That seems to depend on who you read: Last year in the journal Science, a research review concluded that the chytrid fungus caused the decline of at least 501 amphibian species, of which 90 have gone extinct. That paper suggested that species losses due to the chytrid fungus are “orders of magnitude greater than for Read More…
Peer review
Retraction fun: Fellow didn’t seem to know much about cats
Generally, never trust anything a cat tells you about how it hunts. That’s proprietary information and a lot depends on it. The cat is rarely trustworthy anyhow.
At Areo: How universities cover up science fraud – the details
A pretty hard-hitting article. Is it partly the secular god-like status that these “scientists” assume? The tax funding they receive? Whatever fixes all this will need to be pretty far-reaching.
Science media have strange standards for assessing corruption…
Berezow goes on to add something very significant: “The scientific publishing industry is thoroughly corrupt, and AAAS and Science are now also a part of the problem. If and when all government-funded research is mandated to be released free of charge upon publication, journals like Science may go out of business. Good riddance.”
Anyone remember psychologist Hans Eysenck? There’s now a retraction frenzy on his papers
The rap? Among other things, “the implausibility of the results presented, many of which show effect sizes virtually unknown in medical science.”
Steve Fuller in Times Higher: Academics are the last “feudal lords”
Fuller: Many if not most academics fancy themselves as “anti-capitalist”, but that may be because they are the last feudal lords. They alone take the metaphors “domain of knowledge” and “field of research” literally, which ultimately explains the fixation on plagiarism.
Is lavish taxpayer funding killing science?
Before you say no, at least read this.. One senses that the massive increase in research misconduct masks a deeper issue. Why don’t scientists want to be more honest? In most systems whose practitioners are distinguished for a high standard of integrity, integrity is actually a value. Can science thrive without it?
End of science prediction from 2014: Are we there yet?
Daniel Greenfield on the Saganization of science: This form of science measures itself not against the universe, but against the intellectual bubble inhabited by those who share the same worldview or those who live under their control.
At Times Higher: Is Defending Expertise Worthwhile These Days?
Taking issue: Persecution stories are only a small part of the picture. The insistence that anyone be allowed to have whatever they are doing, saying, or thinking regarded as science in order to do justice to wronged groups doesn’t in fact arise from scientists who are on the outs with their colleagues about an ingroup issue like Vit C injections or HPV vaccines. It arises from a social justice demand that the professional and academic spoils of science be shared among a host of new claimants, making a variety of claims.
Climate change is NOT making tropical fish act odd
The claim couldn’t be replicated. But then how likely IS it that haywire fish would actually be attracted to predators instead of just behaving in weird ways, getting themselves eaten?
800 Russian journal papers retracted: The most interesting question is undiscussed
To the extent that science is global, tolerated fraud in one milieu taints an entire discipline. Recall the smug people who think that science is an infinitely superior way of knowing, Won’t that be an increasingly harder sell as more people become aware of these tip-of-the-iceberg “bombshell” revelations?
Science decadence: A “Woke” medical journal’s war on having kids
When institutions get this crazy (and Berezow provides a number of further examples of Lancet gone crazy) , it’s usually because their reason for existence has been undermined. Is it Lancet that we don’t need any more or medical journals generally? We’ll be able to find out by seeing whether a number of other journals follow suit and ramp up the crazy.
Research fraud in China: The weak spot of totalitarianism?
The central weakness of totalitarianism is that it exalts the powerful lie over the fact. But nature doesn’t reward that behavior. It may take a long or short time for the system to collapse (and other systems can collapse for other reasons). But the insistence that 2+2=5 if the Party says so is a lethal flaw.
Researchers test whether science advances one funeral at a time
Yes. And with luck, retirement works the same way. Many Darwinians are looking kind of like they could use a break and there is lots to research.
Researchers: There is an inference crisis as well as a replication crisis
In other words, even if social scientists can replicate research results, there may be little agreement about what, if anything, they mean. Is it a good idea for governments to consult them on social policy?