"Compromised science" news/opines (includes retractions, declining academic standards, pred-J, etc)

Experts fail to reliably detect AI-generated histological data
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-73913-8

ABSTRACT: AI-based methods to generate images have seen unprecedented advances in recent years challenging both image forensic and human perceptual capabilities. Accordingly, these methods are expected to play an increasingly important role in the fraudulent fabrication of data. This includes images with complicated intrinsic structures such as histological tissue samples, which are harder to forge manually. Here, we use stable diffusion, one of the most recent generative algorithms, to create such a set of artificial histological samples. In a large study with over 800 participants, we study the ability of human subjects to discriminate between these artificial and genuine histological images. Although they perform better than naive participants, we find that even experts fail to reliably identify fabricated data. While participant performance depends on the amount of training data used, even low quantities are sufficient to create convincing images, necessitating methods and policies to detect fabricated data in scientific publications.

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The paper mills helping China commit scientific fraud
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-paper-mills-helping-china-commit-scientific-fraud/

EXCERPTS: This week, the individual prize went to Elisabeth Bik, not a conventional boffin, but a sleuth – a dogged Dutch researcher who abandoned a career at a biomedical start-up for one exposing scientific fraud. [...] She investigates China-based ‘paper mills’ – outfits that churn out fake academic papers to order, manipulating and reusing sections of the same images and passing them off as original research...

[...] On the surface at least, China is well on the way to achieving President Xi Jinping’s goal of becoming a scientific superpower. Since 2017, it has published more scientific papers per year than any other country, while also leading the world in the number of citations, usually regarded as a measure of a paper’s impact. The problem is that much of this research is decidedly dodgy. In its rush for global dominance, the Chinese Communist party (CCP) has sacrificed quality for quantity, enabling large-scale fraud which threatens to undermine trust in the entire process of scientific publication... (MORE - details)

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Stanford professor paid $600/hr for expertise accused of using ChatGPT
https://www.sfgate.com/tech/article/stanford-professor-lying-and-technology-19937258.php

EXCERPT: Hancock cited 15 references in his declaration, mostly research papers related to political deepfakes and their impacts. Two of the 15 sources do not appear to exist. The journals he cites are real, as are some of the two citations’ authors, but journal archives show no sign of either paper.

[...] “The citation bears the hallmarks of being an artificial intelligence (AI) ‘hallucination,’ suggesting that at least the citation was generated by a large language model like ChatGPT,” Bednarz wrote. “Plaintiffs do not know how this hallucination wound up in Hancock’s declaration, but it calls the entire document into question, especially when much of the commentary contains no methodology or analytic logic whatsoever.” (MORE - details)
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Standard Terminology for Peer Review: Where Next?
https://eon.pubpub.org/pub/unohtchr/release/1

EXCERPTS: By way of historical context, although the term ‘peer review’ dates from the 1970s, the concept of consulting learned experts for an opinion on someone’s research has existed for far longer. Readers will doubtless be familiar with the oft-cited criticisms of peer review in the journal context: that it’s outmoded, ineffective, expensive, time-consuming, or any combination of all of these. Criticisms of this nature are hardly new...

[...] One could argue that most such criticisms are levelled at a single, narrow definition of ‘peer review’—typically, single-anonymous and pre-publication—whereas in practice it is far from homogeneous. Double-anonymous review is the most obvious and well-established variation, and in recent years we have witnessed the emergence of new experimental models, facilitated through new technology and largely driven by the push for greater openness, in parallel with the push for open science, open data, and open access.

The recent publication by the Royal Society of 80 volumes of referee reports dating 1832–1954 is itself a vigorous nod towards greater transparency, as well as providing a fascinating historical resource for anyone with more than a passing interest in the development of scientific knowledge. Different types of peer review seek to mitigate, if not eliminate, the weaknesses of the single-anonymized, pre-publication model... (MORE - details)

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Neglect of hidden academic labour ‘bad for science’
https://www.researchprofessionalnew...ct-of-hidden-academic-labour-bad-for-science/

INTRO: The lack of recognition for “hidden” academic labour in South Africa is having dire consequences for the quality of research in the country, a webinar heard this week. Universities overlook activities such as peer review and journal editing when they hire or promote researchers, said Keyan Tomaselli, an emeritus communication studies professor.

Instead, he noted, institutions reward academics for publishing—a practice driven by the publication subsidy the country’s higher education department pays institutions for articles published in accredited journals. Some scientists even have yearly publishing quotas. “The quota system must be thrown out the window,” Tomaselli said. “We must produce work that is symbolic, that is good, that is clear, and only submit for publication when it is ready for publication.” (MORE - details)

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Trends in hoaxes of academic communication (click Full Text)
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.11.17.624043v1

ABSTRACT: Academic journals use peer review to weed out false information, but peer review and other editorial processes are normally confidential. Therefore, individuals sometimes create hoaxes to test whether editorial processes are as robust as they are claimed, or whether they are done at all. This article tracks the occurrence of hoaxes aimed at scholarly publishers and academic conferences since 2000. Since 2009, successful hoaxes usually appeared at a year of one or more a year, usually motivated by academics or journalists exposing so-called “predatory” journals. The apparent rise in the number of hoaxes reflects a lack of transparency in editorial processes at both legitimate and “predatory” journals. Reaction of academic communities to hoaxes varies widely depending on the perceived intent of the target of the hoaxes and whether the hoax demonstrates what the hoaxer claims.
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A call for research to address the threat of paper mills
https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.3002931

Research paper mills are covert organizations that provide low-quality or fabricated manuscripts to paying clients. As members of the United2Act Research Working Group, we propose 5 key research questions on paper mills that require resourcing and support...

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Revealed: Saudi Arabia accused of modifying official Cop29 negotiating text
https://www.theguardian.com/environ...-of-modifying-official-cop29-negotiating-text

A Saudi Arabian delegate has been accused of directly making changes to an official Cop29 negotiating text, it can be revealed...

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Researchers urged to give local leaders credit on research papers
https://www.nature.com/nature-index/news/researchers-urged-give-local-leaders-credit-research-papers

Giving community leaders authorship credit on papers for research projects they were involved in is one way to help boost local impact, research managers have been told. [...] The benefit of this approach, said Thomsen, is that it avoids the common scenario where a community leader or participant’s right to authorship is at the discretion of the lead researcher on a project...
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C C said:
Fossil fuel industry influences medical research, raising ethical concerns
https://www.news-medical.net/news/2...edical-research-raising-ethical-concerns.aspx

INTRO: An investigation published by The BMJ today reveals the extent of fossil fuel industry involvement in medical research, leading to fresh calls for academics and publishing companies to cut ties with companies. An analysis by journalists Hristio Boytchev, Natalie Widmann and Simon Wörpel found that over the past six years, more than 180 medical articles have acknowledged fossil fuel industry funding, and an additional 1000 articles feature authors who worked for a fossil fuel company or related organization... (MORE - details)
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I think this is stupid. I can see no harm in fossil fuel companies funding medical research.

In fact the whole demonisation of fossil fuel companies strikes me as highly hypocritical scapegoating. It is we who choose to run IC engined cars, and we who choose gas to heat our houses, not fossil fuel companies. The whole infrastructure of industrialised society has grown up around fossil fuel because that is what we all chose, back in the 1940s or before, not because we were somehow lured into bad choices by fossil fuel companies. Fossil fuel companies meet a (current) need, and many of them are devoting a lot of effort to the energy transition away from fossil fuel.
 
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exchemist said:
I think this is stupid. I can see no harm in fossil fuel companies funding medical research.

In fact the whole demonisation of fossil fuel companies strikes me as highly hypocritical scapegoating. It is we who choose to run IC engined cars, and we who choose gas to heat our houses, not fossil fuel companies. The whole infrastructure of industrialised society has grown up around fossil fuel because that is what we all chose, back in the 1940s or before, not because we were somehow lured into bad choices by fossil fuel companies. Fossil fuel companies meet a (current) need, and many of them are devoting a lot of effort to the energy transition away from fossil fuel.
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I somewhat agree, from the standpoint that it doesn't seem like they -- in contrast to, say, the tobacco industry -- would have ulterior motives for funding in this particular area. That is, it looks purely for public image purposes (etc) via serving humanitarian good (no manufacture, manipulation, and distortion of data necessary). Context matters, or can undermine this kind of global suspicion about what companies support.

But I get the general idea of business being one of the potential corrupting influences on research. With the domain of political biases and administrative policies being another. (And personal career boosting and survival being a third.) For the sake of balance, I guess they alternately have to wail about the "subversions of capitalism" in conjunction with frowning on the "but, but, but... skewing _X_ or mandating _Y_ is for a noble cause" of the other.
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C C said:
I somewhat agree, from the standpoint that it doesn't seem like they -- in contrast to, say, the tobacco industry -- would have ulterior motives for funding in this particular area. That is, it looks purely for public image purposes (etc) via serving humanitarian good (no manufacture, manipulation, and distortion of data necessary). Context matters, or can undermine this kind of global suspicion about what companies support.

But I get the general idea of business being one of the potential corrupting influences on research. With the domain of political biases and administrative policies being another. (And personal career boosting and survival being a third.) For the sake of balance, I guess they alternately have to wail about the "subversions of capitalism" in conjunction with frowning on the "but, but, but... skewing _X_ or mandating _Y_ is for a noble cause" of the other.
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I agree, when the business has an interest in a particular research outcome. But fossil fuel and medical research? Really?
 
DEI “studies” displace scientific research at the National Science Foundation
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024...-research-at-the-national-science-foundation/

INTRO (Jerry Coyne): Yes, this analysis and report are from Texas’s Republican Senator Ted Cruz, but let’s not use that to dismiss his press release and report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation. If you won’t read something simply because it’s from Ted Cruz’s office, you are at the wrong site.

At any rate, the press release”reveals how Biden-Harris diverted billions from science to DEI activists.” I have no reason to doubt this claim given the increasing tendency of federal funding agencies (the NSF in this case) to divert money from real science into ideological project furthering the “progressive” agenda. But if you want to undercut this claim, simply look at the projects that are classified as “DEI activism”. Only a few are offered, and they support the claim, which is not surprising... (MORE - details)

  • NOTE: Due to contemporary information and research sources selectively filtering and catering to what is politically kosher with their respective audiences, and conforming to the agenda policies of their own local bureaucracies and the administrative levels of institutes or the managerial hierarchy of their own employers...

    The old-fashioned liberal camp (that Coyne and others arguably slot in) may well be the only thing remaining that resembles a critical orientation that can set aside knee-jerk personal reactions. (Or an "outsider" with some good degree of objectivity, that won't be regulated by data-interpreting self-interests, presuppositions, and beliefs of its own.)

    That said, however, in this era the reality-seeking individual has to border on sampling the whole spectrum of information, opinion, and study publication sources -- as unsavory as that might be at times -- to acquire a well examined "big picture" of what different sides are up to. Internally or "in-house", areas of expertise dominated by particular political canon no longer have the capacity to deeply vet or evaluate themselves in their own ideologically sensitive areas (granting that such "confidence in that" or "potential myth" ever was actually the case).

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Geoengineering could alter global climate. Should it? (Responsible sci-tech restraint versus developments driven by rising alarm/panic in the context of "noble causes or activism")
https://undark.org/2024/12/03/unleashed-geoengineering-climate/

EXCERPT: But now that human-caused climate change has accelerated, and with devastating effects already underway around the world, what previously appeared to be a risky Hail Mary technofix has gained respectability. Some scientists, including Ricke, as well as some environmentalists, political officials, and business leaders now call for tests of geoengineering technologies that could one day be used in an ambitious, or perhaps desperate, attempt to artificially cool the planet.

Such outdoor experiments, these proponents argue, could demonstrate a particular approach’s utility and finally assuage critics’ concerns. Talk of solar geoengineering has become so widespread that people on the fringe, like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Donald Trump’s pick to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, have even espoused the conspiracy theory that the government, or Bill Gates, is already funding such experiments, through airplanes’ “chemtrail” emissions (which have always been of water vapor, not secret chemicals)... (MORE - details)
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The Gratuitous, Endless Mask Debate
https://www.acsh.org/news/2024/12/0...er-alert-believe-scientists-not-pundits-49137

INTRO: There is overwhelming evidence that high-quality masks reduce the spread of aerosol-spread infectious diseases, including COVID-19. The folks at City Journal must not be aware of the Rule of Holes, “When you’re in a hole, stop digging.” Their contributors continue to make insupportable, easily disproved claims about the supposed lack of effectiveness of masks to prevent COVID-19.

Contributing editor John Tierney, unfazed by a thorough debunking of his first set of claims in February 2023 that masks don’t work to prevent COVID-19 infections, delivered yet another inaccurate, misleading rant six months later. In the latter article, he presented – or I should say, misrepresented -- various studies and cherry-picked others. I responded in print to that article as well, discussing his errors at length... (MORE - details)
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"Science" places expressions of concern on two articles as Toronto’s Sinai Health investigates
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12...ticles-as-torontos-sinai-health-investigates/

"Science" has issued expressions of concern for two articles from the lab of Daniel Durocher, a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Toronto. The notices, and two more editor’s notes on Nature articles, follow PubPeer comments on several of Durocher’s papers pointing out potentially duplicated images, as described by ForBetterScience. Durocher has responded to many of the comments promising to look into the issues...

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Wiley medical journal retracts dozens of papers for manipulated peer review, with more to come
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12...or-manipulated-peer-review-with-more-to-come/

International Wound Journal, a Wiley title, has retracted 27 papers since June with notices mentioning “manipulated” or “compromised” peer review. “A comprehensive investigation examining manipulated peer review in this journal is in progress,” a Wiley spokesperson told Retraction Watch. The publisher anticipates retracting more articles as the investigation continues...

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Crossref suspends company’s membership after Retraction Watch report
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12...nys-membership-after-retraction-watch-report/

Crossref, a nonprofit focused on metadata of scholarly publications, has suspended the membership of a company linked to websites which copied the appearance of journals belonging to Elsevier and Springer Nature, among others from major publishers...
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Russia accused of weaponizing science in Ukraine
https://cen.acs.org/policy/publishing/Russia-accused-weaponizing-science-Ukraine/102/web/2024/12

Papers in scientific journals are increasingly citing universities based inside occupied Ukrainian territories as being affiliated with Russia, a new analysis has found. [...] “It is a problem in our opinion, because it means that the scientific community accepts them as being part of Russia, even though legally, in most countries, as well as in United Nations resolutions, these territories belong to Ukraine,” says Hryn’ova, who was born in Ukraine...

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This scientist’s name was used to write fake peer reviews
https://www.science.org/content/art...ntist-s-name-was-used-write-fake-peer-reviews

In May, behavioral ecologist and ecotoxicologist Michael Bertram received some disconcerting news: His identity had been used, apparently by another researcher, to produce dozens of fake peer reviews on papers submitted to the journal "Science of the Total Environment" (STOTEN). Elsevier, the journal’s publisher, had opened an investigation, says Bertram, who works at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Now, this scandal has burst into the open...

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‘Systematic reviews’ that aim to extract broad conclusions from many studies are in peril
https://www.science.org/content/art...ract-broad-conclusions-many-studies-are-peril

The junk papers are likely the products of paper mills—businesses that produce fake science to order. The size of the problem is not clear, but a manuscript posted to the Center for Open Science’s OSF preprint server in September suggests up to one in seven published papers are fabricated or falsified. Aquarius and Wever’s group plans to sum up the problems in papers it analyzed by the end of this year; the results are “grim,” Aquarius says. Just in the past 4 weeks he has flagged 130 suspect papers on the postpublication peer-review site Pubpeer, bringing his total over the past 10 months to more than 690—many related to the stroke project, as well as others. Other researchers echo Aquarius’s experience...

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(paper) Metrics fraud on ResearchGate
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1751157724001160#sec0028

ABSTRACT: The academic social networking site ResearchGate (RG) allows members to post refereed papers and non-refereed preprints on the service. RG provides service-specific metrics and altmetrics for authors and publications posted on the service such as Reads, Citations, Recommendations, h-index, and RI Scores.

This paper identifies problems based on a review of examples of questionable practices, which raises concerns about the lack of transparency and the validity of RG's metrics and altmetrics to assess scientific reputation. The paper describes a scheme that small groups of researchers use to deliberately inflate each other's metrics on RG. Additionally, a comparison is made between an unethical physics researcher's RG metrics and those of several Physics Nobel Laureates.

Based on the problems found, the paper proposes several corrective actions RG could implement to mitigate metrics fraud on the service...
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Can't completely rule out how even feedback intimidation from the public (not just publishing pressures and the administrative policies of institutes and businesses) could affect the quality of research. Though there is the buffer of who the "communicators" are -- not all paper authors find time for or take to the magazine article, interview and lecture circuit, to write slash speak about or promote their work.
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More than half of researchers who communicate science in the media in Spain say they suffered attacks, according to a FECYT survey
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1067914

EXCERPT: One of the study’s main takeaways is that, overall, scientists have a positive or very positive perception of their participation in the media (83.12%). Getting their message across is the main benefit for them, and the opportunity for their studies to have greater visibility and impact is also a motivating factor for more than half of those surveyed.

In terms of obstacles, fear of misrepresentation of their message is the main barrier cited by scientists. Respondents say they have mainly been involved in the production of news content, and less so in talk shows, where opinion plays a big role. 79.71% of respondents have participated in videos for websites and social networks in the last five years; and 66.50% in podcast interviews, two formats that are gaining importance.

However, the results show that scientists involved in science communication activities also face a hostile reality. 51.05% of survey respondents say they suffered an attack after communicating science. The incidence is higher for women: 56.86% of female scientists surveyed report having suffered such attacks compared to 46.21% of male scientists.

Insults (30.38%), comments about their professional capacity (28.69%) and opinions about their professional integrity (17.72%) are the most frequent attacks suffered by researchers who communicate about science. They are followed by comments about researchers’ origin, ethnicity, ideology, religion or beliefs (13.50%), intense and repetitive contact (10.97%), comments about their physical appearance (4.64%), publication of personal data (2.95%) and comments about their sexual orientation or gender identity (2.53%). Some also report being threatened with physical and sexual violence (2.11%), as well as death threats (1.69%).

The data show different patterns according to gender. For example, more than one in three female researchers (34.31%) say they have received comments about their scientific ability, with a difference of more than 10 percentage points compared to men (24.24%). Meanwhile, men receive significantly more comments on their professional integrity.

The most frequently harassed respondents are those who communicate about environmental and health issues... (MORE - details)
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C C said:
However, the results show that scientists involved in science communication activities also face a hostile reality. 51.05% of survey respondents say they suffered an attack after communicating science. The incidence is higher for women: 56.86% of female scientists surveyed report having suffered such attacks compared to 46.21% of male scientists.

Insults (30.38%), comments about their professional capacity (28.69%) and opinions about their professional integrity (17.72%) are the most frequent attacks suffered by researchers who communicate about science. They are followed by comments about researchers’ origin, ethnicity, ideology, religion or beliefs (13.50%), intense and repetitive contact (10.97%), comments about their physical appearance (4.64%), publication of personal data (2.95%) and comments about their sexual orientation or gender identity (2.53%). Some also report being threatened with physical and sexual violence (2.11%), as well as death threats (1.69%).

The data show different patterns according to gender. For example, more than one in three female researchers (34.31%) say they have received comments about their scientific ability, with a difference of more than 10 percentage points compared to men (24.24%). Meanwhile, men receive significantly more comments on their professional integrity.
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What are the odds the attackers are religious morons who hate science?
 
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(Q) said:
What are the odds the attackers are religious morons who hate science?
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More likely just ignorant people of all stripes, who happen to have a fixed, wrong, opinion on the matter in question.

What I’d like to see is some context here. What would be the proportions of representatives of other professional groups who get attacked after a media appearance? Lawyers, say, or priests, or medical people. From this article we have no idea whether the figure is higher or lower than it is for these groups.

I strongly suspect that anyone who sticks his head over the parapet on the media is going to attacked by somebody. That’s just what the internet does.
 
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Congressional Republicans conclude SARS-CoV-2 originated in a lab leak
https://arstechnica.com/science/202...conclude-sars-cov-2-originated-in-a-lab-leak/

INTRO (excerpts): Recently, Congress' Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic released its final report. The basic gist is about what you'd expect from a Republican-run committee, in that it trashes a lot of Biden-era policies and state-level responses while praising a number of Trump's decisions. But what's perhaps most striking is how it tackles a variety of scientific topics, including many where there's a large, complicated body of evidence.

[...] The conclusions themselves aren't especially interesting; they're expected from a report with partisan aims. But the method used to reach those conclusions is often striking: The Republican majority engages in a process of systematically changing the standard of evidence needed for it to reach a conclusion. For a conclusion the report's authors favor, they'll happily accept evidence from computer models or arguments from an editorial in the popular press; for conclusions they disfavor, they demand double-blind controlled clinical trials.

This approach, which I'll term "shifting the evidentiary baseline," shows up in many arguments regarding scientific evidence. But it has rarely been employed quite this pervasively. So let's take a look at it in some detail... (MORE - details)

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The long, contentious battle to regulate gain-of-function work
https://undark.org/2024/12/11/unleashed-gain-of-function-regulation/

EXCERPTS: . . . Concerns about Covid-19’s origins have brought calls for additional oversight of U.S. labs. That effort seems misplaced to some researchers, effectively hamstringing U.S. science in response to alleged biosafety lapses thousands of miles away. If additional rules are not carefully calibrated, they say, the country could wind up less prepared to fight future pandemics. Gigi Gronvall, a biosecurity expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, characterized the backlash as a situation of muddled priorities: policymakers, she argued, are fretting about research that poses far less danger than the viruses evolving all around us in “nature’s gigantic lab.”

Still, other experts remain deeply skeptical of the status quo... [...] Such efforts have brought new public attention to some of the basic questions Imperiale and his colleagues agonized over in that conference room 12 years ago: How should society weigh the costs of engineering pathogens in the pursuit of public health goals?

[...] To prevent the spread of microbes, researchers in U.S. laboratories follow extensive biosafety protocols. ... Despite those protocols, some scientists remained uneasy. Lone Simonsen, director of the PandemiX Center in Denmark, was working in the U.S. when news about the gain-of-function studies started to spread. She was immediately concerned. Scientists like to think of themselves as the good guys, she said. “But are we really?” she wondered. “What’s our field exactly producing out of all this?”

Around the same time, Marc Lipsitch, an epidemiologist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, began to question whether the risks of such research outweighed the benefits. He was preparing a lecture on a drug-resistant flu virus that had swept across the globe a few years prior. As it happened, said Lipsitch, that fast-spreading flu virus contained a mutation that virologists had previously studied in the lab. When the virologists inserted that mutation into a common flu strain, the mutation crippled the virus. But as that common flu strain continued to evolve out in the world, the single mutation that had weakened the lab virus came to confer an advantage in nature.

There’s no guarantee that a mutation that behaves one way in one flu strain will behave the same way in a different flu strain, said Lipsitch. And because influenza viruses evolve quickly, any laboratory findings may be obsolete, or even misleading, by the time they are published.

In his view, this had implications for gain-of-function studies. Not only did they risk sparking a devastating pandemic — their purported benefits were uncertain... (MORE - missing details)
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Exclusive: Researcher who received settlement to leave University of Iowa won’t be starting new job
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12...-university-of-iowa-wont-be-starting-new-job/

A cardiology researcher who left the University of Iowa with a six-figure settlement earlier this year won’t be starting the new job he’d lined up [...] Justyn Charon, a spokesperson for the Providence VA, previously told us the researcher, Kaikobad Irani, would begin his new position “around November.” When we followed up, Charon confirmed, “there is currently no plan for Dr. Irani to be employed by VA Providence.”

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Bribery offers from China rattle journal editors. Are they being scammed?
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12...attle-journal-editors-are-they-being-scammed/

On November 12, Richard Addante, an associate editor at the journal "Frontiers in Psychology", received an alarming email from someone purporting to be a faculty member at a university in China. “I have a lot of papers to publish, papers on computers, medicine, materials, and so on,” the email, signed by a “Wei Yang” of Zhengzhou College of Business and Industry, stated. “If you can help me publish my paper, I’ll pay you $1500 as a referral fee.”

To Addante, a psychologist at Florida Institute of Technology, in Melbourne, the message suggested the field of scientific publishing needed a thorough clean-up...

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19 months and counting: Former Hindawi journal still hasn’t marked paper
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12...mer-hindawi-journal-still-hasnt-marked-paper/

A journal formerly published by Hindawi has yet to publish any sort of notice on a paper sleuths reported for containing duplicated images 1.5 years ago. ...

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Dean in Bulgaria accused of plagiarism
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12/10/dean-in-bulgaria-accused-of-plagiarism/

Earlier this year, Milen Zamfirov, dean of the faculty of educational sciences at Sofia University in Bulgaria, was named an exceptional scientist in the social sciences and humanities. As part of the accolades at the prestigious Pythagoras Science Awards from the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science, Zamfirov received a commemorative plaque, diploma, and a cash prize of 8,000 BGN (US $4,300). Now, he is accused of plagiarising past research in a paper he co-authored with Margarita Bakracheva, who received a certificate of excellence from the Union of the Bulgarian Scientists earlier this year...

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Former Harvard researcher, now at Moderna, loses paper following postdoc’s report
https://retractionwatch.com/2024/12...oderna-loses-paper-following-postdocs-report/

PLOS Pathogens has retracted a paper by a former group at Harvard following a postdoc’s allegations the work contained manipulated data....
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Yeah, maybe stretching relevance to the topic... But the pre-graduate environment and its psychological effects is arguably a precursor to the mindsets of and career pressures latter afflicting some as academicians and researchers. And in turn, a faint contributory role to integrity issues. And certainly there are parallel efforts to patrol the professional, scholarly world for its own brand of violations, probably instilling mild heebie-jeebies in some of its members.
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Half of all students worry about plagiarism detection software
https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1068401

EXCERPT: “It’s paradoxical that a technology intended to ensure academic integrity is causing unnecessary worries among students. Our research clearly shows that uncertainty about how the software operates, how it’s used, and what constitutes plagiarism leads to worries and counterproductive writing practices,” says the researcher.

In interviews, students described how they avoid reusing sources from previous assignments or unnecessarily rewrite texts to “outsmart” the software – a development that Mads Goddiksen warns against:

“The biggest issue isn’t the worry itself, but that students lose focus on writing well and ethically. Instead, it becomes about avoiding the software flagging something as problematic. This affects the quality of both their assignments and overall education,” he explains.

Goddiksen emphasizes that plagiarism detection software cannot independently determine whether plagiarism has occurred – it merely highlights text overlaps. Understanding this distinction is crucial.

“There’s nothing inherently wrong with paraphrasing or reproducing content from other sources in an assignment – this is largely what academic writing involves, as long as it’s done transparently. However, today, such practices may pop up in plagiarism checks because the software identifies similarities in phrases and formulations. This makes students nervous and renders the software ineffective if used on its own,” Goddiksen explains.

However, many students in the study mistakenly believe that the software alone determines what counts as plagiarism, even though this is not the case. This misunderstanding makes the students change their writing behaviour to adapt to the perceived control... (MORE - details)
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When I use a word . . . Academic felonies and misdemeanours—adverse effects
https://www.bmj.com/content/387/bmj.q2787.short

INTRO: Estimates of the frequencies of the different types of academic felonies (research misconduct), fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism, are in single figures, at between 2% and 5% of all publications. Misdemeanours are more common. However, these figures are probably underestimates of the true frequencies, and even if the numbers seem relatively low, felonies are likely to have marked effects on research results. There is, for example, some evidence that they may contribute to the problem of poor reproducibility of research results. Furthermore, the quality of the data included in meta-analyses of published studies can certainly affect the conclusions of the analyses, as the example of ivermectin in the treatment of covid-19 shows... (MORE - details)

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Huge math error corrected in black plastic study; authors say it doesn’t matter
https://arstechnica.com/health/2024...k-plastic-study-authors-say-it-doesnt-matter/

INTRO: Editors of the environmental chemistry journal Chemosphere have posted an eye-catching correction to a study reporting toxic flame retardants from electronics wind up in some household products made of black plastic, including kitchen utensils. The study sparked a flurry of media reports a few weeks ago that urgently implored people to ditch their kitchen spatulas and spoons. Wirecutter even offered a buying guide for what to replace them with.

The correction, posted Sunday, will likely take some heat off the beleaguered utensils. The authors made a math error that put the estimated risk from kitchen utensils off by an order of magnitude... (MORE - details)
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Publisher reviews national IQ research by British ‘race scientist’ Richard Lynn
https://www.theguardian.com/science...search-by-british-race-scientist-richard-lynn

A leading academic publisher is reviewing its decision to publish research papers by the late British professor Richard Lynn, an influential figure in the discredited field of “race science” who argued western civilisation was threatened by genetically inferior ethnic groups....

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Columbia, Penn State cancer researchers face retractions, one blames LGBTQ discrimination
https://www.thecollegefix.com/colum...-retractions-one-blames-lgbtq-discrimination/

Two prominent cancer researchers at Columbia and Pennsylvania State universities had their research articles retracted recently due to allegations of misconduct, including the use of manipulated data. One, Deborah Kelly at Penn State, suggested prejudice against “LGBTQIA+” researchers could be to blame. But a journalism scholar who reports on academic retractions told The College Fix that there are many reasons for the increasing number of retractions, including pressure from universities to produce more work...

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How bad is fraud in Alzheimer’s research? Q&A with neurologist-sleuth Matthew Schrag
https://www.beingpatient.com/fraud-alzheimers-research-neurologist-matthew-schrag/

In the last few years, several high-profile dementia researchers have been credibly accused of fraud and scientific misconduct. We spoke to one of the investigators involved in these cases, neurologist and science sleuth Dr. Matthew Schrag, about spotting misconduct — and why it takes so long to fix...
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Coyne has titled this in a way where the tense of "impedes" sounds ongoing, but he also frames it historically. Given the incursions of Christian fundamentalism and how the decolonization or "de-Westernization" of science seems to be harmonizing regional tribal beliefs with anthropology in a social justice apologetic context, I'm going to assume here that "religion" is at least a potential factor or contributor to compromised science. Ergo, posting this here instead of the Philosophy Update thread.
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How religion impedes science: a new historical study (Jerry Coyne)
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2024/12/17/how-religion-impedes-science-a-new-study/

EXCERPTS: This paper purports to demonstrate ... an incompatibility between science and religion using data, but the data are correlative without any indication of causation, and the data have some problems. To be sure, the data are provocative, and author Matías Cabello may be on to something, but right now the paper is at SSRN (Social Science Research Network) and doesn’t appear to have been published or peer-reviewed. You can see it by clicking the title below or download paper here. If you’re interested, read it and form your own opinion...

[...] For a long time historians of science, the most prominent of which was the late Ronald Numbers, maintained that the “conflict hypothesis”—that religion and science were in historical conflict—was dead wrong.

[...] Caballo ponders why opposition to the “conflict hypothesis” (which, by the way, is embraced by a majority of Americans) is so strong among academics. His theory is that academics see a lot of religious scientists, and from that conclude that there can be no conflict. To that I’d respond, “those people demonstrate compartmentalization, not compatibility.”

Instead, I’d say that people like Numbers and Ruse adopt the “no conflict” hypothesis because it is more or less a “woke” point of view: it goes along with the virtue-flaunting idea that you can have your Jesus and Darwin, too... (MORE - details)
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