The Corruption of Medicine

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Fake Science Proves Problematic for Academic Publishing as Journals Close From Research Fraud​

I noted that City Journal did a detailed review of the ideological capture of science journalism. The must-read article ended by begging for a return to “the core principles of science—and the broader tradition of fact-based discourse and debate—our society.”

Facts are necessary for good science, the foundation of sensible and effective policy-making. Therefore, it is extremely troubling to learn that several academic journals were recently shuttered because their articles contained fake science.

Fake studies have flooded the publishers of top scientific journals, leading to thousands of retractions and millions of dollars in lost revenue. The biggest hit has come to Wiley, a 217-year-old publisher based in Hoboken, N.J., which Tuesday will announce that it is closing 19 journals, some of which were infected by large-scale research fraud.

In the past two years, Wiley has retracted more than 11,300 papers that appeared compromised, according to a spokesperson, and closed four journals. It isn’t alone: At least two other publishers have retracted hundreds of suspect papers each. Several others have pulled smaller clusters of bad papers.
Although this large-scale fraud represents a small percentage of submissions to journals, it threatens the legitimacy of the nearly $30 billion academic publishing industry and the credibility of science as a whole.
The discovery of nearly 900 fraudulent papers in 2022 at IOP Publishing, a physical sciences publisher, was a turning point for the nonprofit. “That really crystallized for us, everybody internally, everybody involved with the business,” said Kim Eggleton, head of peer review and research integrity at the publisher. “This is a real threat.”

The journals are associated with Wiley’s Hindawi subsidiary, an Egypt-based house that published 250 journals and was acquired in 2021. One contributing factor to the increasing number of fraudulent research papers is the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

Hindawi’s journals were found to be publishing papers from paper mills – organizations or groups of individuals who try to subvert the academic publishing process for financial gain. Over the past two years, a Wiley spokesperson told The Register, the publisher has retracted more than 11,300 papers from its Hindawi portfolio.
As described in a Wiley-authored white paper published last December, “Tackling publication manipulation at scale: Hindawi’s journey and lessons for academic publishing,” paper mills rely on various unethical practices – such as the use of AI in manuscript fabrication and image manipulations, and gaming the peer review process.
…The increasing availability and sophistication of generative AI is not the only factor contributing to the academic publishing crisis, but AI tools make fakery easier.
“The industry recognizes that AI is utilized by paper mills to generate fraudulent content,” Wiley’s spokesperson told us. “We’ve recently introduced a new screening technology that helps identify papers with potential misuse of generative AI before the point of publication.”

Professional organizations are asking if AI can be used to detect AI-generated paper-milled articles.

 

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[stgislander]

Where have they been the past few years. Of that's right, waiting for Europe to perform the study and publish their findings.

 

[Hijinx]

I believe that one day those who went through the transition will eventually be like the woman with tattoos all over them.
They will realize their mistake and be sad, but it's a little too late.

 

[stgislander]

I believe that one day those who went through the transition will eventually be like the woman with tattoos all over them.
They will realize their mistake and be sad, but it's a little too late.

Unless you marry a Marine officer and win a beauty pageant.

 

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What have I been telling you about $Science? Three weeks ago, the Wall Street Journal ran an exclusive headlined, “Flood of Fake Science Forces Multiple Journal Closures.”



Publicly traded John Wiley & Sons, one of the largest and most well-regarded science publishers, has been polishing its sterling reputation for over 200 years. But over the past two years, Wiley has retracted more than eleven thousand papers that turned out to be faked, and last month Wiley announced it was closing nineteen journals “infected by large-scale research fraud.”

Trust the science!

The Wall Street Journal spotted the awful risk that morons like us will conclude the whole Science industry is just a big casino-like shell game where the house always wins:



Ha. I say, threatens what credibility? Maybe Big Science still has some pus-filled pockets of credibility remaining among credulous New York Times editors, liberal elitists, and petty bureaucrats. But as for the rest of us, we survivors of the iatrogenic pandemic, have had our fill, thank you.

This story should surprise no one.

Way back in 2009, Marcia Angell, the executive editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine for twenty years, dropped this truth bomb in an article she published in the New York Review of Books:

It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.​

Ten years ago in 2015, Richard Horton, chief editor of top journal The Lancet, also raised the alarm, and he was even more pessimistic than Marcia:

The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue. 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.​

A turn toward darkness! And just in time for the pandemic. It’s too bad nobody listened. That dose of scientific skepticism might have been very helpful back when the pandemic modelers swamped us with fake studies exaggerating the risks of covid mortality by orders of magnitude.

But the Journal, and all the downstream articles also wringing their hands about the loss of trust in Science, overlooked the more meaningful problem. During the pandemic, when fake studies based on “models” filled the journals hyping massive covid mortality — which were then used to justify the draconian pandemic mitigation laws — journal editors were systematically canceling any submitted studies with different conclusions.

You can argue about “study mills” and “pharma capture” all you want, but the truth is the journal editors failed. They earn their salaries as gatekeepers with the duty to ensure fair peer review. They are expected to actually read the studies to make sure they make sense. They failed. Worse, they reason they failed to do their job was on purpose, because the editors decided their job was not to ensure good science, but to enforce the official narrative.

But the narrative was wrong.

Given the stakes and the dollars involved, and how the system markets “peer review” as some kind of false scientific gold standard, of course pharma will try to get its fake studies published. Fake studies mint billions. But, if “peer review” is to be used as the gold standard, then editors like Wiley must ensure their products are not just a shiny artifice.

They are selling us fool’s gold. The good news is the whole rotten frame is falling down on them. And what started it tipping over was how far they overreached during covid. It’s another unexpected covid blessing.

☕️ THE BLUE WALL ☙ Wednesday, June 12, 2024 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠

Jury convicts Hunter and media starts smugness contest; June temps disappoint activists; 10th Circuit raises tough questions of body autonomy; WSJ reports fake science; Trump W's; and more.

www.coffeeandcovid.com

11,000 FAKE RESEARCH REPORTS

 

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