
US scientists significantly more likely to publish fake research, study finds - J3L2404
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101115210944.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Latest+Science+News%29
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patio11
The glib response is "US scientists significantly more likely to _get caught_
". (In related news, New York City's arrest rate for murder is likely higher
than Kabul's.)

But, given that there is no attempt to adjust the numbers for the US'
disproportionate representation in the universe of all published papers, even
the glib response isn't correct.

~~~
dsplittgerber
The source says that 33% of withdrawn papers by US first authors were
attributed to fraud, while only 25% of withdrawn papers by Asian first authors
were attributed to it. So, US first authors are - comparing race cohorts -
more likely to publish fake results, are they not (disregarding the fact that
there is no possible measure of how likely it is to get caught)?

I agree, though, that the finding is pretty much useless.

Great article in The Atlantic btw - "Lies, damned lies, and medical science"
[http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-
dam...](http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-
and-medical-science/8269/)

~~~
tbrownaw
33% of retracted papers were from the US.

30% of retracted papers were from "Asian nations".

The UK, India, China, and Japan each had over 5% of the retracted papers.

33% of retracted US papers were fraudulent. So 67% of their retracted papers
were erroneous.

25% of retracted ... is this Asian, or UK/India/China/Japan? papers were
fraudulent. So 75% of their retracted papers were erroneous.

How does the percentage of US papers that were retracted, compare the the
percentages for other countries (it has number of retracted papers, but not
number of non-retracted)? This is necessary to compare the overall percentages
of fraudulent/erroneous papers; what I see in the article could mean that US
researchers are less likely to make mistakes and equally (or less, even)
likely to commit fraud; it doesn't _necesasrily_ mean that US researchers
commit more fraud (or make less mistakes).

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dennyabraham
The title is misleading. The abstract of the cited paper
<http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2010/10/18/jme.2010.038125> says that
retracted papers from the US published in PubMed had a higher ratio fraudulent
to erroneous retractions than those of other nations. Given that the study
targets English language publications only and that its results showed that
groups of repeat offenders are responsible for the majority of fraudulent
retractions, global statements about the likelihood of fake research
originating from US scientists cannot be accurately drawn.

~~~
raphman
Additionally, the higher fraud/error ratio might actually mean that US
scientists make less methodological errors than other scientists.

It should also be noted that PubMed only covers a small, non-representative
part of the entire research landscape.

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spokey
If I'm using it right, it looks like more than 7.5 million papers were
submitted to PubMed in this 10 year period. Only 0.01% of all papers were
retracted and only 0.003% were retracted due to "fraud". This seems like an
exceedingly small sample. I wish we could see more of the raw analysis
(p-scores and the like).

I think the other result was more interesting: 53% of "faked" research papers
were submitted by "repeat offenders", while only 18% of "erroneous" papers
were. If you do this once it seems you are likely to do this again.

BTW, the abstract is at
<http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2010/10/18/jme.2010.038125>

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tokenadult
Even if a primary research study (such as the one mentioned in the link
submitted here) is conducted without deliberate fraud, it may not be
meaningful and may not even be true.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

To be convinced that the headline statement "US Scientists Significantly More
Likely to Publish Fake Research" is true, I would go through Peter Norvig's
checklist above, and see how many methodological issues may have been missed
by the reported study. Then I would wait for a follow-up study by an
independent researcher, preferably with different methodology and definitely
based on a different data set. Right now, I have no idea whether or not there
are national differences in rates of publication of fake research.

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jdp23
one result that seems interesting: "Roughly 53% of fraudulent papers were
written by a first author who had written other retracted papers (‘repeat
offender’), whereas only 18% of erroneous papers were written by a repeat
offender."

~~~
ahi
cheaters cheat, but everyone can make a mistake.

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thetable
Note that the study was written by an American.

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laskito
And I'm more likely to ignore useless studies.

