Free Republic

Fake studies have flooded the publishers of top scientific journals, leading to thousands of retractions and millions of dollars in lost revenue. The biggest hit has come to Wiley, a 217-year-old publisher based in Hoboken, N.J., which Tuesday will announce that it is closing 19 journals, some of which were infected by large-scale research fraud. Paywall.

But new tools show promise in tackling growing symptom of academia’s “publish or perish” culture When neuropsychologist Bernhard Sabel put his new fake-paper detector to work, he was “shocked” by what it found. After screening some 5000 papers, he estimates up to 34% of neuroscience papers published in 2020 were likely made up or plagiarized; in medicine, the figure was 24%. Both numbers, which he and colleagues report in a medRxiv preprint posted on 8 May, are well above levels they calculated for 2010—and far larger than the 2% baseline estimated in a 2022 publishers’ group report. “It is just...

E-mail Author Send to a Friend <% printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%> Print Version February 24, 2005, 8:14 a.m. Science Goes Tabloid In scientific journals, if it bleeds, it leads. By Iain Murray In the United Kingdom, most of the respected broadsheet newspapers have cut costs and increased circulation by adding a tabloid edition. Some argue that this downsizing has led to a dumbing down of the papers' content. But, in both Britain and America, it is not just the news industry that is shifting to a more sensationalistic attitude. Some scientific journals are abandoning scientific neutrality in favor of policy...

Science censors itself for war effort Journals try to keep sensitive findings out of terrorists' hands The world's leading science journals will no longer publish details of research that might somehow aid terrorists, even if it means withholding information that could advance scientific knowledge. The unusual self-censorship agreement was announced at a major gathering of scientists this weekend. It reflects the current social climate in which security is paramount -- but some experts say it should be viewed with caution because of its potential to stifle research. The new policy has been adopted by 32 publications and scientific associations, including...