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

exchemist said:
What credence should we give the South China Morning Post nowadays, though? [...] Is it not possible that the Chinese authorities simply want to undermine the prestige of Nature because it is Western?
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The overall mood is derived from discussions taking place on Chinese social media platforms, and a lot of it sounds like angry students. Though there may be some established, professional veterans participating. Given that context, the trust issue with Nature is probably an overblown topic, even if this latest eruption might be more prominent than those in the past.
  • Academic Jobs: "Retraction trends are not unique to China, but the scale of Chinese-affiliated retractions has drawn particular attention. International publishers, including Springer Nature, have faced past mass retractions involving Chinese authors, such as the 2017 case of 107 papers in Tumor Biology due to fake peer reviews. The current wave, however, centres on high-profile titles like Nature, amplifying visibility. Experts note that China's rapid growth in research output-now leading in many fields-has outpaced the development of uniform integrity safeguards, though recent policy changes aim to close the gap."
What does Nature itself have to say about these criticisms emanating from China?
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They're addressing it much as the other times. Diagnose and fix. No extreme alarm, seemingly regarded as within routine parameters (for this troublesome era, anyway). Probably viewed as more a matter of Chinese institutions needing to revise their protocols and funding distribution system, which is also taking place in response to the fraud outbreak.
  • SCMP article: "In an email received after publication time, Springer Nature’s head of communications Michael Stacey said, “Concerns have been raised with us regarding five papers published in our journals. We are undertaking a rigorous investigation which is ongoing. Once this process is complete, we will take any appropriate action in line with our policies to protect the integrity of the scientific record."

    Regulatory and Institutional Responses in China (AJ article): "Chinese authorities have responded with stronger measures. The science ministry has announced plans to penalise universities that fail to investigate or sanction serious misconduct. [...] Universities are now required to declare all retractions and conduct investigations, contributing to a growing database of misconduct cases. These steps reflect a shift from prestige-driven metrics toward greater emphasis on integrity, though challenges remain in implementation across thousands of institutions."
 
C C said:
The overall mood is derived from discussions taking place on Chinese social media platforms, and a lot of it sounds like angry students. Though there may be some established, professional veterans participating. Given that context, the trust issue with Nature is probably an overblown topic, even if this latest eruption might be more prominent than those in the past.
  • Academic Jobs: "Retraction trends are not unique to China, but the scale of Chinese-affiliated retractions has drawn particular attention. International publishers, including Springer Nature, have faced past mass retractions involving Chinese authors, such as the 2017 case of 107 papers in Tumor Biology due to fake peer reviews. The current wave, however, centres on high-profile titles like Nature, amplifying visibility. Experts note that China's rapid growth in research output-now leading in many fields-has outpaced the development of uniform integrity safeguards, though recent policy changes aim to close the gap."


They're addressing it much as the other times. Diagnose and fix. No extreme alarm, seemingly regarded as within routine parameters (for this troublesome era, anyway). Probably viewed as more a matter of Chinese institutions needing to revise their protocols and funding distribution system, which is also taking place in response to the fraud outbreak.
  • SCMP article: "In an email received after publication time, Springer Nature’s head of communications Michael Stacey said, “Concerns have been raised with us regarding five papers published in our journals. We are undertaking a rigorous investigation which is ongoing. Once this process is complete, we will take any appropriate action in line with our policies to protect the integrity of the scientific record."

    Regulatory and Institutional Responses in China (AJ article): "Chinese authorities have responded with stronger measures. The science ministry has announced plans to penalise universities that fail to investigate or sanction serious misconduct. [...] Universities are now required to declare all retractions and conduct investigations, contributing to a growing database of misconduct cases. These steps reflect a shift from prestige-driven metrics toward greater emphasis on integrity, though challenges remain in implementation across thousands of institutions."
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Hmm, but now I’m confused. The tone of the SCMP article seemed to be that Nature’s standards have slipped, whereas this is saying it is the integrity of scientific research in China that is the problem. Which I think we all knew. China (and India) seem to churn out crap papers on an industrial scale.
 
exchemist said:
Hmm, but now I’m confused. The tone of the SCMP article seemed to be that Nature’s standards have slipped, whereas this is saying it is the integrity of scientific research in China that is the problem. Which I think we all knew. China (and India) seem to churn out crap papers on an industrial scale.
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Yah, in a sense it sounds like Nature got caught in the crossfire between the students / researchers and the Chinese academic system, because their careers are often tied to publication success in the journals. Via the latter being a key factor of what the country's institutional scheme revolves around. If the journals loses integrity via substandard evaluation and acceptance of poor papers, then the boffins suffer from the fallout in terms of financial support and promotional perks, not just drops in personal reputation and other punishments. Only a native insider or access to the translated dialogues transpiring on the platforms could probably clarify the details of the system's heavy dependency on journals (that differs somehow from the West?) and whatever the complicated reciprocal effects are.
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Statistical misreporting on a new cancer drug: “survival times” misconstrued as “survival rates” or “death risks”
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2026...isconstrued-as-survival-rates-or-death-risks/

EXCERPTS: Last night on the NBC News ... I heard a report on a new cancer drug touted as being almost miraculous. ... But the news confused survival time with survival rate ... I knew that something was wrong, as metastatic pancreatic cancer is almost always fatal, so the survival rate, which the percentage of people still alive after a specified period of time (often five years), cannot be expressed in months. Sure enough, this mistake, expressing the effects as a doubling of survival rate, was not only misleading, but widespread. It’s easy to find similar errors in the press; just google the drug name and “survival rate”... (MORE - details)

Science has met its nemesis in the broad, ongoing political neutralization of Western oppression? ;) No defense at all against activist non-Christian beliefs? ;) Toss it in for the heck of it, since the "dark side" might be the only camp allowed to whine.
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The Reburial of the Southwest
https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/policy-report/the-reburial-of-the-southwest/

EXCERPTS: The desire to understand humanity’s past is as old as civilization itself, and archaeology and anthropology have long been the disciplines that make key insights possible. [...] In 1990, Congress attempted to reconcile the scientific process of analyzing archaeological artifacts with concerns raised by Native American tribes about the treatment of ancestral remains. [...] Over time, however, the interpretation and application of NAGPRA have changed. Activists, regulators, and increasingly risk-averse museum administrators have begun interpreting NAGPRA regulations as applicable far beyond what Congress originally intended. Remains that predate modern tribes by thousands of years are now slated for tribal reburial. Ordinary artifacts-and even objects created for commercial sale-have been removed from museum collections or withdrawn from displays. In some cases, the expansion of repatriation policies has effectively barred scientists from studying materials that once formed the foundation of much archaeological research... (MORE - details)
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C C said:
But the news confused survival time with survival rate ... I knew that something was wrong, as metastatic pancreatic cancer is almost always fatal, so the survival rate, which the percentage of people still alive after a specified period of time (often five years), cannot be expressed in months.
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Saw this and was going to post a short rant on media frequently doing this sort of breathless and misleading reportage. This one especially rankled, as I've known several people who've had pancreatic cancer. Few survive, and those rare cases are only when it is caught extremely early, i.e. stage one. And it is very hard to detect in stage one.

Eat your fiber and hide when you see a pastry cart coming, people. All the usual advice is pertinent to preventing this horrible cancer - high fiber low glycemic diets, plenty of exercise, foods like salmon, eggs, avocados, apple cider vinegar and olive oil on leafy salads, whole fruits not juices, etc. These are the horses to bet on, not daraxonrasib. /rant
 
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Hijab-switching researcher scandal puts Indonesian academia under scrutiny
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/s...andal-puts-indonesian-academia-under-scrutiny

EXCERPTS: The almost cartoonish antics of an Indonesian researcher at an international scientific conference has opened a Pandora’s box of alleged academic misconduct, putting Indonesian academia under the spotlight. [...] At the conference, held from May 17 to 21, Dwi observed the researcher, later identified as Prihantini, changing her hijab and switching name tags in an apparent attempt to pose as other members of her team. [...] What they found suggested the Copenhagen incident was not an isolated one: Rifaldy and associates appeared to have submitted suspiciously similar abstracts to dozens of international conferences over several years... (MORE - details)

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AI is eating the academic publishing industry alive, but some good might come of it
https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opi...ndustry-alive-but-some-good-might-come-of-it/

EXCERPTS: In a publish-or-perish environment where numbers count much more than quality, artificial intelligence has become the great disruptor. [...] This is the logic of today’s numbers-obsessed university that cannot tell the difference between the creation of knowledge and the production of outputs. A university that cannot tell the difference between the creation of knowledge and the production of outputs has confused use value with exchange value [...] If the exposure of AI-generated slop, hallucinated references, fabricated data and voiceless prose brings about the downfall of the Big Five publishing oligopoly, I cannot mourn it. An industry that profits so spectacularly from unpaid labour, that sells publicly funded research to the public at an enormous mark-up, that has used its stranglehold on prestige to distort what universities are for, well, this industry deserves disruption... (MORE - details)
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TheVat said:
Saw this and was going to post a short rant on media frequently doing this sort of breathless and misleading reportage. This one especially rankled, as I've known several people who've had pancreatic cancer. Few survive, and those rare cases are only when it is caught extremely early, i.e. stage one. And it is very hard to detect in stage one.

Eat your fiber and hide when you see a pastry cart coming, people. All the usual advice is pertinent to preventing this horrible cancer - high fiber low glycemic diets, plenty of exercise, foods like salmon, eggs, avocados, apple cider vinegar and olive oil on leafy salads, whole fruits not juices, etc. These are the horses to bet on, not daraxonrasib. /rant
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Yes it happens a lot, because often the journalists are not very knowledgeable in the field and are working to a tight deadline. For most of my life I have operated on the rule of thumb that in any article on a topic on which you yourself are knowledgeable, you will spot at least one error. Often it is quantitative data that trip them up, wrong orders of magnitude, confusing kW with kWh, things like that. This example is in that category.
 
Scientists ejected from diabetes conference for distributing journal reprints
https://arstechnica.com/science/202...conference-for-distributing-journal-reprints/

Five leading scientists were ousted from the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) in New Orleans on Friday. Their crime: handing out copies of an editorial, published in the journal Diabetes Care on April 29, sharply criticizing the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on scientific research...
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How Scientific American went from fighting pseudoscience to platforming it
https://beyondtheabstract.substack.com/p/how-scientific-american-went-from

EXCERPTS: Much as I don’t go to POLITICO to learn about black holes, or Sports Illustrated for movie reviews, I didn’t subscribe to Scientific American to be told what conclusions I should reach on political issues. [...] I stumbled upon a hard copy of the October 2025 issue in a waiting room and began reading. Inside it, I found a piece that highlighted a study claiming that tongue photographs, analyzed by machine learning, could diagnose diseases. My immediate reaction was: This can’t be serious. Tongue-reading has a long history in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and while it can be culturally meaningful, its scientific basis has never passed basic clinical scrutiny... (MORE - details)
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