It's also still a business

[MarionP]

Just a reminder why you can't just read a summary or actual article, or many, and take as whole cloth. Take a look. retractionwatch.com weekend reader

[Hanger112]

I don't know what you're referring to.

😐

[Godiv in reply to Hanger112]

It’s a blog that lists scientific papers that have been retracted. Papers that turned out to be untrue or just wrong. It’s a good resource since all of us are always looking at studies and scientific papers.

[Godiv]

That’s amazing, Marion. Thank you. I didn’t know that existed.

[MarionP]

It's called the publishing industry, part of the research industry, which is a critical medium, for developing and distributing, and filtering, scientific information, and it is as flawed as any other for-profit industry, including paper mills (think puppy mills), self-policing, and questionable, absent, or outright phony peer review, nestled in among the legitimate and higher quality journals.

Today many people read journal abstracts and whole articles without having any clue as to whether they are a reading something real or made up and fabricated or adulterated in some way. I put this out about once a year to help people learn that you cannot simply believe what you read, because when you do uncritically, what you see is all you can know, and what you don't see and aren't shown can hurt you.

There are other features of the publishing business having more to do with the academic and commercial research fields themselves, such as the bias toward publishing positive results rather than negative or inconclusive results.

The point here is also that, like any business, the business of research and publishing has to make a profit in order to operate, and thus, significant competitive and business pressures exist to turn that profit, and can include shortcuts, unethical directions, and anything else that might tempt operators to bias the process toward the bottom line. Negative results and inconsistent or inconclusive results are often believed to carry a financial penalty, and therefore may be discouraged or suppressed. The thing to remember everywhere is it's a business, and baby always needs a new pair of shoes...everybody's gotta eat, feed ambitions, all that.

I donate to this nonprofit group regularly. Have some fun, sign up for the email service, poke around on the website, read a few articles and delve into some of the other features as you might care to, enjoy yourself have a little fun and learn.