Alarming Rise In Retractions Of Research Papers
 

For those of you who "trust the media", "trust the experts", "trust the science" or "trust the government", or think data is unbiased or even consistently accurate:

Recent evidence indicates the constant pressure to generate data and publish papers may be affecting the quality of research and fueling retractions of research papers.

In the past decade, there have been more than 39,000 retractions, and the annual number of retractions is growing by around 23% each year.

Nearly half the retractions were due to issues related to the authenticity of the data.

Plagiarism was the second most common reason research papers were retracted, accounting for 16% of retractions.

Fake peer review was another reason why research papers were retracted.

Read the rest here

Even a Nobel prize winner has retracted papers. Where there is money, there is fraud. . People several years ago were submitting obviously fraudulent papers just to see if the peer review process was even working. They all got peer reviewed for publishing. .

Thye system has broken down due to people seeing other fake data papers published, and hopping on board. One masters level economics class had projects to reproduce other paper's results. One of the more well known harvard publishers was caught with a cell or two errors which allowed the hypothesis to pass. He made a comment, that the data mistake didn't alter the outcome. . .

hmmmmmm . . . its all about supporting the outcome

In my opinion, there are too many data to narratives requirements advertisements, and courses.

So much for honesty but the old saying publish or perish is still alive

I suppose some type of grant associated. Pass out grant money like it’s cotton candy know wonder there fraud?

The system seems to be working if it is catching fraud and the like. I would worry when many start looking the other way like when German academics came under the control of totalitarianism. Whoever had the bigger gun and the will to use it controlled the dialog.

The system isn't working if 39,000 papers had to be retracted. I'm assuming they didn't even catch all the fake news. This is a travesty of intellectualism.

The other day, the FBI came out with a report that violent crime was down. Except it didn't include crime stats from several large, dangerous cities that refused to report data. So they just left it out. Everyone who lives in a city knows crime is up, but they insist "the data" shows otherwise.

So why would you believe anything (climate change, crime, inflation, unemployment, drug trials, etc.) if time and again, the "experts" have straight up lied to your face?

Caveat Emptor neighbors.

It looks like the digital availability is making for more scrutiny. It makes me wonder if the older papers were just as bad.

I'd like to know what percentage of fake papers were on climate change.

The only surprising thing about this is how unsurprising it is.

Agree. There is fraud everywhere. Fake studies, fake papers, fake Gucci wallets and purses, even plastic food. Fortunately, the real stuff is still readily available for those who know what they are looking for and systems to find and eliminate the fakes.

So - plagiarism of the article - means that no one is questioning the data, the content, only the author(s). That's good news. It means that 16% of those articles are legit, even if incorrectly attributed.

Another 16.2% is due to duplication. Again - no concern with the content. So that's 32% of articles that has legitimate content and data.

Publication error - 5.5% is due to that. They retracted these because they found mistakes. No lying, no fraud, no shenanigans.

In all, almost half were retracted due to "concerns or issues" about the data itself, which is serious, but it also means that they were, in fact, retracted.

Lack of/fake peer review is equally serious, but significantly less frequent, at only 8.3%.

Now that everyone and their brother is jumping on the AI bandwagon, expect it to get worse, before it gets better.

Yes, not as bad as the outright fraud, but what does that tell you about the integrity of the "researchers"?

You can't trust these people.

Within the context of a patient needing to know what the best medical treatment is for me, I don't care who the researchers are. I care only about the integrity of the data. If 20 different people say the same thing, word for word, and the first one was proven correctly peer reviewed and accurate, I'm okay with it. Let the lawyers and publishers and editors deal with the "who dunnit" of the thing. Just tell me my tylenol really will get rid of my headache and wearing sunscreen really will reduce my risk of skin cancer, and carry on.

Talked with a PhD friend who used to teach at UMASS undergraduates.
He has no desire to read and grade papers anymore, and professors who do grade papers, have to trick the students to catch them using AI. and then run them through plagarism software.

There is a book about this, "The Death of Expertise", by Tom Nichols, a former US Naval war school professor and legislative aid.

And the world keeps moving forward somehow!

Professor grade papers? Thought under post doctoral graduates more less teach class under the guidelines of the professor?

Lying, cheating and stealing have become the norm in the world. People who are suppose to help America are helping themselves. People are told what to do and what to believe they just do it. They don’t take time to think for themselves and figure out what are the truths and what are the lies. No one answers questions anymore they just talk and spit out their own agenda. You only get retractions and the truth when someone gets caught in their lies. We have a lazy and stupid society today and people taking advantage of it.