“Across the 32 papers that have so far drawn publisher scrutiny, all list Semenza as an author, but there are many combinations of different co-authors.” – Holly Else
Peer review
At Nature: Authors’ names have “astonishing” influence in science
Surely the author of this paywalled article, Nicola Jones, is joking if she claims to be astonished. Does she think we are all the slow class? Her mistake.
At Retraction Watch: … a massive list of retractions due to peer review rings
Ironically, it’s easier to trust science when we see something being done about fraud. Elite demands for blind trust don’t have anywhere near the same effect.
At City Journal: In science today, correctness openly trumps truth
Irrespective of evidence, if people don’t like what’s being said about them — and they are a perceived victim group — it’s not science. Well, at least we know how science will end: As a public relations agency!
Eureka! Researchers discover the Gollum effect in academia
At Times Higher: Scholars who examined “research opportunity guarding” – how some professors have lied, threatened and sought to sabotage the careers of those seeking to move into their topic – liken the behaviour to that of the maniacally possessive guardian of the Ring of Power from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth chronicles.
J. Scott Turner: Scientific publishing as a scam
Readers unfamiliar with J. Scott Turner may wish to know that he is also the author of Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It. And here he is, publishing at Real Clear Science… Maybe it took someone willing to quit worshipping at the Darwin shrine to bring this out.
Get rid of the science paper?
Richie: This [his proposal] would be a major improvement on the status quo, where the analysis and writing of papers goes on entirely in private, with scientists then choosing on a whim whether to make their results public.
Some things never change: Ridiculous attack on the surgeon author of an article on scientific gatekeeping
Let’s just say, 1) the author goes on at some length and 2) readers may find it useful to know that gate defenders are out there and some of them would appear to have a lot of time on their hands.
A surgeon protests scientific “gatekeeping”
Singer: “… a problem arises when some of those experts exert outsized influence over the opinions of other experts and thereby establish an orthodoxy enforced by a priesthood. If anyone, expert or otherwise, questions the orthodoxy, they commit heresy. The result is groupthink, which undermines the scientific process.”
How the COVID pandemic showed that evidence-based medicine is — at present — an illusion
Malone: The release into the public domain of previously confidential pharmaceutical industry documents has given the medical community valuable insight into the degree to which industry sponsored clinical trials are misrepresented. Until this problem is corrected, evidence based medicine will remain an illusion.
Universities? Do poor science career prospects contribute to far out theory and Cancel Culture?
Far out theory (e.g., “Advanced aliens engineered the Big Bang…) may be one way of standing out in the crowd — and Cancel Culture is definitely a way of thinning that crowd. Sutter’s suggestions are worth pondering.
At BMJ: Evidence based medicine running into many of the same problems as felled earlier reform movements
Op-ed: “Ironically, industry sponsored KOLs [key opinion leaders] appear to enjoy many of the advantages of academic freedom, supported as they are by their universities, the industry, and journal editors for expressing their views, even when those views are incongruent with the real evidence. While universities fail to correct misrepresentations of the science from such collaborations, critics of industry face rejections from journals, legal threats, and the potential destruction of their careers.”
Why has science begun to resemble the troubled crowd at school?
Why does a person who is University of North Carolina research chief need plagiarism? And why should journals ban Russian scientists. If Putin doesn’t care about them, we aren’t hurting him.
New Zealand’s Royal Society grudgingly lets off two scientists who critiqued “Indigenous ways of knowing” as conventional science
Jerry Coyne: As I said, the controversy over the hegemony of MM [Indigenous ways of knowing taught as science] in science continues, and if I know anything about New Zealand educational politics, MM will worm its way into science class. All the new RSNZ statement does is exculpate two scientists unfairly accused of misbehavior and harm for saying that MM, while worthy of being taught, is not coequal with modern science.
Would you believe? Science ghostwriting factories in China
Epoch Times: A reporter from Xinhua Viewpoint, a column of official media Xinhua, posing as a cardiovascular and cerebrovascular physician contacted numerous paper factories and was told that all levels of dissertation could be written and published for him as long as the delivery time was not too short, according to Xinhua in a Jan. 11 report.