[SEE THAT BLOG <HERE>]
AT THE TIME, ONLY A FEW HAD COME OUT VERY PUBLICLY TO ADMIT THE FALLIBILITY OF SUCH STUDIES AND JOURNALS, BUT THE ONES WHO DID SO HAD SHONE A LIGHT ON THE EASE OF TRICKERY, HOW SIMPLE IT IS TO "FOOL SOME OF THE PEOPLE ALL OF THE TIME", AND BRAVELY SHOWED US THE FACTS.
TODAY, AFTER A FEW DAYS OF "MEDIA STORM" ANOTHER SUCH STUDY BIT THE DUST IN A VERY BIG WAY, AND NOW SEEMS LIKE EVERYONE IS JUMPING ON THE BANDWAGON TO EXPOSE PEER REVIEW AS QUESTIONABLE, TO SAY THE LEAST.
IVAN ORANSKY OF 'RETRACTION WATCH' SAID TO CBS NEWS:
"If this story, because [of] the amount of attention it's getting, helps reporters, in particular, to think twice about covering the latest study that sounds a bit too good to be true, the whole kerfuffle -- whatever the downsides of it are -- [it] has accomplished something."
He estimates there are at least 500 retractions a year, up more than tenfold since 2001. Stunningly, about two-thirds of these retractions are due to misconduct on the part of the researchers, including faking data and plagiarism. That averages out to one retraction a day attributable to dishonest reporting by scientists.
And, Oransky pointed out, that's only the ones who get caught.
"The number of people who are convicted of a crime does not necessarily reflect the number of people who have committed a crime," he told CBS News.
In an op-ed in The New York Times Friday, Oransky and Marcus wrote, "Retractions can be good things, since even scientists often fail to acknowledge their mistakes, preferring instead to allow erroneous findings simply to wither away in the back alleys of unreproducible literature. But they don't surprise those of us who are familiar with how science works; we're surprised only that retractions aren't even more frequent."
The latest controversy began in December, when a political science graduate student at the University of California, Los Angeles, named Michael LaCour published a study in the prestigious journal Science that found that gay canvassers were more effective than straight pollsters in effecting long-term change in voters' opinions on gay marriage.
Last week, two researchers hoping to replicate his findings unearthed inconsistencies in LaCour's study that cast doubt on his methods. In light of their investigation, LaCour's coauthor, Columbia University professor Donald P. Green, wrote to Science requesting a retraction.
"Michael LaCour's failure to produce the raw data coupled with the other concerns noted above undermines the credibility of the findings," he wrote. "I am deeply embarrassed by this turn of events and apologize to the editors, reviewers, and readers of Science."
That day, Science published a so-called "expression of concern," something Oransky said journals do not do lightly.
It said, in part: "Science is urgently working toward the appropriate resolution, while ensuring that a fair process is followed. In the meantime, Science is publishing this Editorial Expression of Concern to alert our readers to the fact that serious questions have been raised about the validity of findings in the LaCour and Green paper."
Speaking about [the} impending retraction decision, Oransky said, "We should be concerned about this and it should force us to think about the incentives that scientists are working under and whether or not peer review is equipped to pick up misconduct and fraud."NO, NO IT IS NOT EQUIPPED TO PICK UP FRAUD.
ONLY WHEN OTHERS TRY TO REPLICATE A STUDY CAN SUCH FALLACIES, SUCH MANIPULATIONS AND OUTRIGHT LIES BE TRULY UNCOVERED.
BY REPEATED STUDIES, ALL STUDIES CAN BE VERIFIED OR DISPROVEN.
TO TAKE JUST ONE STUDY AS FACT IS INHERENTLY STUPID OF ANYONE WHO DOES SO.
"THE JOURNAL SCIENCE" IS NO EXCEPTION.
AS I SAID IN THE PREVIOUS BLOG, I COULD "CREATE" A STUDY THAT SHOWS PIGS CAN FLY AND CONVINCE THE MASSES IT'S TRUE!
AT LEAST, UNTIL OTHERS TRY IT AND SHOW ME TO BE A FRAUD.
THEN AGAIN, MAYBE A COHORT, A "PARTNER IN CRIME" WILL SWEAR HE/SHE REPLICATED MY "FINDINGS", AND, TOGETHER, WE SCAM THE WHOLE WORLD!
AND MAYBE MANY OF LIKE MINDS WOULD ALSO VOW THEY, TOO, DUPLICATED EVERY STEP OF MY STUDY, AND, YES,PIGS CAN FLY!
IT IS AS SIMPLE TO DO AS THAT!
IT HAS ALREADY BEEN DONE MANY TIMES, SOMETIMES TAKING DECADES TO SORT OUT, TO UNCOVER, TO SHOW HOW LUDICROUS A "STUDY" IT WAS!
PEER-REVIEWED...WHICH PEERS?
WHOSE PEERS?
LIKE A CARTOON SHOWED THAT I UPLOADED ON THE OTHER BLOG, THE "PEER" LOOKING AT THE PAPER FROM A DISTANCE, SAYING, "YUP, LOOKS GOOD TO ME!", THAT IS EXACTLY HOW PEER REVIEW WORKS.
AM I SAYING NO PEER-REVIEWED STUDIES ARE VALID?
WHY, YES, YES I AM SAYING THAT, WITH THE QUALIFIER THAN NO STUDY, PERIOD, IS WORTH ITS SALT UNLESS ALMOST ANYONE CAN REPLICATE IT, CONDUCT A SIMILAR STUDY AND FIND THE SAME THINGS.
WE JUST SHOULD NEVER, EVER TAKE ONE SET OF SCIENTISTS' WORD FOR ANYTHING.
"QUESTION EVERYTHING, EVERYONE" SHOULD BE THE ORDER OF THE DAY.
DUPLICATION, REPLICATION, "PLAY IT AGAIN, SAM" AND GET THE SAME RESULTS...NOW WE HAVE A STARTING PLACE.
GO BACK IN A YEAR OR TWO AND TRY AGAIN...
SAME RESULTS?
FANTASTIC!
IF NOT, INVALID, YES?
PEERS CAN ONLY READ, MAYBE THINK A LITTLE.
HOW MANY PEERS SPEND WEEKS, OR EVEN DAYS REVIEWING ANY STUDY?
GLAD YOU ASKED!
IS A PEER REVIEW...
"...somebody pouring [sic] all over the paper, asking for raw data, repeating
analyses, checking all the references, and making detailed suggestions for
improvement?
Such a review is vanishingly rare."
SO, NO, "PEERS" DON'T GENERALLY DO THINGS THAT WAY.
IT'S A QUICK READ, A "HMMMM", THEN BACK TO THE EDITOR...TAAA-DAAA!
"PEER-REVIEWED' ALL DONE!
IRONICALLY, ONE OF 'THE WRITERS AT 'SCIENCE' (MAGAZINE) POINTED THIS
OUT, BEFORE'SCIENCE' (THE JOURNAL) GOT CAUGHT BEING SCAMMED!
THE MUD IS ON THEIR FACES NOW!
"Having an authentic name, representing a real research institution, and offering actual scientific results are apparently not required for publication in many open access journals, Science has found. A completely invented scientist—“Ocorrafoo Cobange”—who worked at a fabricated institution—“the Wassee Institute of Medicine in Asmara”—was able to get the same terribly faked paper accepted for publication in 157 journals. “My hope is that now that we have a map of at least some of the good versus bad journals, scientists can submit their paper to one of the good guys and for the same amount of money get the real deal,” John Bohannon, the Science correspondent who did the investigation, told NPR."
"GOOD VERSUS BAD JOURNALS", IS IT?
THEN SCIENCE (THE JOURNAL) IS A BAD JOURNAL NOW, YES?
YES!
NOT ONE WHIT BETTER THAN THE REST!
HOW MANY FAKE PAPERS HAS GOOD OLD "SCIENCE" PUBLISHED?
HOW CAN WE EVER KNOW?
NOT ALL THE FAKES HAVE BEEN EXPOSED....YET!
BUT, HERE'S THE MOST RECENT FEW, YES, FEW, MORE THAN A COUPLE!
Archive for the ‘science (journal) retractions’ Category
"SCIENCE" IS NOW A "QUESTIONABLE PUBLICATION"!WHO CAN WE TRUST, RIGHT?
"Many of the journals were already flagged by Beall's List, which catalogs questionable publications, but others were present in the Directory of Open Access Journals, which aims to list credible publications.
One example Bohannon highlighted in his report was a journal published by Sage, which was named “the Independent Publishers Guild Academic and Professional Publisher of the Year” in 2012.
“The Sage publication that accepted my bogus paper is the Journal of International Medical Research. Without asking for any changes to the paper's scientific content, the journal sent an acceptance letter and an invoice for $3,100,” Bohannon wrote."
RETRACTIONWATCH.COM HAS ASKED FOR A SIMPLE "TRANSPARENCY INDEX" FROM ALL THE "JOURNALS", SOMETHING TO...
"...signal to the scientific community how willing editors and publishers are to share how they make decisions. For example, we write, the index could include:
- The journal’s review protocol, including whether or not its articles are peer-reviewed; the typical number of reviewers, time for review, manuscript acceptance rate, and details of the appeals process
- Whether the journal requires that underlying data are made available
- Whether the journal uses plagiarism detection software and reviews figures for evidence of image manipulation
- The journal’s mechanism for dealing with allegations of errors or misconduct, including whether it investigates such allegations from anonymous whistleblowers
- Whether corrections and retraction notices are as clear as possible, conforming to accepted publishing ethics guidelines such as those from the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) or the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE)
OBVIOUSLY IT IS.
NOBODY IS VOLUTEERING!
No. There are ways to search Medline and the Web of Science for retractions, but there’s no single database.
We’ve been approached about creating one, and would love to take on that project, building on the categorization that we already offer in our right-hand column.
We even have some ideas about how it could pay for itself. But we’d need some help."
I DOUBT THEY'LL GET MUCH HELP BECAUSE THEIR WORK WILL SIMPLY EXPOSE OUR ILLUSTRIOUS SCIENTIFIC AND MEDICAL COMMUNITIES FOR WHAT THEY ARE...SELF-SERVING FOLK WHO JUST WANT TO BE RECOGNIZED, FURTHER THEIR CAREERS, GO DOWN IN 'HISTORY', OR WHATEVER...We’ve been approached about creating one, and would love to take on that project, building on the categorization that we already offer in our right-hand column.
We even have some ideas about how it could pay for itself. But we’d need some help."
AHHHH, FAME...YOU OFTEN ROB US OF HONOR AND TRUTH!
AND FORTUNE, YOU GLITTERY SWINDLER!
YOU, TOO, OFFER US LITTLE OF TRUE SUBSTANCE!
AS I SAID BEFORE, KEEP ASKING ME FOR "PEER-REVIEWED" PAPERS/STUDIES, AND I'LL KEEP LAUGHING AND GIVING THEM TO YOU.
WANT A PEER REVIEW ON FLYING PIGS....ANYONE?
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