Scientific publication 'sting'

I think they are scraping our 'cookies' and tailoring the ads to what they find.

Bob Wilson

 

I would be quite happy if that was all they were doing.

 

I think we see more about falsified results in biomedical sciences because of the sheer numbers of people who do such research, it's complexity, and the consequences of willfully bad data. On the latter point, falsification of ,say, a drug study can kill people and given that survival or quality of life is at stake, people WILL test the results. More concerning to me is the number of studies in which results are not replicatable for reasons that are not readily apparent. I think most often this due to the complexity of the system - meaning there are still too many unknown variables, but sometimes it's just sloppy work. For the scientist, it is here where critical scientific thinking is paramount and why a complete evaluation of the literature on a given subject is vital to understanding the scientific issues. In climate change, for example (not biomedical, I know, but it is a superb example) the data in the literature are vastly in favor of anthropomorphic climate change in a manner I have not often seen. A meta analysis of the subject in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed 97% of papers by climatologists in favor of the consensus. People that deny this are either non-scientists or scientists who don't understand the literature of the field. In the biomedical literature we don't see denial of the science in this manner because there is no political value in it, so there is far less involvement of those who have some agenda other than science. The biomedical literature would look much different to a non-scientist if there were a 24 hour a day media organization, one with the trappings of journalism but with none of the ethical constraints, waging a campaign to discredit the science and the scientists working in the biomedical field.

 

There are some issues in that link. First, one must be careful with the logic, a rather the implication, that all open access journals are bad. The logic they seem to be using is "all dogs have collars, therefore all those with collars are dogs". I personally like the open access model because, in general, scientific publishers piss me off because they are too restrictive and they shamelessly gouge libraries with their access fees. Some "open access" journals, I think, exist to make money for someone by taking advantage of people who must publish, something, anything, for promotions or whatever, but don't have the scientific chops to do anything publishable in a reputable journal. I get no less than 3-4 requests a week for contributions to some journals I never heard of and some have offered to pay me. I never reply to those requests. They are trying to get well established scientists to publish in their journal to lend it cachet so they can get more submissions. They are a total waste of time. However, some open access journals, such as PLOS One, are good, and I would publish in them anytime. But, you touch on one important issue: peer review. Who does the peer review and how an editorial office manages the process is what determines the quality of a journal in any field. If you have bozos as peer reviewers, you'll have bozo papers, and reputable scientists will flee.

 

Excellent.

We don't need a sting to prove unsavory characters will use non-peer reviewed science in climate change. The most publicized example is an IPCC chapter head using an environmental groups fund raising material as the basis for an extremely fast melting of himalyan glaciers. The chapter head, and head of IPCC rejected comments that the research was extremely wrong, and seemed to assert only a small group inside the IPCC could be trusted in reviewing data. This is the tame version of the story.

IPCC officials admit mistake over melting Himalayan glaciers | Environment | theguardian.com

I can show you the youtube clips of the IPCC stating its authortity that this fake research was real, and you needed to have published a peer reviewed study to even question it. Unfortunately the chairman still stands by his ability to use grey (non peer reviewed) liturature of the lowest quality whenever he feels like it is real.

 

This is so true.

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