Anti-Trust in Scientific Journals

James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal ^ | February 12, 2025 | Nathan Schachtman

[karpov]

Scientific journals emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries as the principal way in which scientists and the public shared scientific ideas and discoveries. Journals met the need for dissemination of research results so that the scientific community could challenge, debate, test, replicate, and refine scientific claims. Timely publication of studies in so-called peer-reviewed journals became an essential step in obtaining scientific knowledge.

Journal papers are foundational building blocks in the political and legal realm. Scientific studies, peer reviewed and published in journals, are necessarily relied upon by expert witnesses in their opinions in judicial proceedings, as well as in the promulgation of sound regulatory and legislative rules that protect our health and safety.

For some time, however, the practice of scientific publication has suffered from threats to the integrity and validity of published papers. These threats undermine trust in science, as well as public health and the rule of law.

We do not have to look hard for evidence that the foundation is crumbling. Criticisms of science publishing practices have been around for some time, especially in the field of epidemiology of potential health risks. In 1999, a prominent epidemiologist, Lewis Kuller, published a commentary, “Circular Epidemiology,” which criticized the practice of publishing studies that showed associations that were already well established, or consistently ruled out, without adding any increased analytical rigor.

[hinckley buzzard]

A watchdog organization, Retraction Watch, documents thousands of “scientific” articles which have been retracted due to false results, distorted reporting of data, plain fabrication using AI, and the product of “paper mills,” unethical generators of counterfeit articles on demand. Made possible by the collapse in many fields of the peer review process. These fake articles include critical fields such as cancer research, pharmaceutical trials, other medical domains which could be affecting treatment decisions.

[BroJoeK]

"A watchdog organization, Retraction Watch, documents thousands of “scientific” articles which have been retracted due to false results, "

"Thousands" does sound like a lot, but then you consider, every year over 5 million scientific papers get published, 90% peer reviewed.
Over 10 years, that is 50 million papers, meaning that, if 5,000 are retracted as invalid, the retraction rate is around one one-hundredths of one percent.

My hope is that this area of study is one place where really capable A.I. could more that pay for itself by reading all the studies and weeding out duplicates, mistakes, substandard work and outright frauds.

I suspect this will drive up the initial rejection rate quite high, but then reduce the overall volume of papers -- as unnecessary studies are reduced and poor work eliminated.

[Rockingham]

An even more insidious problem is that many published scientific studies cannot be replicated, with cancer research so problematic that the major pharmaceutical companies treat almost all of them as suspect.

Moreover, medical studies are often compromised by basic errors in statistics and probability that indicate a lack of math and logic skills and inadequate oversight from publishers and review panels.

Notably, physics studies tend to be reliable because modern physicists tend to be math nerds of the first rank. On the other hand, social science studies are frequently so weak in method as to be little more than extended opinion essays.