

    So, they found 31 individuals who do a crappy job! I'm glad they are found, of course.

    But once again, you need to divide that number by the number of scientists to get any kind of fair reading on the problem you are trying to promote as endemic.

    And, I think you will find that the result of that division is ... ZERO percent!
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2021
  21. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    Retraction Watch was founded with a MacArthur "genius grant" in response to what has been termed the "replication crisis" in science. That struggle continues.
    A New Replication Crisis: Research that is Less Likely to be ...
    https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu › pressrelease › a-new-replica...


    May 21, 2021 — Published in Science Advances, the paper explores the ongoing “replication crisis” in which researchers have discovered that many findings ...
     
  22. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    This is a well know problem in the field of social sciences. Prominent scientists have pointed this out concerning THEIR OWN WORK! The scientists in these areas absolutely DO care about the validity of their results.

    One big problem in the social sciences is that serious controls are far less possible than is the case in the hard sciences.

    While work is done on improving the scientific approach to social science issues, we need to be taking action, too.

    And, that action has to do with how WE consume science.

    We need to be looking for confirmations and being careful concerning issues such as review process.

    That means that single studies can not be considered more than possible areas of further investigation - causing us to consider what other scientists think about the issue, for example.

    It also means that unreviewed and unpublished papers need to be given far less credence. And, the same goes for papers reviewed or published by organizations that have little or poor track record.

    It means that the claims we see in the media concerning results in science need to be verified by actually tracing to the referenced paper, because science reporting is a mixed bag.

    And, while the issue in your cite is mostly about the soft sciences, one needs to take similar care with the hard sciences of physics, chemistry and biology.
     
  23. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    ". . . Serra-Garcia and Gneezy analyzed data from three influential replication projects which tried to systematically replicate the findings in top psychology, economic and general science journals (Nature and Science). In psychology, only 39 percent of the 100 experiments successfully replicated. In economics, 61 percent of the 18 studies replicated as did 62 percent of the 21 studies published in Nature/Science. . . . "
     
  24. WillReadmore

    WillReadmore Well-Known Member

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    What's your point?

    Did you fail to notice that I fully agreed that the problem DOES exist?

    How come you ignored the rest of my post, involving what this means for how we need to improve how we consume science???
     
  25. Jack Hays

    Jack Hays Well-Known Member Donor

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    The point is to discuss the thread title.
     
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