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

[G_j]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/27/fabricated-peer-reviews-prompt-scientific-journal-to-retract-43-papers-systematic-scheme-may-affect-other-journals/

By Fred Barbash March 27

A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews amid signs of a broader fake peer review racket affecting many more publications.

The publisher is BioMed Central, based in the United Kingdom, which puts out 277 peer-reviewed journals. A partial list of the retracted articles suggests most of them were written by scholars at universities in China, including China Medical University, Sichuan University, Shandong University and Jiaotong University Medical School. But Jigisha Patel, associate editorial director for research integrity at BioMed Central, said it’s not “a China problem. We get a lot of robust research of China. We see this as a broader problem of how scientists are judged.”

Meanwhile, the Committee on Publication Ethics, a multidisciplinary group that includes more than 9,000 journal editors, issued a statement suggesting a much broader potential problem. The committee, it said, “has become aware of systematic, inappropriate attempts to manipulate the peer review processes of several journals across different publishers.” Those journals are now reviewing manuscripts to determine how many may need to be retracted, it said.

Peer review is the vetting process designed to guarantee the integrity of scholarly articles by having experts read them and approve or disapprove them for publication. With researchers increasingly desperate for recognition, citations and professional advancement, the whole peer-review system has come under scrutiny in recent years for a host of flaws and irregularities, ranging from lackadaisical reviewing to cronyism to outright fraud.

...more...

[Dont call me Shirley]

1. These fake scientific papers are simply a method used to muddy the real scientific waters.

Look at who is to gain financially from muddying the waters chemical, gmo, pharmaceutical, oil, coal corporations.

[jeff47]

3. Yeah, remember how much money Wakefield got from chemical, GMO, pharmaceutical, oil and coal?

We was utterly awash in his $0 from those industries.

Just because it wasn't funded by "big money" does not mean it isn't fraudulent. All papers need real review, and real efforts to replicate the results before being taken as "true".

[Buzz Clik]

11. In the context of the OP, your comments are nonsense.

This is an important issue not the place for knee-jerk injections of ignorance.

[cab67]

12. Possibly partly true, but probably not the primary reason it happens.

We scientists (in academic settings, anyway) are judged in large measure by our productivity, and peer-reviewed publications are the primary means of assessing it. The more papers you publish, the more secure your job is. Promotions and raises are based on them.

I strongly suspect most of these "papers" were intended to pad CV's and not actually mislead anyone about the science itself.

[Dont call me Shirley]

23. I understand this, I worked with scientists. Writing grants and publishing research is how most

researchers obtain funding. With the infusion of "Koch money" our academic intuitions are being swayed to produce the results the "Koch money" wants. I stand by my comment. Control over which scientific literature is published is the new "fight".

[cab67]

29. I've never encountered such pressure,

and neither has any other scientist I know. And many of them work on climate change. Our funding usually comes from federal (NSF, NASA, NIH, etc.) sources or foundations that, in my experience, just don't try to sway the results.

Corporate funding is another matter - but most of us don't seek it.

Cases of university administrators trying to influence the research of their faculty are very, very rare. It just doesn't happen.

I'm not saying the infusion of corporate money is necessarily a good thing - only that the fear of such funding driving the scientific community toward or away from certain conclusions is overblown.

[Dont call me Shirley]

31. The corporate infusion of money into academic research will only increase just as it has into our

political system.

[cab67]

33. Maybe -

but it's got a long way to go. Getting a professor (of any field) to keep quiet or say something contrary to his or her results is very, very difficult. We don't tolerate it, and administrators (many of whom were themselves professors) rarely (if ever) intervene on behalf of external pressure.

The biggest danger we face is the demolition of the tenure system, and this could indeed promote corporate influence on research. But this, I think, has less to do with influencing research and more to do with cost cutting - PhDs brought in as lecturers are paid less and teach a whole lot more. They usually don't have enough time for research.

[Dont call me Shirley]

35. If scientists don't start taking steps now to stop this privatization of academic research

it will avalanche beyond your collective ability to stop. Just look at the various areas of our commons which have been privatized over the past 35 years. All of it will be privatized except the losses, those will socialized.

[HuckleB]

18. You might want to look at the list of studies in question.

That might lead to change your claim.

http://www.biomedcentral.com/search/results?drpField1=&txtSearch1=&drpPhrase1=&drpField2=[TI]&txtSearch2=retraction&drpPhrase2=&drpField3=[AU]&txtSearch3=&drpPhrase3=&drpField4=&txtSearch4=&drpPhrase4=&excludeField1=&excludeSearchText1=&excludePhrase1=&drpAddedInLast=7&drpFromDate=&drpToDate=&drpOrderBy=by+date&itemsPerPage=100&portal_id=9001&search-button=Search

http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/08/sage-publications-busts-peer-review-and-citation-ring-60-papers-retracted/

[cab67]

30. It doesn't.

These are nearly all in low-tier journals and look like the standard attempts to shingle - to essentially publish the same article multiple times with very little modification. CV padding is almost certainly the primary reason it's happening.

[cab67]

2. as a scientist who's been an author, reviewer, and editor in the peer-review system -

this is very troubling.

I've always borrowed from Winston Churchill when describing peer review - it's the worst possible way to assess the quality and impact of a scientific paper, except for the others that have been tried from time to time.

[Duppers]

4. China--it's not surprising.

Last edited Fri Mar 27, 2015, 02:11 PM - Edit history (1)

The Chinese scientists also put people on papers for purely political reasons, a fact known by many American researchers. They have little integrity.

[Buzz Clik]

13. ? That's a pretty broad brush. You have some way of backing that up, right?

[Buzz Clik]

37. Is this a "says you!" moment?

What statement do I need to back up?

[cab67]

15. Not just in China.

It happens everywhere, though admittedly with greater frequency in some places (including China).

"Political reasons" is a broad gray zone of actions. I've had coauthors I never met. They may have been in charge of some sort of government agency responsible for whatever permits were needed in the country where samples were collected, for example.

[Curmudgeoness]

5. As if there isn't enough problem with people believing scientific evidence.

This is the sort of thing that can hurt ethical scientists for years to come. In the future, the deniers will be pointing to this as an example of why "we cannot trust science". Truly sad.

[Trillo]

9. Except for a very small minority of folks, this likely will have the opposite effect,

that of increasing confidence in scientific information.

[Buzz Clik]

14. Maybe. The fact that the journals are willing to purge bullshit is heartening.

The fact that it was so easy to publish bullshit suggests that there are more cockroaches that we don't see.

[HuckleB]

22. +1

[Curmudgeoness]

28. I wish I was that optimistic.

I do suppose that it is how it is spun and who used this. I agree that it SHOULD increase confidence because they were willing to retract the flawed info, but many people can be convinced that there is a lot more out there that was not retracted.

I used to think that it was a very small minority who had Tea Party opinions too, but IRL, I find that many people I talk to spout that shit. I am not confident that the majority are rational anymore.

[Trillo]

6. Seems to be a lot of gene or DNA related articles, not a preponderance, but a lot of them.

All the retractions seem medical in origin. Why would this kind of fraud be limited to one discipline?

[angrychair]

7. thats easy

Big Pharm and Big Med...trying to beat each to the the punch and squeeze as many dollars out of their "bottle of snake oil" as they can before moving on to the next money-making scheme.

[Maedhros]

10. Yes, it's less likely that we would see this kind of scandal

with the Journal of Invertebrate Paleontology, for example.

[cab67]

17. Actually,

the primary journal for invertebrate paleontologists is Journal of Paleontology; there's no Journal of Invertebrate Paleontology.

And it actually happened. Look up Viswa Jit Gupta.

[Maedhros]

24. Less likely, not impossible. [n/t]

[cab67]

32. It's more common in the biomed field for demographic reasons.

THere are many more people in the biomedical field than in paleontology, invertebrate or otherwise.

[Maedhros]

34. There is much money to be made from biomed research,

and none to be made from paleontology.

[Buzz Clik]

19. That's assuming that money is motivating factor.

I absolutely guarantee you that some invertebrate paleontologists have benefited from scant or non-existent peer review sometime in their careers.

Often, the journals themselves are to blame. They get overwhelmed by dozens or hundreds of submissions and a growing reluctance to review papers, and the associate editors are pressured to accept (or reject) papers lacking a credible review.

[hunter]

38. The "publish or perish" mentality plays a big part too.

For both the authors and the journals themselves.

There are some positives in our hyper-competitive international society, but the negatives are beginning to outweigh those, everything from fraudulent journal articles to airline pilots crashing planes into mountains.

[HuckleB]

16. That statement doesn't wash with the actual of studies in question.

What gives?



http://retractionwatch.com/2014/07/08/sage-publications-busts-peer-review-and-citation-ring-60-papers-retracted/

http://www.biomedcentral.com/search/results?drpField1=&txtSearch1=&drpPhrase1=&drpField2=[TI]&txtSearch2=retraction&drpPhrase2=&drpField3=[AU]&txtSearch3=&drpPhrase3=&drpField4=&txtSearch4=&drpPhrase4=&excludeField1=&excludeSearchText1=&excludePhrase1=&drpAddedInLast=7&drpFromDate=&drpToDate=&drpOrderBy=by+date&itemsPerPage=100&portal_id=9001&search-button=Search

[Trillo]

25. The link I was referring to was in the OP's article.

Click on the link in the excerpt below to see the list of retractions.

The BioMed Central list of retracted articles so far identifies 38 of the 43 published papers. They all have highly technical names and topics, such as “Pathological dislocation of the hip due to coxotuberculosis in children” and “A meta-analysis of external fixator versus intramedullary nails for open tibial fracture fixation.”

Your list seems to be related to the topic of scientific fraud generally, but is not referenced in this article. Your list is composed primarily of articles of interest to the Journal of Vibration and Control.

[HuckleB]

26. It's also in my post.

[Trillo]

27. I noticed you edited your post, or I was mistaken.

Goodbye.

[pnwmom]

8. This is sickening. n/t

[Buzz Clik]

21. This is a rock that journals have not been keen to turn over.

They will discover a system that, in some areas and some journals, is in a state of decay.