I know we’re a forum of people who like to be informed, do our own background reading, follow the latest research.
So I’m posting this just to keep us up to date about a worrying trend that’s threatening to undermine our efforts: the large quantity of fake scientific papers entering academic journals. I’m not talking about the obvious conspiracy theorists and far right nonsense.
I mean fake papers that pose as respectable research by responsible scientists.
You can read more by followingthe link below or explore on the Observer website. Over 10,000 papers had to be retracted last year from academic journals and that’s thought to be the tip of the iceberg.
Quote: “The situation has become appalling,” said Professor Dorothy Bishop of Oxford University. “The level of publishing of fraudulent papers is creating serious problems for science. In many fields it is becoming difficult to build up a cumulative approach to a subject, because we lack a solid foundation of trustworthy findings. And it’s getting worse and worse.”
So let’s all be on our toes, quote our sources and where possible check with known experts in the field. I’m not sure how bad things are in medical journals but assume they are under the same threat. Sorry, this isn’t very jolly. I knew I should keep away from the News!
Written by
Rainfern
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When I clicked on your link, I got a notice that my iPhone was being scanned for viruses. I don't suggest anyone clicking on the link and you might consider removing it.
It was a McAfee scan, probably trying to sell their software. I've gotten this before on bad sites on my PC but never on my iPhone. It could've been coincidental but I thought I should mention it.
It may just be coincidental the because no one else seems to be having the problem,, but they're similar articles in other publications, including the financial times.
Speaking of which here is a quote, which might help us discern what is fake and what is real.
"The German researchers took a different tack, identifying simple “red flag” indicators that do not require detailed examination of the paper itself, such as the use of private rather than institutional email addresses, affiliation with a hospital rather than university and lack of international co-authors. "
A big thanks for bringing this to our attention. It's really mind-boggling.
Another clue is that most of these papers are being published in China, but not all.
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Yes, I can understand this and it would be impossible for admin to police every link, especially in the light of the alarming quantity of fake research!
This is quite shocking. I thought scientific papers (and other academic papers) had to be peer reviewed before they were published in reputable journals. Thanks so much for bringing it to our attention
Another thing to check out is ‘fake’ journals, that can look amazingly like the proper peer-reviewed publications. I can’t remember all the details, but I did come across one that shocked me once.
A good way to avoid that is to use PubMed rather than just Google - though I can be quite lazy about doing that myself.
Not fake articles in reputable journals - sadly. But, unless it has changed since my days in medical libraries, it has a list of journals indexed. So that if it’s a proper peer reviewed journal it should be indexed by the National Library of Medicine.
A couple of years ago I came across something that looked dodgy, and the journal wasn’t indexed. Yet it looked convincing.
At least using something like PubMed will cut out some of the dodgy things, but it’s never foolproof. After all the MMR article by Andrew Wakefield was published in the Lancet - a good few years ago now. It was retracted, but still did a lot of damage.
I get at least 2 invitations a week to write a paper for some journal or another, or present a keynote at a conference entirely unrelated to my field. All bogus.
I agree it is very alarming. It is far too easy to see an apparently academic paper and take it as fact and well researched and evidenced. Quite often the research base is only mentioned in the small print and things are based on very limited groups of people, but it should be hoped that those publishing papers should use far more discrimination and their own 'peer review'.
I have become a lot more skeptical of research papers over the last few years anyway. It seems to me that the another part of the problem is that all doctors and nurses are encouraged to engage in research - according to the GMC -
When doctors and other healthcare professionals engage with research opportunities as part of their clinical work, there are demonstrable benefits to individual patients, patient care overall, healthcare teams, care organisations, practices and doctors themselves.
Now whilst there is a case for encouraging this, I do think that a lot of this type of research is observational, qualitive rather than pure scientific research. Very useful but not what many people on this site with some sort of scientific background might call research.
Plageurism thrives because medics need to ‘publish’.
And then we have the outright scam advertising which SO many people are taken in by - one quite recently on buying some sort of wand with vibrational qualities and people really believe that this is genuine just because it has been ‘researched’.
Inaccurate journalistic reporting and headlines, government and political directives ‘to follow the science’ without any knowledge or understanding of ‘the’ science and who clutch onto segments of discussion which suit their own political ambitions.
In The Death of Science the authors give numerous examples of specious argument and what they call ‘Inverted Syllogism’ in science.
Without an understanding of science what hope the general public?
we want to rely on multi centre, multi year, peer reviewed articles in reputable journals. I use research papers a lot, I find observational or single site interesting but they certainly don’t have the same influence as larger scale research. For me it’s an important part of my understanding that I definitely won’t be reducing, we just need to be sensible how we use them.
The press certainly don’t seem to know the difference which is why one year we are told eggs are bad for us the next year they are good!
This is not surprising and has been going on for years. Part of the problem has been the " privatisation " of science and the the emphasis on "performance". In the dim and distant past scientific research and universities received far more government money and scientists were not under as much pressure to publish . There were some who would spend long parts of their careers without having anything that they considered worth publishing and which did not have much in the way of a practical application . No longer - they have to get grant money to continue their research and if their research is going to upset powerful industrial interests not only is it almost impossible to get it their university will throw them under the bus too. A good example of this is Chris Exley at Keele Uni. Medical research is one of the areas most badly affected and former editors of the most prestigious journals on the planet -the BMJ , the NEJM and the Lancet have written about corruption in medical publishing as far back as a decade ago. So it's not just the smaller or even "fake" sites that are involved. Peer review is seriously degraded too. Which is why there are so many retractions. If the peer reviewers had done their job correctly the papers would not have been published.
I guess this is the same in all disciplines, not only science . Just the term “discipline”seems rather quaint and old-fashioned in the light of all this mess!
This is also why it's very important not to just copy and paste an article here -- or parts of an article-- like some have been doing, without any type of source citation, if you are not able to post a link,
That way, we have the opportunity to check the source, the study, the authors and their affiliations.
Thanks Redfern for posting this. Interesting much of the research on Hypothyroidism is based on very small numbers of patients......and this research is used to advise our doctors on what they may and may not do or prescribe. Clearly 'research' needs to be far more carefully regulated.
I just want to add how much I appreciate the amount of academic minds we have on this forum. I was never a scientist, and pointing out this article on fake research has opened out big gaps in my own knowledge which you kind seekers of truth have helped fill.
That’s alarming! I do subscribe to JAMA network-I receive their cardiology,general and psychiatry newsletters. The articles appear to be legit but who knows?!
I have just read the article, it is scary!! The Guardian works fine here, I read it everyday…
There is one university now who has accepted if they set an assignment they are more than likely to be inundated with AI look alikes so changed the premise - give students an AI generated essay and ask students to analyse and define the inaccuracies and lack of logic in argument. Way to go!
I’ve played with Chatbot briefly and had a conversation about gun control. What came back was super bland, centre-right ethics, not a jot of feeling one way or another, morally defunct and a bit like the art AI produces, clever and soul-less. But polite, of course!
A point well raised. I have read enough about the financing of research and publishing of results in once respected journals that I now take most with a pinch of salt.
I am glad to see this discussion and some people who have real experience of this recently. I started a PhD years ago that moved from a technical focus to a social science one. I realised that was quite a different ball game to physics and mathematical modelling. I am very interested in this area, but rather out of date. I didn’t get a PhD but moved into computing related research, including vision and AI.
I believe we need to be more aware of the multifaceted nature of Truth, even when focusing on Science. Certainly Integrity is one important part of that. Medical science is hard to do good research in, double blind trials are good, but often not feasible, as is often the case in the social sciences.
The huge increase in computing power, connectivity and AI is seriously challenging some ideas about what Gold standard science looks like. The serious temptation to pervert science that many organisations, especially commercial ones, have is a serious problem for their employees as well. I think most of the time we are at Bronze level science, especially outside of physics and chemistry type science ( the classic ‘hard’ sciences)
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