Spyke

Syndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.

View original on mander.xyz

24 replies

lemmy.world

I think that Retraction Watch needs to do an institution leaderboard, to highlight which are the most, & least, corrupt institutions, because corruption's a cultural thing, not merely an individual-thing.

_ /\ _

60
GorGorreply
startrek.website

Wouldn't that end up with a big survivorship bias? The truly corrupt would have no retractions from authors or institutions and there are potential incentives for publishers to not retract.

22

Exactly.

There are plenty of retraction worthy papers still standing. I think most in academia have come to the realisation that as of the late 2010s and early 2020s the ratio of decent paper to slop has gotten so bad that most bad papers are just ignored, not retracted.

4

Now, I'm aware that I'm on the science memes comm right now, and that you're all much smarter and more enlightened and mature and shit.

But that dudes name is hitler and not one of you has said a word about it, and I find that very disappointing.

39
Owlreply
mander.xyz

Isn’t that the joke ?

20
Klearreply
quokk.au

Yes! Finally a comment that explained it!

8
lemmy.world

I wonder how retracting a man’s papers compares to rejecting him from art school?

18

Put this guy on suicide watch and keep him away from his niece.

13

Had this article pop up in my news feed last week or smth like that

If you read it you will notice the absurdly named Hitler Louis has a partner named Innocent Benjamin lmfao. It reads like satire.

9
lemmy.world

curious - as i have only worked in the data pipeline side of research and cohort generation - is it not ok for a researcher to cite their prior work if said work is post peer review?

9
The_vreply
lemmy.world

It's normal to cite your own work if the new paper is a continuation of that research. A references or three is normal and expected.

When somebody publishes a bullshit paper that is eventually withdrawn, every subsequent paper citing the fraudulent work can also be withdrawn as being unreliable.

A sign it's all bullshit is when you see the majority of the citations for the paper from the same author. This usually doesn't pass peer review anymore. In hyperspecialized fields with few researchers, they commonly get a little creative on the introduction section to include other authors.

16

When somebody publishes a bullshit paper that is eventually withdrawn, every subsequent paper citing the fraudulent work can also be withdrawn as being unreliable.

It depends on how foundational it is, of course. If you could swap it for a dozen other papers, nobody cares. If you're continuing the work from a retracted paper, you're fucked (but then, you probably would have noticed some errors pretty soon anyway).

I have a friend who basically ran a series of experiments based on a paper that was complete bullshit. And like any good biochemist, he figured he was screwing up, or the equipment was faulty, or the substrate was more cursed than usual. Lucky for him, after weeks of smashing into a brick wall of failure, he started asking other people, who also kept failing and then they figured it out.

4

By leaderboard do they mean the "Bad Hitlers" leaderboard? Cus he's not at the top sure, but on the board I can believe.

2

You reached the end