
Tumor Biology retracting 107 papers after authors faked peer review process - MR4D
https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04/107-cancer-papers-retracted-due-to-peer-review-fraud/
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trendia
> “When a lot of the fake peer reviews first came up, one of the reasons the
> editors spotted them was that the reviewers responded on time,” Wager told
> Ars. Reviewers almost always have to be chased, so “this was the red flag.
> And in a few cases, both the reviews would pop up within a few minutes of
> each other.”

I have submitted late peer reviews before and felt really guilty about it. But
with this new information I should be _proud_ about my late reviews -- it
helped make the fake reviews stand out!

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cies
Now it is interesting to see which paper were fraudulent. Sponsored by
industry or not? Specific authors, for specific institutions? Particular kinds
of research?

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jhbadger
The point of peer review isn't primarily about finding fraud, which is rare,
but about finding errors in reasoning by the authors, lack of needed
experimental controls, faulty statistical analysis and so on. The retracted
papers aren't necessarily fraudulent in a malicious way, but by circumventing
the peer review process as the authors did, it is hard to judge the merits of
the papers -- they might be great papers or they might be crap.

~~~
cup
>The point of peer review isn't primarily about finding fraud, which is rare.

Rare? Scientific misconduct is rampant. It seems like theres a new professor
every day being caught out on retraction watch.

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jhbadger
That's like thinking crime is rampant given that every time you look at a
tabloid newspaper there's a story about some robbery or murder. You have to do
the math and realize that even if every story is true they still are very rare
occurrences given the number of people in the community (physical or
scientific)

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LeeHwang
Good point, but scientific papers can have larger ramifications in social
policy,funding allocation(billions of tax dollars), even daily public life
(food guidelines).

It's also far more important for science to keep its hands clean because fair
or not its public relations is important. In our high technological society,
we cannot allow people to lose faith in the scientific process, It would be a
global disaster.

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jonathansizz
Journals are already under fire for privatizing publicly-funded research. They
justify their existence by claiming to hold the research they publish to the
highest standard, primarily through the peer-review process.

That this journal has now repeatedly failed in the most basic standard of
quality control leaves it with zero credibility, and it therefore should
immediately be shut down.

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weberc2
> That this journal has now repeatedly failed in the most basic standard of
> quality control leaves it with zero credibility, and it therefore should
> immediately be shut down.

Whatever your thoughts on journals, I don't think that follows logically.

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jaclaz
From time to time a quick visit to retractionwatch.com is a good way to
understand how often Research papers have issues, from very minor ones up to
something so big that it seems impossible that the article managed to be
published at all.

It is really sad how diffused are let's say less-than-fully-ethical practices
among scientists (even if of course the cheaters are a minority).

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jvilalta
Shouldn't at least the authors and the sponsors be named? Have their names and
info posted online? A blacklist of shady researchers and their associates
would perhaps deter some of the fraud.

