• @brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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    2010 months ago

    California microbiologist Elisabeth Bik, 57, has been sleuthing for a decade. Based on her work, scientific journals have retracted 1,133 articles, corrected 1,017 others and printed 153 expressions of concern…

    Incredible, she has some enemies.

  • stravanasu
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    10 months ago

    Really embarrassing also for the journals that published the papers – and which are as guilty. They take ridiculously massive amounts of money to publish articles (publication cost for one article easily surpasses the cost of a high-end business laptop), and they don’t even check them properly?

    • @JoBo@feddit.uk
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      510 months ago

      Oh, they don’t pay the peer reviewers. That would cut their profit margins waaaay too much.

    • @Akagigahara@lemmy.world
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      510 months ago

      Why would they? They get the money. I feel like that system is just prime corruption/malpractice and leads to crap like this.

      It’s for profit all the way through

    • @moitoi@feddit.de
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      10 months ago

      You have a lot of shit in the journals. I read about autism for example. I can’t count how many article with restrain and basic human right abuse are published. And, it continues in 2024.

      It’s seriously depressing to see this BS and other pseudo-scientific text published.

  • @Haagel
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    1110 months ago

    That’s really embarrassing, but not surprising that a medical institution would lie and cheat. The profit motive is destroying scientific research.

    • bmaxv
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      310 months ago

      @bl4kers @floofloof I think it’s interesting that it’s just a 30 something dude.

      The things he’s found aren’t super detective stuff either, he’s taken an interest, found a few pictures that look suspicious, looked some more and wrote about it. Something anyone can do.

      I find that motivating.

  • AutoTL;DRB
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    710 months ago

    This is the best summary I could come up with:


    Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a Harvard Medical School affiliate, announced Jan. 22 it’s requesting retractions and corrections of scientific papers after a British blogger flagged problems in early January.

    They use special software, oversize computer monitors and their eagle eyes to find flipped, duplicated and stretched images, along with potential plagiarism.

    In a Jan. 2 blog post, Sholto David presented suspicious images from more than 30 published papers by four Dana-Farber scientists, including CEO Laurie Glimcher and COO William Hahn.

    The blog post included problems spotted by David and others previously exposed by sleuths on PubPeer, a site that allows anonymous comments on scientific papers.

    Technology has made it easier to root out image manipulation and plagiarism, said Ivan Oransky, who teaches medical journalism at New York University and co-founded the Retraction Watch blog.

    Some may intentionally falsify data, knowing that the process of peer review — when a journal sends a manuscript to experts for comments — is unlikely to catch fakery.


    The original article contains 792 words, the summary contains 158 words. Saved 80%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

  • Lung
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    610 months ago

    Hahah what a hobby, using image processing and probably AI to check old papers that predated the tools. Kinda like using DNA to solve old crimes

  • @bhmnscmm@lemmy.world
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    210 months ago

    If you find this interesting, the Freakonomics podcast just put out a really good series on academic fraud. I highly recommend it.

  • ivanafterall
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    110 months ago

    I thought this was The Onion, at first. It’s every internet commenter’s dream headline!

    • Hypx
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      210 months ago

      Blogs are a good idea. We should go back to them instead of being dependent on social media.

      • @force@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        no god please, i hate googling something and the first 12 results are all blogs that take forever to get to the point and then give a bad answer

        i don’t think i could live any longer if i didn’t have “site:reddit.com” or “site:stackexchange.com” etc. to filter out most of the garbage

    • @xkforce@lemmy.world
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      110 months ago

      I hope so because I am working on 2 of them. One for a dumb minecraft mod pack I am building and the other a mix mash of science topics ranging from tutoring resources, commentary on current events in science and on how science is reported in media.