Was reading the Analytical Scientist magazine in my lunchroom today, and this heading was the actual heading of the editorial by James Strachan.
Excerpt:
"There's a debate in philosophy about whether science produces real knowledge--perhaps to the surprise of many scientists! The predictive power of scientific theories would seem to suggest that they are offering accurate descriptions of the world. Yet theories do change over time- scientists used to be confident about the existence of "ether". Will the unobservable entities and best-explanations we posit today stand the test of time?
What about the amyloid hypothesis? In 2006 [a researcher] discovered an unknown polymer AB*56,which when isolated and injected into the brains of mice, caused Alzheimer's-like symptoms...And since then, many millions--perhaps billions--of dollars have been spent developing anti-AB therapies, with little to no success. Now, a 6-month investigation led by Science magazine has found that the 2006 study may contain fabricated results.
If true, the findings would cast doubt on 16 years of research- consider that more than 2300 papers cite the original study. ... Do scientists, on the whole, put too much stock in the findings of individual papers and the peer review process? ...Regardless of any fabrication, other researchers have struggled to reproduce [the] results, so should the paper have been ctied 2300 times? What proportion of researchers cast a truly skeptical eye over the findings?"
Page 9 is their regular contributor Victoria Samanidou's article "Academic Integrity Volume 3: An Indecent Proposal" -- a great series overall -- taking aim at pay-to-publish journal editors. She suggests to revisit the Committee of Publication Ethics [COPE] guidelines, and speak out (send her a letter) about the new schemes you see.
An anonymous letter writer to her last column says he sees "abusive" reviewers:
"Abusive reviewers may become aware (by early citation, arXiv, word of mouth) that a "target" paper or researcher is under review, and then write to the journal's editor demanding to be made a reviewer. ... When decision letters for contributed papers are sent, it's common practice to send all reviews to all reviewers... Scathing anonymous reviews will damage the paper's authors in the eyes of the other unnamed reviewers... Reviewers in the first round are often asked to review the revision...a reviewer may [then] stridently attack another reviewer's first review, and...damn the work of third parties by name.
I've also seen reviewers attacking papers of students of professors with whom they've had a disagreement, even if these students are publishing independently. ... Abusive reviewers are also authors, and such authors have been known to add a few sentences to the typesetters proof of accepted papers."
Questioning "The Science"
Excerpt:
"There's a debate in philosophy about whether science produces real knowledge--perhaps to the surprise of many scientists! The predictive power of scientific theories would seem to suggest that they are offering accurate descriptions of the world. Yet theories do change over time- scientists used to be confident about the existence of "ether". Will the unobservable entities and best-explanations we posit today stand the test of time?
What about the amyloid hypothesis? In 2006 [a researcher] discovered an unknown polymer AB*56,which when isolated and injected into the brains of mice, caused Alzheimer's-like symptoms...And since then, many millions--perhaps billions--of dollars have been spent developing anti-AB therapies, with little to no success. Now, a 6-month investigation led by Science magazine has found that the 2006 study may contain fabricated results.
If true, the findings would cast doubt on 16 years of research- consider that more than 2300 papers cite the original study.
...
Do scientists, on the whole, put too much stock in the findings of individual papers and the peer review process?
...Regardless of any fabrication, other researchers have struggled to reproduce [the] results, so should the paper have been ctied 2300 times? What proportion of researchers cast a truly skeptical eye over the findings?"
Page 9 is their regular contributor Victoria Samanidou's article "Academic Integrity Volume 3: An Indecent Proposal" -- a great series overall -- taking aim at pay-to-publish journal editors. She suggests to revisit the Committee of Publication Ethics [COPE] guidelines, and speak out (send her a letter) about the new schemes you see.
An anonymous letter writer to her last column says he sees "abusive" reviewers:
"Abusive reviewers may become aware (by early citation, arXiv, word of mouth) that a "target" paper or researcher is under review, and then write to the journal's editor demanding to be made a reviewer.
...
When decision letters for contributed papers are sent, it's common practice to send all reviews to all reviewers...
Scathing anonymous reviews will damage the paper's authors in the eyes of the other unnamed reviewers...
Reviewers in the first round are often asked to review the revision...a reviewer may [then] stridently attack another reviewer's first review, and...damn the work of third parties by name.
I've also seen reviewers attacking papers of students of professors with whom they've had a disagreement, even if these students are publishing independently.
...
Abusive reviewers are also authors, and such authors have been known to add a few sentences to the typesetters proof of accepted papers."
I thought all that was very topical.