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Wednesday, March 29, 2017

FAKE SCIENCE - How a sting operation exposed fraud in scientific publications - And how an imaginary DR. FRAUD got so easily published

©http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/. Unauthorized duplication of this blog's material is prohibited.   Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full credit and link is given to Otters and Science News Blogspot.  Link to this post:  http://ottersandsciencenews.blogspot.ca/2017/03/fake-science-how-sting-operation.html - Thank you for visiting my blog.
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  • We know that the scientific establishment's group-think determines what ideas get approved and published.
  • We also know that there is deliberate fraud in just about all branches of science.
  • And yet, politicians and activists  - usually of the left - routinely try to bolster their theories by invoking science, and will automatically reject any notion that questions their 'science'. 
  • The history of fraud in science is embarrassingly long.
  • Deliberate deceit by the pharmaceutical industry has caused countless tragedies in patients who trustingly consume approved medication whose research has been tampered with, or whose true side effects are minimized or hidden from the public.
  • Facts about vaccines are routinely hidden or misrepresented in order to promote the ever growing mandatory number of shots imposed on infants and children.
  • GMOs have a seal of approval in spite of proven evidence that they have detrimental consequences for the environment and those consuming them.
  • Wind turbines cause serious health effects on those living nearby, such as farmers, but this industry keeps growing.
  • Not long ago it was revealed that the sugar industry paid corrupt researchers to blame fat for health problems that were actually caused by sugar.  Remember when authorities told you that even eggs were bad for you, while ice cream was part of the four food groups allegedly good for you? 
RT - The sugar industry paid Harvard researchers in the 1960s to bury research linking sugar intake to heart disease and to instead make fat the culprit, according to a study of archival documents. “These internal documents show that the Sugar Research Foundation initiated coronary heart disease research in 1965 to protect market share and that its first project, a literature review, was published in the New English Journal of Medicine without disclosure of the sugar industry’s funding or role,” stated the study.   
The internal sugar industry documents were found in public archives by a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. The documents showed the sugar industry was aware of evidence in the 1960s that linked sugar consumption to high blood cholesterol and triglyceride levels and was thought to be risk factors for coronary heart disease.  The sugar industry paid the Harvard scientist the equivalent of $50,000 in 2016 dollars for their fake research.
  • Even without fraud, scientific knowledge is evolving daily.  In five or ten years many of our most sacred scientific theories will make the world laugh. 
  • Science must not be treated as a cult or a religion, with scientists as a clergy often wearing those authoritative white coats, upholding their holy theories as gospel. 
  • The following articles explain how a group of scientists fed up with fake science decided to create an imaginary scientist who managed to publish all sorts of rubbish in several respectable scientific journals.

Imaginary "Dr. Fraud" gets published
The researchers created a fake web presence for their “doctor,” along with a fake resume listing fake research publications and no editorial experience.
 

Sting Operation Reveals
Science's Insane Fake News Problem



If someone applied to a top position at a company, you’d hope a hiring manager would at least Google the applicant to ensure they’re qualified. A group of researchers sent phony resumes to 360 scientific journals for an applicant whose Polish name translated to “Dr. Fraud.” And 48 journals happily appointed the fake doctor to their editorial board.
 
This sting operation was the first systematic analysis on editorial roles in science publishing, adding concrete evidence to a problem past stings have shed light on.
 
There are a whole lot of “predatory” scientific journals out there, journals that take advantage of scientists’ need to produce articles by publishing anything for a fee, without checking to make sure the paper is actually new research, worth publishing, and not completely inaccurate.
 
CONTINUE READING this article, and one stating that only 1% of all scientific papers adheres to the scientific method.
 
But the problem is more than a juiced-up email scam (despite some probably-predatory journals looking essentially the same),and highlights many issues in today’s scientific publishing industry.
 
Those issues can result in important science not being published in real journals, or worse, bad, un-vetted science being published, scientists bolstering their resumes with crap, and an eroding public trust in science as an institution.
 

If we cannot trust the academic publishing system,
who can we trust?
 
“What this boils down to is that scholarly papers published in these types of journals are far less likely to have undergone any kind of quality check, including proper peer review,” one of the scientists leading the sting from the University of Sussex, Katarzyna Pisanski, told Gizmodo in an email.
 
“It could result in (and probably already has) thousands of scientific articles that have essentially gone ‘un-checked’... If we cannot trust the academic publishing system, who can we trust?”
 
The standards of academia require scientists to publish papers. It’s how many get their Ph.Ds, and how universities judge the quality of their research.
 
Most journals say they thoroughly vet their research through peer review, by having knowledgable subject matter experts look over the work and make suggestions before publishing.
 
Some, like Science and Nature, charge a subscription fee to access their articles. Others, like PLoS One and Peerj are open access, meaning that scientists pay a fee to have their work appear in the peer-reviewed journal, but the articles are free to read and access for anyone.
 
The idea for a sting operation came after the paper’s authors began noticing “absurd number” of emails asking them to send papers or be the editors of journals outside their expertise, said Pisanski.
 
The researchers randomly selected 120 papers each from three sources: Jeffrey Beall’s blacklist, a since-removed list of predatory journals, the Directory of Open Access Journals (which is exactly what it sounds like), and titles indexed by Journal Citation Reports, which gives “impact factors,” a flawed but frequently-used metric that ranks journals and how often their articles are cited.
 
The researchers created a fake web presence for their “doctor,” along with a fake resume listing fake research publications and no editorial experience. A third of the journals from Beall’s blacklist accepted Dr. Fraud as an editor. Seven percent of the DOAJ’s journals did, but none of the JCR’s journals did. 
 
This may be the first peer-reviewed analysis of predatory journals, but scientists and others have been aware for the problem for a while. In 2013, journalist John Bohannon sent over three hundred nearly identical bogus papers to open-access journals, around 60 percent of which accepted the paper without peer review, and published his results in Science.
 
The problem hasn’t gotten better, Bohannon told Gizmodo. “I’m confident there are more predatory journals today than there were a few years ago,” he said.

I sent an email to the editor of one of the Society for Science and Nature journals, the fishy looking website below whose journals are probably predatory, given its appearance, buzzwords and content. I will update the post if I hear back.
 
So what’s going on? There are lots of theories, but basically, scientists need to publish, and more journals than ever are open-access. Predatory journals are predominantly open access, pointed out Bohannon.
 
Their publishers take money from scientists who are either gullible or just looking for a quick way to tie a publication to their name. Bohannon thinks the open access community needs to work to rid itself of these journals.
 
“Finding bad guys in the world of open access publishing is something you should do if you love open access publishing,” he said.

That being said, some folks I spoke to, including Beall and people in the open access community, thought it was a larger problem than open access publishing alone. The community tries to regulate itself after all, Andrew Wesolek, head of digital scholarship at Clemson, pointed out to Gizmodo.
 
The DOAJ removed 39 of the 120 journals listed in its directory before the analysis came out in Nature today, though six of the eight journals that accepted the fake editor still remain.
 
 
 
 
When I called Lars Bjørnshauge, their founder and managing director, he immediately asked to be put in touch with Pisanski so he could find out the titles of the six journals. He said the DOAJ removes journals with fake editors immediately.
 
“We go in and check randomly members of the editorial board and contact them to see if they are real people. On and off we actually discover an academic who says ‘oh, am I on the board of that journal? I didn’t know that.’ This is immediately cause for rejection or removal of that journal.”
 
Wesolek noted that many of the DOAJ’s journals don’t charge their authors fees, either. “It’s not correct to say that Open Access gives rise to a predatory model,” he said. Instead, “A business model, authors paying to publish, can potentially give rise to this problem.”
 
Bohannon said this business model reason to be vigilant in protecting the open access movement from exploitation.
 
Some think a whitelist of non-predatory journals would be a worthwhile solution, but others hope to see a reincarnation of Beall’s blacklist of predatory journals, including Beall himself. “Everyone figures out the easiest journal [to publish in] on the whitelist and then publishes there,” Beall told Gizmodo.
 
A flood of scientists hoping to publish papers could turn the higher acceptance rate journals on the whitelist into predatory ones. Instead, Beall’s blacklist had been a resource to those wondering which journals were legit, but has been taken down for reasons Beall can’t disclose aside from pressure from the University of Colorado, where he works. He hopes to see a new blacklist take its place. “You can immediately eliminate these journals from the journals you’re going to submit to.”
 
 
Beall said he would also be alright with one of our suggestions—sting operations conducted by private agencies—but not if they were carried out by researchers. Fraudulently applying to journals still operates in a moral grey area, going against scientists’ honor codes, but might be okay for a journalist or a private investigator.
 
 “I think efforts to de-emphasize publishing over all other forms of science productivity would go a long way towards cutting the oxygen supply of predatory publishers.” 
 
Aside from a blacklist, others recommend conversations on how to determine a journal is legit. “With time and experience most scholars acquire an almost ‘implicit’ understanding about what constitutes good science. They learn about reputable journals from mentors and leaders in their field,” said Pisanski. “But this takes time, and so students and early career researchers are encouraged to talk with others on this topic early on.”
 
But researchers in other countries not used to speaking English (though that’s the language most scientific publishing happens in) might not immediately recognize the difference between a predatory journal and the real thing, Bohannon and others said. Or they might recognize it and publish anyway to build up their cred.
 
This all might sound like inside baseball, but it can have tangible effects on non-scientists, as well. Two years ago, Bohannon wrote an article for io9 detailing how he submitted an accurate but purposefully bad study to predatory journals like these, who accepted the article.
 
The story, on the immensely clickable topic of how chocolate can help you lose weight, made it to the press, and lazy journalists wrote stories with splashy headlines and little vetting. In 2017, we’d probably call that “fake news,”  even if the story was based on a real paper.
 
Not only are predatory journals misinforming the public, they’re making the scientific institution as a whole look bad, and now more than ever, the public needs to be able to trust scientists.
  
Really, the problem probably just lies in the nature of publishing as a mark of scientific achievement.
 
“I think efforts to de-emphasize publishing over all other forms of science productivity would go a long way towards cutting the oxygen supply of predatory publishers,” Adam Marcus, cofounder of science watchdog blog Retraction Watch and managing editor of Gastroenterology & Endoscopy News, told Gizmodo.
 
These publishers could simply be “stepping in to meet this insatiable demand for journal articles.”
 

That’s Pisanski’s hope, too. “We—the academic community—need to de-incentivize contributions to low-quality journals that do not promote best practices and exist primarily to make money.”
 
Source 
http://gizmodo.com/sting-operation-reveals-sciences-insane-fake-news-probl-1793523135



 

UPDATE:

Less than 1% of Scientific Journal Papers follow Scientific Method

Fewer than 1 percent of papers published in scientific journals follow the scientific method, according to research by Wharton School professor and forecasting expert J. Scott Armstrong.


Professor Armstrong, who co-founded the peer-reviewed Journal of Forecasting in 1982 and the International Journal of Forecasting in 1985, made the claim in a presentation about what he considers to be “alarmism” from forecasters over man-made climate change.
 
“We also go through journals and rate how well they conform to the scientific method. I used to think that maybe 10 percent of papers in my field … were maybe useful. Now it looks like maybe, one tenth of one percent follow the scientific method” said Armstrong in his presentation, which can be watched in full below. “People just don’t do it.”

Armstrong defined eight criteria for compliance with the scientific method, including full disclosure of methods, data, and other reliable information, conclusions that are consistent with the evidence, valid and simple methods, and valid and reliable data.

According to Armstrong, very little of the forecasting in climate change debate adheres to these criteria. “For example, for disclosure, we were working on polar bear [population] forecasts, and we were asked to review the government’s polar bear forecast. We asked, ‘could you send us the data’ and they said ‘No’… So we had to do it without knowing what the data were.”

According to Armstrong, forecasts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) violate all eight criteria.

“Why is this all happening? Nobody asks them!” said Armstrong, who says that people who submit papers to journals are not required to follow the scientific method. “You send something to a journal and they don’t tell you what you have to do. They don’t say ‘here’s what science is, here’s how to do it.'”

Digging deeper into their motivations, Armstrong pointed to the wealth of incentives for publishing papers with politically convenient rather than scientific conclusions.

“They’re rewarded for doing non-scientific research. One of my favourite examples is testing statistical significance – that’s invalid. It’s been over 100 years we’ve been fighting the fight against that. Even its inventor thought it wasn’t going to amount to anything. You can be rewarded then, for following an invalid [method].”

“They cheat. If you don’t get statistically significant results, then you throw out variables, add variables, [and] eventually you get what you want.”
“My big thing is advocacy. People are asked to come up with certain answers, and in our whole field that’s been a general movement ever since I’ve been here, and it just gets worse every year. And the reason is funded research.”

“I’ve [gone through] my whole career, with lots of publications, and I’ve never gotten a research grant. And I’m proud of that now.”

Armstrong concluded his talk by arguing that scientific evidence should be required for all climate regulations.

Source
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2017/03/29/j-scott-armstrong-fraction-1-papers-scientific-journals-follow-scientific-method/






Predatory journals recruit fake editor
 
NATURE - An investigation finds that dozens of academic titles offered 'Dr Fraud' — a sham, unqualified scientist — a place on their editorial board. Katarzyna Pisanski and colleagues report.
 
Thousands of academic journals do not aspire to quality. They exist primarily to extract fees from authors. These 'predatory' journals exhibit questionable marketing schemes, follow lax or non-existent peer-review procedures and fail to provide scientific rigour or transparency.
 
The open-access movement, although noble in its intent, has been an unwitting host to these parasitic publishers. Bogus journals can imitate legitimate ones that also collect fees from authors. Researchers, eager to publish (lest they perish), may submit their papers with or without verifying a journal's reputability.
 
Crucial to a journal's quality is its editors. Editors decide whether a paper is reviewed and by whom, and whether a submission should be rejected, revised or accepted. Such roles have usually been assigned to established experts in the journal's field, and are considered prestigious positions.
Many predatory journals hoping to cash in seem to aggressively and indiscriminately recruit academics to build legitimate-looking editorial boards. Although academic pranksters have successfully placed fictional characters on editorial boards (see go.nature.com/2nbikpp), no one has examined the issue systematically. We did.
 
We conceived a sting operation and submitted a fake application for an editor position to 360 journals, a mix of legitimate titles and suspected predators. Forty-eight titles accepted. Many revealed themselves to be even more mercenary than we had expected.

The sting

We study human behaviour, and conceived of this sting when working together at the University of Wrocław in Poland. Although our research rarely focuses on scholarly publishing, we became increasingly disturbed at the number of invitations we received to become editors or to review for journals completely outside our field. We learnt that some of our colleagues, mainly early-career researchers, were unaware of predatory practices and had fallen for these traps. It became clear that the problem was huge, yet had not been empirically examined. 
 
So, in 2015, we created a profile of a fictitious scientist named Anna O. Szust and applied on her behalf to the editorial boards of 360 journals. Oszust is the Polish word for 'a fraud'. We gave her fake scientific degrees and credited her with spoof book chapters. Her academic interests included, among others, the theory of science and sport, cognitive sciences and methodological bases of social sciences.
 
We also created accounts for Szust on Academia.edu, Google+ and Twitter, and made a faculty webpage at the Institute of Philosophy at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. The page could be accessed only through a link we provided on her CV.
 
 
The profile was dismally inadequate for a role as editor. Szust's 'work' had never been indexed in the Web of Science or Scopus databases, nor did she have a single citation in any literature database. Her CV listed no articles in academic journals or any experience as a reviewer, much less an editor. The books and chapters on her CV did not exist and could not be found through any search engine. Even the publishing houses were fake.
 
We sent Szust's application to 360 journals, 120 from each of three well-known directories: the JCR (journals with an official impact factor as indexed on Journal Citation Reports), the DOAJ (journals included on the Directory of Open Access Journals) and 'Beall's list' (potential, possible or probable predatory open-access publishers and journals, compiled by University of Colorado librarian Jeffrey Beall; Beall took down his list in January this year for unknown reasons, after we had completed our study).
 
To be indexed by either the JCR or the DOAJ, journals must meet certain standards of quality, including ethical publishing practices. Journals listed on the DOAJ must also be fully open access. By contrast, Beall's controversial yet widely used blacklist identified potential predatory journals. It consisted of journals that, in his opinion, exploited researchers and failed to meet basic standards of scholarly publishing.
 
We asked two postgraduate researchers, unaware of our study's purpose, to pseudo-randomly select 120 English-language journals that matched Szust's expertise from each list. We then e-mailed Szust's application for editor — a CV and cover letter — to these 360 journals and tracked responses for six months. Applications were identical, except that some contained an extra paragraph expressing Szust's enthusiasm for new open-access journals.
 
The aim of our study was to help academics to understand how bogus versus legitimate journals operate, not to trick journals into accepting our editor. For this reason, Szust was not a persistent applicant.
 
If journals did not respond to her application, we did not e-mail them again, but coded them as 'No response'. Journals that responded initially but failed to follow up were coded as 'Rejected'. Any attempt by a journal to verify Szust's qualifications (for example, through a trial review of a manuscript or through an interview) was also considered a rejection, as were explicit rejections.
 
We coded journals as 'Accepted' only if a reply to our e-mail explicitly accepted Szust as editor (in some cases contingent on financial contribution) or if Szust's name appeared as an editorial board member on the journal's website.

All too easy

In many cases, we received a positive response within days of application, and often within hours. Four titles immediately appointed Szust editor-in-chief. No JCR journal accepted Szust. By comparison, 40 predatory and 8 DOAJ journals appointed her as an editor (see 'Who embraced the fake?').

Szust was almost never questioned about her experience. No one made any attempt to contact her university or institute. One journal spotted that Szust's cover letter stated that becoming an editor would allow her to obtain a degree that she had listed as already having obtained. That journal nonetheless appointed Szust as editor.
 
Fifteen journals on Beall's list, 45 DOAJ journals and 48 JCR journals replied to Szust's application but did not make her an offer. These journals sent three broad types of responses: a short message acknowledging receipt; a condescending or discourteous rejection; or a longer, kinder explanation of how one actually becomes an editor (first you publish papers, then you become a reviewer, and so on).
 
At least a dozen journals appointed Szust as editor conditional on, or strongly encouraging, some form of payment or profit (see ‘Spot the predator’). In some cases, this was a direct payment, such as a subscription fee requested by one journal of US$750 (later reduced to “ONLY $650”), or a donation of $50 (although Szust was accepted without paying).

Spot the predator

Excerpts from e-mails from journals accepting and rejecting a fake, unqualified candidate.

Titles that accepted the fake
  • “... as an editor, you have to publish some of your research articles with the Journal”
  • “If you want to start a new journal...you will get 30% of the revenue earned thru you”
  • “It's our pleasure to add your name as our editor in chief for this journal with no responsibilities”
Titles that rejected the fake
  • “One does not become an editor by sending in the CV; these positions are filled because a person has a high research profile and a solid research record”
  • “The typical progression ... involves developing a track record of excellent service as an ad hoc reviewer which results in an invitation to join [journal name redacted] Editorial Board”
  • “... your field of research is not exactly fitting with the goals of [journal name redacted]”

Others asked Szust to organize a conference after which the presenters' papers would be published (for a fee) in a special proceedings issue. One publisher suggested that the profits be split (“60% us 40% You”). Twice, Szust was offered the opportunity to start a new journal as lead editor. One e-mail proposed “30% of the revenue earned thru you” for launching a new journal, but 20% for joining an existing journal as editor.
 
Some journals granted Szust conditional acceptance if she submitted her own papers to be published for a fee. In some cases, these paid submissions could be submitted by Szust's “Friends/Colleagues/Associates and Fellow Researcher's”. Many journals were more eager for Szust to recruit paid submissions than for her to assess the quality of manuscripts.
 
Two journals offered to waive fees for the publication of Szust's own paper in their journal. Another clarified that, “if you, your friends and colleagues have submitted papers successfully, just contact us, we'll pay attention to them”.
 
Of the 120 DOAJ journals included in our study, at least 39 have since been removed from the directory (in a purge last year, several hundred were delisted for suspected editorial misconduct, non-compliance with best practices, or simply failing to reapply to the directory). Of the 8 DOAJ journals that accepted Szust as editor, 6 remain on the directory as of March 2017; none of these was also on Beall's list at the time of sampling.
 

Predators and prey

In 2013, journalist John Bohannon revealed gaping holes in the peer-review system when his fictitious, purposely flawed research article was accepted for publication by 157 of 304 open-access journals to which it was submitted, contingent on payment of author fees4.
 
His project did not include non-open-access journals nor did it explicitly compare titles that did or did not have an impact factor. Bohannon was criticized for targeting specific journals and for persistent correspondence with editorial boards.
 
We designed our study to explicitly compare whitelisted and blacklisted journals and limited our communication with them. Although some journals listed as predatory did act honourably (for instance, some sent Szust papers to review), such titles were by far the most likely to accept an unqualified candidate and to try to profit from her.
 
The number of active predatory journals has increased at an alarming rate1. By 2015, more than half a million papers had been published in predatory journals, and at the end of 2016, the number of predatory journals on Beall's list (about 10,000) approached the number indexed by the DOAJ and JCR5. Most are hosted by publishers (including some industry giants). Predatory publishing is becoming an organized industry.
  
This rise of predatory journals threatens the quality of scholarship. Without a credible editorial board, flawed scientific papers become an increasing problem. These practices also threaten to give the open-access movement a bad name6.
 
The pressure on academics to publish contributes. Publication counts often form the basis for research funding and career advancement. For example, in Poland and many other European countries, at least one peer-reviewed publication (regardless of quality) is a prerequisite for obtaining a PhD.
 
Judging the quality of a journal is not always simple, but resources are available. In the absence of Beall's blacklist, there are the JCR and DOAJ whitelists.
 
Scholars can also check whether a journal is indexed in reputable citation databases such as Scopus or the Web of Science. Criteria for assessing the quality of open-access publishers and journals also include those compiled by Beall, or through a collaboration of several community organizations, including the Committee on Publishing Ethics, the DOAJ, Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association and the World Association of Medical Editors.

A bigger problem

We hope that our sting brings further awareness to the problem of predatory publishing. However, a solution will require targeting the problem at its core by making publishing in illegitimate journals less attractive. Those who reward academics for publishing must make efforts to assess journal quality and to reward only best practices.
 
Our study, approved by an institutional ethics review board, necessitated deception. However, we made every effort to maintain a high standard of ethical conduct and transparency. We also resigned from the editorial boards that accepted Szust. We thank all editorial boards for their time.
 
In February 2017, we e-mailed the 49 journals originally coded as accepting Szust as an editor to inform them of our study and offer them a chance to respond. Nine replied.
 
One journal simply acknowledged receipt, another declared having since improved its vetting process. Six journals denied accepting (or wrongly accepting) Szust as editor; one of these claimed to have rejected Szust after performing a background check on her.
 
We re-coded this journal as 'Rejected' and the others as 'Accepted (later disputed)'. Several journals criticized our actions and Beall's list; one asked for a link to Beall's list. We also received a tenth e-mail — a threat from an alleged legal firm (which did not have a professional domain name), that claimed responsibility for the list's disappearance following a lawsuit for “1 Billion Dollars”.
 
We have not included journal titles in this article, in part because predatory publishers often choose names confusingly similar to reputable titles, and in part because we believe the problem is much larger than the journals we sampled. Details of the study, including all anonymized e-mail correspondence and how scholars may obtain full data for research purposes, are available (see Supplementary Information).
 
It is difficult to predict the future editorial career of Anna O. Szust. Although journals that accepted our fraud were informed that Szust “kindly withdraws her application”, her name still appears on the editorial boards listed by at least 11 journals' websites.
 
In fact, she is listed as an editor of at least one journal to which we did not apply. She is also listed as management staff, a member of conference organizing committees, and ironically, a member of the Advisory Board of the Journals Open Access Indexing Agency whose mission it is to “increase the visibility and ease of use of open access scientific and scholarly journals”.
 
Read more about the authors and their references here: 
http://nature.com/articles/doi:10.1038/543481a




 
LEFT GROUPTHINK DESTROYING
CAMPUS SCIENCE

Progressive group-think mentality is rife among U.K. academics and is killing science on campus, according to new report by the Adam Smith Institute (ASI).
The report found left-wing and liberal views are over-represented in British academia compared to the general population. Roughly 50 percent of the general public supports right-wing or conservative parties, but only 12 percent of academics do.
 
The study also found 90 percent of universities in the U.K. had censored free speech on their campuses in the last year or prevented scientific research into areas deemed politically unpalatable to the political left.
 
“It cannot have escaped the notice of anyone who has spent time in British academia, especially in the social sciences and humanities, that there is a sizable left-liberal skew,” Noah Carl, author of the report and researcher at Oxford University, said in a press statement. “Moreover, growing evidence from the empirical literature indicates that the academy’s sizable left-liberal skew has had an adverse impact on scholarship.”
 
Other research from the U.S. cited by ASI’s report confirms that conservative or libertarian academics are discriminated against in grant reviews and hiring decisions. Roughly 80 percent of right-wing academics feel that there is a hostile climate at work towards their beliefs.
 
“Universities are supposed to be places where perspectives are challenged, arguments are picked apart, and all ideas are up for discussion,” Carl said. “This ideal is very difficult to achieve when the vast majority of scholars adhere to the same ideological precepts.”
 
This is a big problem, because researchers have a documented tendency to find evidence of phenomena they happen to believe in and to reject observations that are unpopular with their financiers. In a survey of 2,000 research psychologists conducted in 2011, over half admitted they selectively reported experiments, which yielded results favorable to their predisposed views.
 
Scientists also have a huge incentive to tweak, or outright fake, statistical analyses to make results appear to significantly validate their political goals. A growing number of scientists have noticed the wave of retractions, especially among social scientists. Polling indicates that such outcomes are causing science itself to become less trusted.
 
Another study found that 34 percent of researchers self-report that they have engaged in “questionable research practices,” including “dropping data points on a gut feeling” and “changing the design, methodology, and results of a study in response to pressures from a funding source,” whereas 72 percent of those surveyed knew of colleagues who had done so. Virginia Tech researchers note that the National Science Foundation estimates that research misconduct creates over $110 million in annual costs.
 
Scientific research is also susceptible to bias when it is funded by the government, leading to a considerable number of scientific studies that cannot be replicated or reproduced.
 
Government funding of research produces enormous financial incentives for scientists to engage in dubious laboratory research. Academics are under serious financial pressure to rapidly and continually publish research to sustain or further their careers, even if the research is essentially useless or misleading. Even major scientific journals like Nature are asking, “Is Science Broken?”
 
“Much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue,” Richard Horton, editor of the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet, wrote in a study published last April.
 
“Afflicted by studies with small sample sizes, tiny effects, invalid exploratory analyses, and flagrant conflicts of interest, together with an obsession for pursuing fashionable trends of dubious importance, science has taken a turn towards darkness.”
 
Sourcehttp://dailycaller.com/2017/03/02/ideological-group-think-is-killing-science-on-campuses/



 
Government agency NOAA faked climate change data in order to fit with Obama's policies

Now, in what might be the largest scientific fraud ever uncovered, NASA and the NOAA have been caught red-handed altering historical temperature data to produce a "climate change narrative" that defies reality. This finding, originally documented on the Real Science website, is detailed here.

We now know that historical temperature data for the continental United States were deliberately altered by NASA and NOAA scientists in a politically-motivated attempt to rewrite history and claim global warming is causing U.S. temperatures to trend upward. The data actually show that we are in a cooling trend, not a warming trend (see charts below).

This story is starting to break worldwide right now across the media, with The Telegraph now reporting (1), "NOAA's US Historical Climatology Network (USHCN) has been 'adjusting' its record by replacing real temperatures with data 'fabricated' by computer models."

Because the actual historical temperature record doesn't fit the frenzied, doomsday narrative of global warming being fronted today on the political stage, the data were simply altered using "computer models" and then published as fact.
READ MORE
http://www.naturalnews.com/045695_global_warming_fabricated_data_scientific_fraud.html







Image result for images science fraud


 
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