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This seems to be one of the biggest cases of scientific misconduct ever:
On July 8, scientific publisher SAGE announced that it was retracting a whopping 60 scientific papers connected to Taiwanese researcher Peter Chen, in what appears to be an elaborate work of fraud.
This case is one of what appears to be a recent spate of scientific malfeasance. So what's going on here? Is this just a uniquely bad run? Or does the recent spate of scientific misconduct point to a flaw in the peer-review process? Vox.com provides a rundown.
The Chen case is quite astounding. Publisher SAGE announced it was retracting 60 papers from 2010-2014 in the Journal of Vibration and Control, which covers acoustics, all connected to Peter Chen of National Pingtung University of Education, Taiwan.
Chen allegedly created up to 130 fake email accounts to create a 'peer review and citation ring'.
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Tuesday July 15 2014, @08:26PM
Most appropriate name - Pingtung ? It has everything to do with acoustics.
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 15 2014, @08:27PM
Looks like dice is forcing fck beta.
css is borked on classic.slashdot.org
redirected to beta once site unresponsive a few times
go bacon!
(Score: 0, Troll) by mrchew1982 on Tuesday July 15 2014, @08:40PM
Untill we start making these scientist financially and criminally culpable for this crap it is going to continue ad infinitum. I know that their careers are over once they are caught, but the damage to the scientific community seems to far outweigh that small personal loss. I think prison time (2-5 years) and a lifetime of debt should be levied against them, so that their only respite is to work behind the counter at mcdonalds.
[QUOTE]'peer review and citation ring'[/QUOTE]
Why does this sentence evoke images of the gay pride circle jerks and gang bangs of the 90's?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by strattitarius on Tuesday July 15 2014, @09:29PM
Why does this sentence evoke images of the gay pride circle jerks and gang bangs of the 90's?"
Because you're a bigot looking for a reason to sneak your hatred into any medium possible? You really think a normal mind goes from citation ring to gay circle jerk? No. Sorry, but you are just messed up.
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mrchew1982 on Tuesday July 15 2014, @09:58PM
Sorry to have ruffled your feathers, I meant no offence to anyone. It was just a off the cuff remark that now, in hindsight, I realize might upset someone. I sincerely apologize.
(Score: 2) by strattitarius on Thursday July 17 2014, @07:54PM
Slashdot Beta Sucks. Soylent Alpha Rules. News at 11.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday July 15 2014, @08:59PM
The pressure and demand to "publish or perish" lowers the overall quality and makes researchers take, more or less creative, shortcuts that dances on the boarderline of cheating and clearly many times tripping over said line. Does it have to be harder to explain then that?
(Score: 2) by e_armadillo on Tuesday July 15 2014, @09:19PM
Publish or perish probably does apply. But, this doesn't appear to be a case of shortcuts. It sounds like a whole lot of work went into creating the fake accounts and writing the fake reviews. This wasn't tripping over some line that one is skating along. This appears to be running headlong at the line and leaping as far over it as humanly possible -- hoping nobody will notice. This seems to be simple fraud, passing off bad-science that no amount of honest effort could fix.
"How are we gonna get out of here?" ... "We'll dig our way out!" ... "No, no, dig UP stupid!"
(Score: 1) by looorg on Tuesday July 15 2014, @09:42PM
I agree that in this specific case it seem quite obvious that it is a matter of deliberate cheating. Setting up lots of emailaddresses etc is not a misstake or done by accident.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 16 2014, @06:54AM
This. There is a massive continent of publications which should get redacted but never will. And those do absolutely nothing to advance science, quite on the contrary. We're living in some crazy all-quantity-no-quality age...
(Score: 4, Informative) by zpma on Tuesday July 15 2014, @09:28PM