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1. Flick 🇬🇧 (flick@spinster.xyz)'s status on Friday, 11-Aug-2023 19:48:14 JST Flick 🇬🇧

   https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/science-fiction-the-crisis-in-research/

   The vast majority of scientists are honest, but recent years have seen many cases of scientific misconduct come to the surface, implying there is a systemic problem. The financial and reputational rewards that come with headline-generating results make research fraud all too tempting. High–profile papers on stem cells, superconductivity, psychological priming, drug efficacy and ocean-heat content have been retracted.

   Retraction Watch, an organisation that pushes journals to withdraw dodgy studies, estimates that 5,000 papers are retracted a year but that this is a tiny fraction of how many should be. And they argue that most scientists who retract papers suffer no career setback, while ‘the ones whose papers haven’t been retracted have even fewer worries’.

   • Disinformation Purveyor :verified_think: likes this.
   • Disinformation Purveyor :verified_think: (thatguyoverthere@shitposter.club)'s status on Friday, 11-Aug-2023 20:00:00 JST Disinformation Purveyor :verified_think:

     in reply to

     @Flick > Ah, peer review, that laying on of hands that renders a profane paper scientifically sacred. In practice, peer review has become less a means of challenging papers than a way of keeping out heretics while waving through true believers. In 2019 the late science writer Sharon Begley exposed how a powerful cabal of professors used peer review to ensure that Alzheimer’s research remained in thrall to the hypothesis that amyloid plaques are a cause rather than a symptom of the disease. Grants and publications were denied to heretics of this faith.