There were more scammers in science than thought
A scientific trick
Two-thirds of the articles withdrawn by scientific journals are the result of fraudGrigory Kolpakov, "Newspaper.
This conclusion refutes the opinion that has existed so far that articles are mostly removed due to unintentional errors.
The result refers to articles on biomedical topics. The corresponding study was carried out by the group of the editor-in-chief of the journal Infection and Immunity, Farrick Fung, a microbiologist from the University of Washington in Seattle, and published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Miscellaneous accounts for the majority of retracted scientific publications).
Scientific fraud (speaking of it, the world scientific community uses the English word misconstruct, which in translation into Russian means bad behavior, official crime and even adultery – "Newspaper.Ru") includes falsification of data, suspicion of data manipulation, plagiarism and publication of the same message in different publications. Previous studies, based primarily on the explanations of the editors themselves, gave a completely opposite picture – according to them, it turned out that in most cases (up to about 60%) the reason for the withdrawal of articles turned out to be "honest" mistakes of researchers. However, the journals, notifying the scientific community about the withdrawn article, do not always explain why this was done. The explanations of the authors themselves are hardly worth fully trusting – the accusation of fraud is much scarier for a scientist than the accusation of an unintentional mistake. Therefore, Feng decided to clarify the situation using a different approach.
His group analyzed 2,047 recalled biomedical journal articles in the database taken by journals for the period from 1947 to May 2012. To find out the reasons for the withdrawal of the article, scientists used not only the explanations of journals, but also other sources of information, such as data from the Office of the National Institute of Health on Integrity in Research and the portal Retractionwatch.com , who are engaged in the analysis of reviews.
It turned out that scientific fraud was the cause of reviews in 67 percent of cases (43% – falsification or suspicion of falsification, 14% – duplication of publications and 10% – plagiarism). And only 21 percent are due to unintentional errors.
It also turned out that since 1975, the number of reviews of articles convicted of scientific fraud has increased tenfold, reaching a level of about 0.01% of the number of all articles. The researchers also found a direct relationship between the number of scam reviews and the impact factor of magazines. The top ten journals with the maximum number of reviews of articles for this reason included the most influential journals, such as Science, Nature, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Cell. The situation with duplication of publications is very interesting. Two magazines – The Journal of Biological Chemistry and Anesthesia & Analgesia – got into the top ten precisely because of reviews for this reason
Moreover, it was noticed that the same authors are engaged in this kind of scientific fraud. Fung and his colleagues identified 38 research groups, each of which accounts for at least five reviews for dubbing. The German anesthesiologist Joachim Boldt was named the champion among the "understudies".
Recently, the effectiveness of the search for fraud cases by magazines has increased dramatically due to the advent of the Internet and more advanced software that allows you to check articles. Therefore, it remains unclear what caused such a sharp increase in reviews for misconduct – whether scientists began to cheat more, or magazines learned to expose them better. However, researchers believe that the multiplication of the number of crooks from science plays a role here – publication in a serious journal has become too much of a temptation.
According to one of the study participants, microbiologist Arturo Casadeval, editor-in-chief of the mBio journal from Seattle, biomedical research has turned into a winner–takes-all game - a serious publication can easily bring a serious grant and a higher scientific title to a scientist. As for improving the efficiency of the search for cases of scientific fraud, even if it plays a role, it may not be so great due to the fact that not only search methods, but also methods of fraud are progressing. "The better the filter, the more sophisticated the deception," says Casadeval.
It is worth noting, however, that this fly in the ointment got into too big a barrel of honey, and the bulk of scientists work honestly. Recall that there are only one hundredth of a percent of crooks in this environment.
Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru03.10.2012