Modern study By scientists from Northwestern, University appointed alarm bells about the future of academic research, warning that the publication of fraudulent teachings is growing at a faster pace than in the case of justified research.
Over the past four centuries, a hidden agreement has been created between scientists and countries: in exchange for the production of knowledge useful for economic and social development, governments and other benefactors offer researchers a stable career, good salary and public recognition. This model, similar to the commercial enterprise model, proved to be effective and was repeated in most regions of the world.
However, recent studies published in the journal Materials from the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reveals that in recent years this system – consisting of researchers, academic institutions, government agencies, private companies and distribution platforms – shows signs of breakup.
The authors say that due to the huge scale and specialization of contemporary science, the contribution of each actor is no longer assessed on the basis of the internal merits of their work, but according to quantitative indicators, such as the number of published research documents, how often articles are cited by other studies, university rankings or prizes and other recognition.
“These indicators quickly became the purpose of measuring the institutional and personal influence, which generated the uncontrollable competition and growing inequality in distribution of resources, incentives and awards,” warn the authors.
This, in turn, led to the spread of fraud in some districts of the scientific community, because scientists are looking for quick ways to gain success indicators. “The use of numerical indicators to evaluate projects and specialists … encourages you to look for shortcuts,” says Pere Puigdomènech, president of the Committee for Research Integrity in Catalonia (CIR-CAT) in Spain. Types of fraud detected include from the creation of fictitious tests, plagiarism, to the purchase and sale of authorship and quotes in documents.
Mafia, which threatens scientific honesty
Northwestern research shows that fraud cases are often not isolated incidents, but rather the result of sophisticated networks that operate systematically to undermine the integrity of science.
The research team of this article, led by Luis Amarał, a professor of engineering sciences and applied mathematics at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, came to this conclusion after analyzing huge amounts of data on withdrawn publications, editorial records and image reproduction.
The sources included the main scientific literature aggregators – such as Web of Science, Scopus, Pubmed/Medline and Opelenax – as well as lists of magazines removed from these databases to violate quality standards or ethical standards. In addition, data on returned articles marked by watching the Investigative Watch website, comments to the SCIENCE PAPER review Pubpeer website and editorial metadata (editorial names and dates of transmission and acceptance) were also collected and analyzed.
This analysis emphasized the work of “papers”-did not know organizations that massively produce low-quality manuscripts and sell them, sometimes through intermediaries, scientists who want to quickly publish the material. These papers often contain forged data, manipulated or protected on the right paintings, plagiarized content, and even absurd or physically impossible claims. “These networks are basically criminal organizations working together to falsify the science process,” said Amaral in statement Posted by Northwestern University.