What Would We Do Without Peer Review?

21 Replies to “What Would We Do Without Peer Review?”

1. Like article. Show me his horse!

2. Betcha the same formula could be applied to Prime Ministers and Presidents with stand-ins for selfies !

3. First he’s and idiot if he thinks no one remembers Bonanza.
   Second, this fraud is right up there with Elias Alsabti and Charles Dawson.

4. Hoss Cartwright doesn’t exist? Maybe not in reality but many of us well remember Dan Blocker’s portrayal of our favorite Bonanza character.
   If the Left can fantasize about murderous dictators,why can’t we do the same about a great fictional character who was honest,hard working,loyal and kind?
   Hoss Cartwright had a much more positive influence on the world than the bastard the Left is currently mourning.

5. Ain’t credentialism grand.
   As the kleptocracy expands and the big lie need constant expansion,they have minions to support you know, credentials become ever more meaningless.
   Current resumes of job seekers being a good example.
   Experience?
   Just create your own.
   Credentials?
   There is an “app” for that?!

6. I first read about Alsabti in 1980, shortly after I started grad school. I was amazed that he even thought he could get away with filching other people’s work (almost verbatim in some cases) and pass it off as his own.
   While the article mentions cases of fake co-authors, perhaps the best example of deliberate scholarly fakery is the bogus article written and submitted by Alan Sokol:
   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair
   What both disturbing and amusing about the matter is how the whole system was taken in by the stunt.
   Idiocies like this make me glad I never became a professor.

7. One of the biggest problems with the scholastic system is that it’s heavily dependent upon publication numbers.
   In order to get a place at the academic hog trough (sometimes known as tenure), one has to show that one has not just actively conducted research but also published one’s results. The more papers one produces, the better, even if they may, in reality, be half-baked. One’s chances of a seat on the gravy train increases if those publications appear in prestigious journals.
   One’s funding might also be dependent upon a high publication rate, as the granting agencies like to believe that their money has been well-spent.
   One reason why people can get away with faking results, or even conjuring up co-authors out of thin air, is that few people bother reading the publications one claims to have produced. It takes a lot of time to obtain copies of the papers in order to read them, particularly if they happen to have been published in obscure journals. (Submitting manuscripts to them is often done because more reputable journals might have rejected them, the topics they cover are beyond the limits of accepted orthodoxy, or they’re so far out in left field that no one is sufficiently qualified to assess them.)
   Then there’s the time required to actually read, let alone, understand them. Verifying authors, if that’s ever done, is also time-consuming, particularly since in the past that was rarely done or even considered necessary.
   The whole process has a lot of weaknesses and shortcomings that make it vulnerable to such pranks, if not outright abuse.

8. Agreed, B. It was actually not that surprising or difficult to get away with. At the time there were more than 10,000 peer reviewed oncology journals worldwide. Odds were, that if you published your stolen paper in another journal on the other side of the planet (which was Alsabti’s modus operandi) it would never be seen by an author. And, given how many dozens are often listed as co-authors, how many people really check the full list?
   What was truly scandalous was the cover-up by the various universities after catching Alsabti. To avoid embarrassment, they would give him a letter of recommendation somewhere else. Columbia was one such university. The fallout was enormous.
   As for the Sokal affair, Sokal should be commended for his work in pointing out the sloppiness of peer review.

9. Agreed, John. I’ve seen the lengths those on the academic track go to in medicine. Every year we’re asked to submit a report of academic activity. When I can even be bothered, as a clinician I usually just list a couple of the conferences I attended and the topic I may have presented to the departmental rounds (lecture). The academic track folks submit a list which, if it were printed, would buckle a camel — every last lecture they attended, every topic they discussed with the residents, every journal they read, every paper they read in getting background for their research — if I were to do the same I’d look like the reincarnation of Tesla! It’s quantity over quality. And this business with citation stuffing was clearly identified in the climate gate e-mails: authors citing each other in order to put a lock on the journals and exclude competing evidence. But how to drain the swamp?!

10. Burkhard’s “the reason why”
    Burkhard Morgenstern ‏
    The wonderful world of competition and market economy: authors are customers now, expect every junk paper to be accepted immediately.
    The largest journal publishers make billions in profits.
    e.g.
    // According to the journal’s executive editor Johan Rooryck, the mass resignation is a way of protesting the business model of owner and publisher Elsevier—a subsidiary of London-based information giant RELX Group RELX , formerly known as Reed Elsevier. […]
    Like other academic publishers, Elsevier charges universities and researchers a hefty fee to access its journals, a price that can be as high as $2,000 per subscription. This model has come under fire from both academics and non-academics for some time, however, because it means that research—and in many cases, research that is funded by public grants—is unavailable to those who could make the best use of it. //
    And sometimes it’s not really research.

11. Scientific publishing has large ROIs. It has been some years since I saw the figures, but Elsevier had a 40% ROI.
    On another tack, my wife suggests putting dead researchers in author lists. Something like getting the dead to vote.

12. Yet another case of Garbage-In, Garbage-Out.
    I spent some time in academia research until I realized that the actual physical, repeatable accomplishments were not important to the university, the number of reports churned out was. As better employer, commercial industry was much more appreciative of actual results accomplished, and reports were minimal and exclusively for company use. They were also much nicer people to work with who appreciated the value of collaborative team work, instead of everyone keeping their work hidden until it was ready to publish for fear of being scooped or back-stabbed by someone smarter.
    Academia and government research bureaucracies produce the lowest quality product for the greatest cost. It appears to be patterned after the Soviet bureaucratic model.

13. One reason publishers extract such usurious subscription rates is because many universities are flush with cash and can easily afford to pay them.
    I remember reading in the New York Times Sunday colour supplement several years ago that Harvard had investments and holdings worth around the value of a small country’s annual gross national product. Add to that generous donations from corporations looking for tax breaks as well as alumni contributions and the money keeps rolling in.
    As well, many post-secondary educational institutions are run like businesses in which the students are “customers” of the “learning delivery” system.
    It’s all one giant money-making racket. Whoever brings in the most loot wins.

14. I spent some time in academia research until I realized that the actual physical, repeatable accomplishments were not important to the university, the number of reports churned out was.
    I noticed that while I was a grad student. Later, during my Ph. D. convocation ceremony, the university president at the time addressed those in attendance as if he was a corporate executive speaking at a shareholders meeting. He quoted all sorts of figures about how much research money was coming in and I believe he also mentioned the number of publications produced, as if those were just another one of the university’s “products”.
    ….commercial industry was much more appreciative of actual results accomplished, and reports were minimal and exclusively for company use.
    Usually because employers deal in tangible results in order to justify their expenditures. As for the exclusivity, that’s often due to the proprietary nature of what’s being worked on. Anybody outside the firm is generally denied access, so government and academe aren’t the only ones who tend to be secretive.
    As for collaboration, I’ve found that private industry isn’t necessarily better for that, either, largely due to internal company politics. One firm I worked for emphasized promotion through the ranks ahead of actual accomplishments.
    Academia and government research bureaucracies produce the lowest quality product for the greatest cost. It appears to be patterned after the Soviet bureaucratic model.
    Don’t forget that academe and government both pride themselves in providing jobs for life, just like the communist bureaucracies did.

15. HIs real name is Dan Blocker. He’s actually dead. I think Little Joe is dead too. Adam became an actor on a doctor show and went bald.

16. I need another Sasparilly! (Sarsaparilla)

17. The only Bonanza cast members still alive are Mitch Vogel and Tim Matheson.

18. I used to get depressed that peer-reviewed history journals not only would not publish my work, but sometimes even refused to consider it, because I was exposing fraud. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/p/pod/dod-idx?c=plag;idno=5240451.0001.016 But knowing what fraud the process really is makes me feel better. Instead law reviews publish most of my work and the courts cite my work. http://claytoncramer.com/scholarly/journals.htm#citations

19. True, but Rhoda Morganstern, (Valerie Harper) is still alive

20. // many universities are flush with cash and can easily afford to pay them. //
    +
    There aren’t many Harvards around; most depend on government and, increasingly in the U.S. & Britain, student fees.
    But those students, building up debt, are an even bigger market for the big journal publishers & many have turned to unofficial sources:
    Science Magazine, not in any big publisher’s stable, had some recent articles on what students are doing:
    Who’s downloading pirated papers?
    EVERYONE In rich and poor countries, researchers turn to the Sci-Hub website.
    By John Bohannon Apr. 28, 2016
    Just as spring arrived last month in Iran, Meysam Rahimi sat down at his university computer and immediately ran into a problem: how to get the scientific papers he needed. He had to write up a research proposal for his engineering Ph.D. […]
    But every time he found the abstract of a relevant paper, he hit a paywall. Although Amirkabir is one of the top research universities in Iran, international sanctions and economic woes have left it with poor access to journals […]
    He looked at his list of abstracts and did the math. Purchasing the papers was going to cost $1000 this week alone—about as much as his monthly living expenses—and he would probably need to read research papers at this rate for years to come. […]
    http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/04/whos-downloading-pirated-papers-everyone
    Downloading from unofficial sources has become so common that universities offer virus detection programs for their students to use.

21. Looks like my comment got snagged by the spam filter.