From the Washington Post:
Every now and then a scholarly journal retracts an article because of errors or outright fraud. In academic circles, and sometimes beyond, each retraction is a big deal.
Now comes word of a journal retracting 60 articles at once.
The reason for the mass retraction is mind-blowing: A “peer review and citation ring” was apparently rigging the review process to get articles published.
You’ve heard of prostitution rings, gambling rings and extortion rings. Now there’s a “peer review ring.”
…
After a 14-month investigation, JVC determined the ring involved “aliases” and fake e-mail addresses of reviewers — up to 130 of them — in an apparently successful effort to get friendly reviews of submissions and as many articles published as possible by Chen and his friends. “On at least one occasion, the author Peter Chen reviewed his own paper under one of the aliases he created,” according to the SAGE announcement.
The statement does not explain how something like this happens. Did the ring invent names and say they were scholars? Did they use real names and pretend to be other scholars? Doesn’t anyone check on these things by, say, picking up the phone and calling the reviewer?
More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/10/scholarly-journal-retracts-60-articles-smashes-peer-review-ring/
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More also at retraction watch, the source of the WaPo story:
SAGE Publications busts “peer review and citation ring,” 60 papers retracted
If you like the title ‘Journal of Vibration and Control’ then you’ll love the ‘Journal of Controlled Release’ (owned by the Elsevier group).
Peer review is is simply enshrining the logical fallacy of argument from authority.
Good science stands on its own merits. It does not need anyone’s approval.
Once it becomes thinkable, it becomes doable.
Pointman
It is also amazing how many of these one-off vanity journals are used to satisfy the “peer reviewed” claim.
Open publishing via blogs is the only way forward imo. Take the power away and you take the corruption away. Honest results with honest critiques = good science.
I was scrolling through RetractionWatch . com and found an interesting case regarding GMO’s and rats … the comments are particularly enlightening. It seems that all is not well in the practice of peer-review, and that it is a rather well-known fact among those familiar with it.
http://retractionwatch.com/2014/06/26/republished-seralini-gmo-rat-study-was-not-peer-reviewed-says-editor/
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Mushroom George on July 10, 2014 at 12:09 pm
“But it was peer reviewed” will be the new “I was only following orders”.
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I also second this. 🙂
BTW if corruption like this happens is science, where reality has at least some sway, imagine how bad it is in medicine and psychiatry where cures and diseases are invented wholesale. There’s also the fallacy of the excluded middle at play: “We reject homeopathy, therefore pharmaceuticals are effective.”
Whenever I hear the term ‘science based medicine’ I reach for my revolver.
The science industry including all facets of academia and the universities are now no more than another mega multinational business that is totally reliant for it’s existence on the tax paying public.
As they are usually quite lavishly tax payer funded in their entirety, the whole scientific, academic and university level collective should be brought under the auspices of the relevant government business controlling authorities and the universities and their administrators should be held fully accountable for all the actions of the people, the scientists and the researchers in their employ and operating under their auspices, just as any other corporation or family run company is required to do under our laws and regulations.
And like corporations and companies the chief executive , the executives and the boards of all of these publicly funded academic and scientific organisations should be held both fully accountable for all the normal regulatory requirements and any failure to meet these requirements by the regulatory authorities.
The days of scientists, universities and an academia being able to do what they like at the total expense of the ordinary citizen tax payer and then treat the standards expected from them by that same tax paying public with outright condescension and contempt are over.
The scientific industry, academia and university level corporations themselves in their arrogance and contempt and failure to meet the standards required of other organisations and corporations in our society and the apparent and ever more revealing contempt for ethical and morally high research and performance standards particularly those that are totally reliant upon the public purse, are destroying the tax paying public’s trust in these scientific and academic organisations and the people within them by their blatant and often open contempt for any responsibility and standards that reflect the public’s nearly 100% contribution to their continued existence and their ongoing funding.
Chen CY, Chen T-H, Chen Y-H, Yu S-E and Chung P-Y (2013) Information technology system modeling an integrated C-TAM-TPB model to the validation of ocean tidal analyses Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 7 May 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312472924
Lin M-L and Chen C-W (2013) Stability analysis of fuzzy-based NN modeling for ecosystems using fuzzy Lyapunov methods Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 6 February 2013. doi: 10.1177/1077546312466687
This all just reinforces my opinion that “climate science” is a new oxymoron – up there with “army intelligence” and “helpful government”!
This is a new form of peer-review, first we had pal-review now,
Sock-Puppet Review.
The idea of peer review assumes ‘peers’ are above reproach, that they are only interested in objective facts and science, and that they know what they are talking about in the first place. That they are above crass competition for places and social mobility, and have unlimited financial stability. Oh, and self interest doesn’t exist.
Whoever set it up has a lot to answer for. Straight out of Plato’s idea of a community of unelected philosophers who decide how to run things for everyone else. Ever heard of the corrupting influence of money and power? “What would such a social system do to the minds of those within it?”
University internal regulation doesn’t work too well, but I’ve yet to hear an alternate model which works very well either. Making them more accountable and forcing academia to follow its own rules is a start.
Fraud can occur anywhere even in science. tyrannical politicians use this kind of so-called “science” as an excuse to implement laws and regulations without any due diligence or democratic process; they must be stopped if a new dark age is to be avoided.
As long as 41 lawyers graduate for every engineer in the USA, the probsbility of a new dark age in the USA is quite high.
“Peter Chen
Computer Scientist
Peter Pin-Shan Chen is an American computer scientist. He is a Distinguished Career Scientist and faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University, who is known for the development of the entity-relationship model in 1976. Wik”
Wrong Chen. This Chen is from a Taiwanese university (where there are probably another 167 researchers named Chen)
Surface meet scratch !
Just sayin》
AIG says
july 10, 2014 8:38pm
=============================================================================There are about 150 Chens or people who claim to be named Chen just in the 60 retracted articles .
I think that the first article about modeling vibration in the ocean, might touch on a subject that relates to global warming, but really it hard to see how any other of these really have anything to do with it.
If anybody wants to get up to speed with the history of peer review [ Einstein who wrote some 300 or more journal papers only ever had one paper peer reviewed and he kicked up a fuss about that when he found out ] and the quite disturbing failures of peer review and it’s impact in preventing quite possibly very major advances in science to be publicised then a look at the quantum computer researcher Michael Nielsen’s “Three Myths about Peer Review” will provide a background to the rising of the peer review process over the last 40 or 50 years.
http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/three-myths-about-scientific-peer-review/
In certain circles, if a prophet’s prophecies don’t come to pass, then the prophet gets terminated.
What is the impedance of the termination?
AIG says:
July 10, 2014 at 8:38 pm
I see. The Chen that was reviewing his own papers is basically named “John Smith” and is in computer science. Thank you, I simply read it to mean that he was from Taiwan but that the current employer had not been disclosed. Thank you for the correction.
Interesting topics:
Shih BY, Lin MC and Chen CY (2012) Autonomous navigation system for radiofrequency identification mobile robot e-book reader Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 13 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312466578
Chang RF, Chen CY, Su FP, Lin HC and Lu C-K (2012) Multiphase SUMO robot based on an agile modeling-driven process for a small mobile robot Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 13 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464993
Shih B-Y, Lin Y-K, Cheng M-H, Chen C-Y and Chiu C-P (2012) The development of an application program interactive game-based information system Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 12 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464682
Chen C-Y, Chang C-J and Lin C-H (2012) On dynamic access control in web 2.0 and cloud interactive information hub: technologies Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 12 December 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312464992
Shin BY, Chen CY and Hsu KH (2012) Robot cross platform system using innovative interactive theory and selection algorithms for Android application Journal of Vibration and Control Epub ahead of print 13 November 2012. doi: 10.1177/1077546312463757
It was going to happen some time. But it happened sooner than I thought, the malefactors became too oververconfident. I suppose there are not enough carpets at the beer-pal reviewing academia, there is too much dirt to brush under.
MarkW says:
I’ve lost track of the number of warmistas who have declared that if an article has been “peer reviewed” than it can’t be questioned.
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There is widespread public misconception of what a published study represents.
I wonder who the reviewers were who supported Dr. Mann’s hockey stick research?
I bet this isn’t even the ‘tip of the iceberg’…
Sounds like Tony’s trying to jump-start one of Sir Christopher’s ‘Fallacies of Logic’ here. Number 8 – Argumentum a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid. “The argument of assuming something inappropriately by arguing from the general to the particular.” Heartland 2012:
Fallacy of Logic: Some abuse peer review (allegedly), therefore peer-reviewed global warming papers are worthless, therefore there is no AGW.
Sigh!