MDPI changes the content of a published paper even without any correction note – read yourself
We are completely loosing track if “deemed by the Editorial Office to be a reasonable request” is leading to modifications of text, images or data. And this happened already as I learned recently.
James Clear adds the reason
Truth and accuracy are not the only things that matter to the human mind. Humans also seem to have a deep desire to belong … Humans are herd animals. We want to fit in, to bond with others, and to earn the respect and approval of our peers. Such inclinations are essential to our survival. For most of our evolutionary history, our ancestors lived in tribes. Becoming separated from the tribe—or worse, being cast out—was a death sentence.” … Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe … If you want people to adopt your beliefs, you need to act more like a scout and less like a soldier. At the center of this approach is a question Tiago Forte poses beautifully, “Are you willing to not win in order to keep the conversation going?”
Hard to accept for a scientist but probably true.
“Life is too short to be serious all time”, GILE Journal of Skills Development, Vol. 4 No. 1 (2024)
In this food for thought article, we introduce the ‘Donald Duck Phenomenon’ to consider ten of the more unconventional reasons for publishing in academia. These include
(i) symbolic immortality,
(ii) personal satisfaction,
(iii) a sense of pride,
(iv) serious leisure,
(v) cause credibility,
(vi) altruism,
(vii) collaboration with a friend or family member,
(viii) collaboration with a hero,
(ix) conflict or revenge, and
(x) for amusement.
The article was inspired by the lead author’s social media search for a co-author with the surname ‘Duck’. Through LinkedIn, the lead author, Associate Professor William E. Donald, who is based in the UK and specialises in Sustainable Careers and Human Resource Management, found a collaborator, Dr Nicholas Duck, who is based in Australia and specialises in Organisational Psychology. While the collaboration may appear to be somewhat ‘quackers’, per one of Donald Duck’s famous phrases “Life is too short to be serious all the time, so if you can’t laugh at yourself then call me… I’ll laugh at you, for you”. We hope that this article offers some interesting insights and acts as a way to stimulate conversation around unconventional reasons for publishing in academia.
At this point, I feel bleak at the prospect of typing them out again. The problems with overpublication, ‘publish or perish’ culture, abusive lab environments, analytical flexibility, p-hacking, clinical trial registration games, grant front-running, intellectual capture, nonsense journals, fake journals, peer review manipulation, moral entrepreneurship, etc. precede the present discussions of paper mills and active falsification/fabrication cases…
I have tried at least four times in my memory to write out and codify how I would start an institute to combat these problems. Specifically, a formal organization under a 501c3 structure designed to address the problem.
In Germany we have the IQWIQ, an independent Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care who examines the benefits and harms of medical interventions for patients. But they don’t care about all the medical nonsense studies around. And without PubPeer we wouldn’t even know the nonsense…
Lior Pachter has an interesting observation
which goes back to an old article of Richard Guy extracting four major issues in interpreting data
Unfortunately this seems to describe the way we think and even worse – this is what the science system promotes: the spectacular, the unexpected, the fascinating news.
To continue his story, what is the lifetime of the spurious idea? In many instances effects are declining rapidly for example in intelligence research. It took me some time to find the first paper that I remember – it was in 2001 that John & Despina wrote that the results of the first study correlate only modestly with subsequent research on the same association. This was confirmed in 2005
Of 49 highly cited original clinical research studies, 45 claimed that the intervention was effective. Of these, 7 (16%) were contradicted by subsequent studies, 7 others (16%) had found effects that were stronger than those of subsequent studies, 20 (44%) were replicated, and 11 (24%) remained largely unchallenged.
A scandal? The list of failed studies is long, including all areas of biomedicine already back in 2015.
Es tut der Wissenschaft nicht gut, wenn man probiert, sie auf politische Ziele festzulegen, selbst wenn diese weithin gesellschaftlich akzeptiert sind. Was ist die Alternative? Eine altmodische Idee von Max Weber. Sie heißt: Werturteilsfreiheit. Damit wollte Weber die Sozialwissenschaften gegen eine Vereinnahmung durch links und rechts bewahren. Wissenschaftler, so Weber, sollen erforschen, wie die Welt ist, nicht ihre Autorität nutzen, um anderen einzureden, wie die Welt sein sollte. Denn wo sich Werte widersprechen, kann man nicht wissenschaftlich entscheiden, welche richtiger sind. Forscherinnen und Forscher sollten sich deswegen aus politischen Diskussionen fernhalten.
oh ja, das hatte ich auch einmal im Ärzteblatt geschrieben was ich denn von Umweltepidemiologie halte, die vor 30 Jahren gegen und nun im Mainstream Nonsense Ergebnisse produziert.
Und nun auch in der neuesten ZEIT “warum eine Universität überhaupt eine politische Haltung hat”.
Also Positivismusstreit reloaded?
Nein, bestimmt nicht. Ohne einzelne Werturteile geht es natürlich nicht, sie sollten im Zweifel aber als “Conflicts of Interests” am Ende jedes wissenschaftlichen Artikels stehen. Wo die Tatsachen enden und wo die Interpretation anfängt.
Eine interessante Neuschöpfung, die “Digital Humanities” – siehe eine Einführung der GH Wuppertal
Die Digital Humanities (DH) sind eine Brücken-, Schnittmengen- und Metadisziplin in Bezug auf die Geisteswissenschaften, die Informationswissenschaft und die angewandte Informatik. DH schlägt die Brücke von den Forschungsgegenständen, Fragestellungen und Methoden der geisteswissenschaftlichen Disziplinen zu ihrer formalen Bearbeitbarkeit mit digitalen (computergestützten, algorithmischen) Verfahren. Sie bildet eine Schnittmenge zwischen den Disziplinen soweit es die Entwicklung und Anwendung informatischer Lösungen für geisteswissenschaftliche Problemlagen betrifft.
und Bücher gibt es bereits ohne Ende dazu
Wikipedia citation
Thomas Nagel argues that while a human might be able to imagine what it is like to be a bat by taking “the bat’s point of view”, it would still be impossible “to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat“… While it is possible to imagine what it would be like to fly, navigate by sonar, hang upside down and eat insects like a bat, that is not the same as a bat’s perspective.
Animal consciousness is still terra incognita while I also assume that “humans are not unique in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness.“
I am a big fan of study preregistration which includes also pre-registration of systematic reviews. PROSPERO is a perfect place for that as it
accepts registrations for systematic reviews, rapid reviews and umbrella reviews. PROSPERO does not accept scoping reviews or literature scans. Sibling PROSPERO sites registers systematic reviews of human studies and systematic reviews of animal studies.
So I wrote a protocol (basically the method section of the review), downloaded a few papers, constructed a score sheet and entered a few papers to see if my data collection scheme is complete and if my R program is running correctly.
But when I tried to enter the study into the preregistration form, it was no more possible if you read the following notice carefully
Before completing a registration form, please check that your review is eligible for inclusion in PROSPERO
- Registration should take place once the systematic review protocol has been finalised, but ideally before screening studies for inclusion begins. However, reviews are currently accepted for registration as long as they have not started data extraction.
- Completed reviews should not be registered.
- PROSPERO only accepts registration of systematic reviews with a health related outcome.
- Cochrane reviews should not be registered individually (we are working towards uploading these electronically)
as it prohibits any data extraction.
So I believe, that most entries in PROSPERO are by authors with supranormal power who know how their data will look like in advance. Or are they simply ignoring the fact that data extraction may not have been started?
I any case, the database is slow and many records outdated while it seems that it is still stuck with COVID19 …
Die Fakten
Die Verschwörung
So erkennt man Verschwörungstheorien
1. Worum geht es?
Der Glaube, dass bestimmte Ereignisse oder Situationen heimlich hinter den Kulissen von mächtigen Kräften mit negativen Absichten manipuliert werden.2. Verschwörungstheorien haben diese 6 Dinge gemeinsam
Eine angebliche, geheime Verschwörung.
Eine Gruppe von Verschwörern.
„Beweise“, die die Verschwörungstheorie zu stützen scheinen.
Sie suggerieren fälschlicherweise, dass nichts zufällig geschieht und dass es keine Zufälle gibt; Nichts ist so, wie es scheint und alles ist miteinander verbunden.
Sie teilen die Welt in Gut und Böse ein.
Sie machen Menschen und Gruppen zum Sündenbock.3. Warum gedeihen sie?
Sie erscheinen oft als logische Erklärung von Ereignissen oder Situationen, die schwer zu verstehen sind und ein falsches Gefühl von Kontrolle und Entscheidungsfreiheit vermitteln. Dieses Bedürfnis nach Klarheit wird in Zeiten der Unsicherheit noch verstärkt.4. Woher kommen sie?
Verschwörungstheorien beginnen oft mit einem Verdacht. Sie fragen, wer von dem Ereignis oder der Situation profitiert und identifizieren so die Verschwörer. Jeder „Beweis“ muss dann der Theorie entsprechen.Wenn Verschwörungstheorien erst einmal Fuß gefasst haben, können sie sich schnell verbreiten. Sie sind schwer zu widerlegen, weil jeder, der es versucht, als Teil der Verschwörung angesehen wird.
5. Menschen verbreiten Verschwörungstheorien aus unterschiedlichen Gründen:
Die meisten glauben, dass sie wahr sind. Andere wollen Menschen aus politischen oder finanziellen Gründen gezielt provozieren, manipulieren oder ins Visier nehmen. Sie können aus vielen Quellen stammen wie Internet, Freunden, Verwandten.
I asked for that earlier [2019,2022] while only now this idea is being taken up, see https://error.reviews/
The Bill Gates problem – billionaire philanthropists investing only in their own interests – is a real problem
Similarly restricted views exist in other areas, too. In the energy sector, for instance, Gates flouts comparative performance trends to back exorbitantly expensive nuclear power instead of much more affordable, reliable and rapidly improving renewable sources and energy storage. In agriculture, grants tend to support corporate-controlled gene-modification programs instead of promoting farmer-driven ecological farming, the use of open-source seeds or land reform. African expertise in many locally adapted staples is sidelined in favour of a few supposedly optimized transnational commodity crops.
On the hand, billionaires do not pay tax – which is adding even more weight to the Nature commentary. But what are the alternatives “tax the rich“? One remarkable woman is now showing how this could work – Marlene Engelhorn
Marlene Engelhorn, who is 31 and lives in Vienna, wants 50 Austrians to determine how €25m (£21.5m) of her inheritance should be redistributed. “I have inherited a fortune, and therefore power, without having done anything for it,” she said.
“And the state doesn’t even want taxes on it.”
It is hard to believe – but after research paper mills there are now also review mills
What I eventually found was a Review Mill, a set of 85 very similar review reports in 23 journals published by MDPI (Agronomy, Antibiotics, Applied Sciences, Atoms, Biomimetics, Biomolecules, Cancers, Catalysts, Chemistry, Coatings, Electronics, International Journal of Molecular Sciences, Journal of Clinical Medicine, Journal of Personalized Medicine, Materials, Metals, Molecules, Nutrients, Pathogens, Polymers, Prothesis, Sensors and Water) from August 2022 to October 2023, most of the time with coercive citation, that is, asking authors to “cite recently published articles” which were always co-authored by one or more reviewers of the Review Mill.
sondern wie es sich mit der Wahrheit verhällt – so Thomas von Aquin
Quia studium philosophiae non est ad hoc quod sciaturquid homines senserint sed qualiter se habeat veritas rerum.
De caelo et mundo, lib. I, lect. 22, nr. 228
