was the recent title of a Retraction Watch essay
the problems with the Scopus journal rankings, however, run much deeper. The issue is not that inflated citation numbers have occasionally propelled impostor journals to the top of the list. Rather, at least in my own field of literary studies, the ranking makes no sense whatsoever.
I can confirm that also the h-index calculation is wrong when looking up my own account – showing 68 instead of 82.
Rechtzeitig zur Olympiade kommt eine ARD Dokumentation zu Doping, der kriminellen Abkürzung zu Ruhm und Ehre.
Irgendwie erinnert die SZ Filmbesprechung daran, wie aktuell Betrug in der Wissenschaft gehandhabt wird:
Ausführlich zu Wort kommt im Film der spanische Blutpanscher Eufemiano Fuentes, ein verurteilter Superdoper, dessen Dienste das Vaterland bereits in den Achtzigerjahren diskret anwarb. Sportärzte verstehen was von Muskeln und Gelenken, Gynäkologen wie Fuentes was von Blut und Hormonen…Anfragen der Rechercheure zu Fuentes’ Aussagen ließen alle Betroffenen unbeantwortet. Gewagt sei aber die Prognose: Bei den Spielen, die in keinem Halbsatz ohne Floskeln zu Fairness, Ethik und Erziehung auskommen, wird die Causa totgeschwiegen.
Wo immer Ethik gepredigt wird, liegt die Moral im Argen.
Twitter integration has been suspended by WordPress after renaming to X … but here is an announcement as screenshot
Program at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/open-research-summer-school-tickets-910343470827
Unforgotten the testimony of Eysenck’s peer Grossarth-Maticek in Heidelberg
Science relies on controversy. Disagreement is part of research, solid consensus is overturned, celebrated researchers enter shady territory. Most of the time, this proceeds more or less smoothly, without all too much of an outcry. Most of the time…
There is a new video explaining the case
The PubPeer drama and the defense is at Südhof Website.
I added some comments at the PubPeer thread above regarding scientific integrity, compression artifacts, stiching bugs, corner cloning and other paltry excuses.
Post publication peer review is a serious and apparently necessary enterprise. Forensic image analysis is a scientific discipline like molecular biology – see Sencar et al, Beck, Miura et al. for this. Following the ground breaking work of Bik, Bucci and other image analysis experts it is now an integral part of scientific integrity studies. I would therefore hesitate to dismiss identical background areas as “Dr Bik’s A.I.-powered software”. Image duplication software is not even AI powered as it uses rather conventional techniques and can even be verified by the naked eye. Low quality scanner and poor cameras are also not leading to the observation above. Text recognition (Xerox bug) as discussed by #19 is not involved here, neither is this the Thermo Fisher quantification bug nor is this a new case of corner cloning by the publisher. Funny other excuses at PP in similar cases are artefacts by sandwich impressions of other membranes, fingerprints & dirt traces, pen artefacts and explanations like “the scanner mixed up a double exposure””, “we could scan only smaller areas and made an error when pasting pieces together”.
Here are the inks to
– Nikon stitching bug
– Xerox text recognition bug
– Thermo Fisher quantification bug
– corner cloning type 1 (label exchange?), type 2 (scale exchange?) and type 3 (rotational cut?)
It’s a pain, Stanford has the knowledge while this does not prevent msiconduct.
Found at futirism.com
Google researchers have come out with a new paper that warns that generative AI is ruining vast swaths of the internet with fake content — which is painfully ironic because Google has been hard at work pushing the same technology to its enormous user base.
The study, a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper spotted by 404 Media, found that the great majority of generative AI users are harnessing the tech to “blur the lines between authenticity and deception” by posting fake or doctored AI content, such as images or videos, on the internet. The researchers also pored over previously published research on generative AI and around 200 news articles reporting on generative AI misuse.
The authors painfully collected 200 observed incidents of misuse reported between January 2023 and March 2024 and find
– Manipulation of human likeness and falsification of evidence underlie the most prevalent tactics in real-world cases of misuse…
– The majority of reported cases of misuse do not consist of technologically sophisticated uses … requiring minimal technical expertise.
– The increased sophistication, availability and accessibility of GenAI tools seemingly introduces new and lower-level forms of misuse that are neither overtly malicious nor explicitly violate these tools’ terms of services, but still have concerning ethical ramifications.
Das DÄ schreibt über die “Hängepartie für den Deutschen Ethikrat”
Der Deutsche Ethikrat bleibt vorerst arbeitsunfähig. … Entsprechend des Ethikratgesetzes muss die Hälfte der normalerweise 26 Ratsmitglieder von der Bundesregierung vorgeschlagen werden, die andere Hälfte vom Parlament. … Momentan sind lediglich vier Mitglieder im Ethikrat verblieben, deren Amtszeit noch nicht beendet ist: die Theologin Elisabeth Gräb-Schmidt, der Physiker Armin Grunwald, der Bioethiker und Philosoph Mark Schweda und die Philosophin und IT-Expertin Judith Simon. Ihnen gehe jetzt Arbeitszeit verloren, so Vetter. Da es bis zur Neuberufung des Rates keine Sitzungen gebe, müssten sie untätig warten, bis ihre neuen Kolleginnen und Kollegen berufen seien.
Ich fürchte, weder Bundesregierung noch Parlament hat allzu großes Interesse mehr an den Stellungnahmen, die oft reichlich apodiktisch herkamen und – trotz oder wegen des akademischem Backgrounds nahezu aller Mitglieder/innen – nicht immer so qualifiziert waren wie man:frau sich das gewünscht hätte. Statt mehr externe Experten einzubinden, gab es unzählige PR Alleingänge der Vorsitzenden [vgl Dabrock, Buyx, u.v.a.m.]. Der Ethikrat steht sicher nicht vor der Auflösung – er ist immerhin gesetzlich legitimiert – aber als Gremium hat er an Bedeutung verloren.
(Linksammlung)
Die geleakten NDR Mails auf
https://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/download1200.pdf
Alle Frag Den Staat Emails auf
https://fragdenstaat.de/dokumente/248126-pruefbitte-bmbf-offener-brief/
Was 3329 Hochschulangehörige dazu meinen
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSccTcNVPTUSpezw2v7wWgNVpoFPfYsYMa9QpLkmCaq4YWy1Nw/viewform
Was Wissenschaftsfunktionäre dazu sagen
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/debatten/stark-watzinger-will-mit-hochschullehrern-reden-krisengespraech-zum-bmbf-19803153.html
Die offenen Fragen stehen auf dem Wiarda Blog
https://www.jmwiarda.de/2024/06/27/und-jetzt
Der Antrag auf einstweilige Verfügung von Frag den Staat, dem stattgegeben wurde.
Die entlassene Ex Staatssekretärin will reden – der “Prüfauftrag” passt nicht so recht zu Ihrem Interview vom Mai zur Freiheit der Wissenschaft . Der BMBF Link dazu geht aber nun ins Leere.
Es gibt aber auch noch ein früheres DFG Youtube Video von ihr sowie ein neues ZEIT Interview. Der neue Staatssekretär ist auch nicht viel besser wenn er uns als “verwirrte Gestalten” bezeichnet.
Update auf dem Wiarda Blog “Jetzt müssen SPD und Grüne Farbe bekennen”, Deadline ist der 20.8.2024.
Why was the Cambridge’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology so successful?
It was not by increasing administrative staff or new programme oriented funding research as many German research managers believe. It was by scientific (not primarily cultural) diversity
The LMB sets a coherent culture by promoting scientific diversity among its staff, encouraging the exchange of knowledge and ideas and valuing scientific synergies between different areas of research… It encourages the recruitment of groups with diverse but aligned interests that are complementary.
What did we do instead in Germany? We increased competition among groups and develop more hierarchical structures while the LMB is
promoting shared values and common aims helps researchers to feel part of the LMB community and proud to belong to it, fostering long-term loyalty. The LMB has always had a non-hierarchical structure — one in which emphasis lies in the quality of the argument, rather than in the status of the proponent.
So, indeed the incentives are different… While we laudate the number of external EU grants a group leader has been securing, LMB does the opposite
… resources are allocated in ways that encourage innovative collaboration between internal teams and divisions. For example, limits are set for research groups to bid for external grants, because these tend to have short-term, results-oriented requirements that might not align with the LMB’s longer-term ambitions.
I also went to Camden Square last week in London – Amy Winehouse is unforgotten.
best concert ever
the legacy
the price of fame
an untold story
Chris Said had an interesting blog post about the cost of scientific misconduct which includes 4 studies.
It would be a nice thesis if this could be done on a larger scale…
The former BMJ editor Richard Smith is writing about a new book by Carl Elliott “The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Price of Saying No” that is on backorder now. Most interesting for me is not his book review but his own insights.
Over the years I’ve been rung by potential whistleblowers, and I say to them two uncomfortable things: you have a duty to act but you are likely to be badly damaged as a result… What I haven’t said to them but will now after reading Elliott’s book is that the damage you experience is likely to affect your whole life. It’s a matter of power: “doctors have it and their subjects don’t.” Elliott quotes John Pesando, a whistleblower in the Cincinnati case, who says “Every whistleblower is an amateur playing against professionals.” […]
Most of us don’t blow the whistle because we recognise where the power lies. The state, the university, our employer, or the professor will crush us. But some people do blow the whistle. What drives them? Elliott concludes that there is no whistleblower “type” but that they usually act for deeply held moral reasons. He invokes the somewhat old fashioned idea of “honour” as the best way to explain why they act. […]
An alternative explanation offered by political scientist Fred Alford is “narcissism moralised.” Perhaps that’s close to honour. When I think of whistleblowers I know I think of people with a much greater sense of right and wrong than most of us have. I could use words like “exaggerated” or even “pathological,” but I like the concept of honour. I certainly admire whistleblowers.
Twitter was the #1 information source during COVID times but it is now officially declared dead in a new preprint “The Failed Migration of Academic Twitter“.
Utilizing publicly available user account data, we track the posting activity of academics on Mastodon over a one year period. Our analyses reveal significant challenges sustaining user engagement on Mastodon due to its decentralized structure as well as competition from other platforms such as Bluesky and Threads. The movement lost momentum after an initial surge of en- thusiasm as most users did not maintain their activity levels, and those who did faced lower levels of engagement compared to Twitter.
While the paper isn’t particular well designed – I would expect some Sankey plots showing the activity movement like those found after elections – the main message is clear. The paper summary also reflects my own experience as I am writing now only occasionally at my blog while my Twitter, Mastodon and Bluesky accounts are left in an orphan state.
Leider funktionieren die Onleihe Screenshots über GoFullPage in Brave nicht so schön wie in Chrome da zusätzliche CSS Elemente von Onleihe stören . Mit drei Regeln im Inhaltsfilter
kann man sie aber ausblenden. Die Zoom Buttons sind zwar dann auch weg aber der Zoom funktioniert weiter mit CRTL+ bzw CTRL-.