(from Consumer Health Digest newsletter)
research integrity
Trump
University lawsuits settled (Consumer
Health Digest #16-43 - November 20, 2016)
New York Attorney
General Eric Schneiderman has announced that Donald J. Trump has
agreed to pay $25 million to settle three lawsuits which charged
that he had misrepresented the nature and value of real estate
courses offered by Trump University. The settlement includes payment
of $21 million to settle two California class-action suits and
$4 million to New York State to be used to (a) reimburse former
students who were not parties to the class-action suits and (b)
if funds remain, to pay up to $1 million for costs and/or penalties
for Trump University's failure to obtain a license from the New
York's Education Department. Trump admitted no liability, but
Schneiderman's press
release minced no words:
In 2013, my office sued Donald Trump for swindling thousands
of innocent Americans out of millions of dollars through a scheme
known as Trump University. Donald Trump fought us every step of
the way, filing baseless charges and fruitless appeals and refusing
to settle for even modest amounts of compensation for the victims
of his phony university. Today, that all changes. Today's $25
million settlement agreement is a stunning reversal by Donald
Trump and a major victory for the over 6,000 victims of his fraudulent
university. Credential
Watch has additional details and links to the documents in all
three lawsuits.
NAS report
addresses concerns about research integrity (Consumer Health Digest #17-24 - June 18,
2017)
The National Academies
of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has published a report
that expresses concern about research integrity and proposed measures
that would protect it. The report states:
- A growing body of evidence indicates that substantial percentages
of published results in some fields are not reproducible.
- While a certain level of irreproducibility due to unknown variables
or errors is a normal part of research, data falsification and
detrimental research practices, such as inappropriate use of statistics
or after-the-fact fitting of hypotheses to previously collected
data, also play a role.
- New forms of detrimental research practices are appearing, such
as predatory journals that do little or no editorial review or
quality control of papers while charging authors substantial fees.
- The number of retractions of journal articles has increased,
with a significant percentage due to research misconduct.
- Practices that have until now been categorized as "questionable"-for
example, misleading use of statistics that falls short of falsification,
and failure to retain research data-should be recognized as "detrimental"
practices.
- Detrimental practices should be understood to include not only
actions of individual researchers but also irresponsible or abusive
actions by research institutions and journals.
- Research institutions and federal agencies should ensure that
good faith whistleblowers-those who raise concerns about the integrity
of research - are protected and that their concerns are addressed
in a fair, thorough, and timely manner.
- Research sponsors, publishers, and federal funding agencies
should ensure that the information needed for knowledgeable persons
to reproduce the reported results is made available at the time
of publication or as soon as possible after that.
- Researchers should routinely disclose all statistical tests
carried out, including negative findings. Available evidence indicates
that scientific publications are biased against presenting negative
results and that the publication of negative results is on the
decline. But routine reporting of negative findings will help
avoid unproductive duplication of research and make research spending
more productive.
- Scientific societies and journals should develop clear disciplinary
authorship standards based on the principle that those who have
made a significant intellectual contribution are authors. Universal
condemnation by all disciplines of gift or honorary authorship,
coercive authorship, and ghost authorship would also contribute
to changing the culture of research environments where these practices
are still accepted.
To bring a unified focus to addressing challenges in fostering
research integrity across all disciplines and sectors, the report
urges the establishment of a nonprofit, independent Research Integrity
Advisory Board. The RIAB could facilitate the exchange of information
on approaches to assessing and creating environments of the highest
integrity and to handling allegations of misconduct and investigations.
The report - Fostering
Research Integrity - can be accessed online free of charge
or ordered from the Academies Web site, which also has a
video of the briefing that announced the report.
"Predatory
journal" critic speaks out again (Consumer Health Digest #17-24 - June 18,
2017)
Jeffrey Beall, who
was the first person to study what he called "predatory journals,"
has emerged from a 5-month silence. Predatory publishers use an
author-pay open-access model and aim to generate as much revenue
as possible, often foregoing proper peer review. In 2012, Beall
launched a blog titled Scholarly
Open Access that listed predatory publishers and journals
and offered critical commentary on scholarly open-access publishing.
In January 2017, facing intense pressure from his employer (University
of Colorado Denver) and fearing for his job, he removed the content
from his Web site. [Beall J. What
I learned from predatory publishers. Biochemia Medica 27:273-279,
2017] His recent article traces the history of open access
publication, the rise of predatory journals, and the opposition
he received from authors, publishers, and-to his surprise-academic
librarians. It also warns:
I think predatory publishers pose the biggest threat to science
since the Inquisition. They threaten research by failing to demarcate
authentic science from methodologically unsound science, by allowing
for counterfeit science, such as complementary and alternative
medicine (CAM) to parade as if it were authentic science, and
by enabling the publication of activist science. . . .
CAM is really taking off, and it's being largely fueled by pay-to-publish
journals, though a few subscription journals have gotten in on
the action as well. Predatory journals and even journals from
legitimate publishers are legitimatizing this unscientific medical
research in the public's eye. Acupuncture and homeopathy are thriving,
and numerous "studies" are being published each year
to back up their effectiveness claims. In medicine, demarcation
is failing, and there's no longer a clear line where legitimate
medical research ends and unsound medical research begins. More
questionable medical research is being published now than ever
before in history, including bogus research promoting fake medicines
and nutraceuticals. There's no longer a clear separation between
the authentic and counterfeit medical research, even though medical
research is the most important research for humankind today. Indeed,
of all human endeavors, what surpasses medical research in importance,
value, and universal benefit?
Although the Scholarly Open Access Web site no longer contains
Beall's lists, the Internet
Archive has preserved them.
Recommendations
offered to combat predatory journals and conferences (Consumer Health Digest
#22-12 - March 20, 2022)
The InterAcademy Partnership
(IAP) has published a 126-page report on a two-year study to identify
practical interventions to curb the rise in journals and conferences
of practices that are compromising the integrity of research.
[Combatting
Predatory Academic Journals and Conferences. InterAcademy
Partnership, 2022.] The report used this definition:
Predatory journals and conferences are described here as a spectrum
or typology of journal and conference practices; a broad set of
dynamic predatory behaviours that range from genuinely fraudulent
and deceitful practices – as described by the international
consensus definition in Nature (Grudniewicz et al, 2019) – to questionable and unethical
ones, with varying degrees of unacceptable to well-intentioned
low-quality practices in the middle. At their core, and in agreement
with the international consensus definition, these practices serve
to prioritise self-interest at the expense of scholarship. They
can be committed by new and established, fraudulent and reputable,
traditional and Open Access publishers, anywhere in the world.
Typical markers are provided for each part of the spectrum to
help users navigate their way around this complexity.
The IAP includes more than 140 science, engineering, and medical
organizations that are seeking solutions to the world’s most
challenging problems. The study drew evidence from a survey, interviews,
and an extensive literature review. The report calls for:
- raising awareness and minimizing the risk, vulnerability, and
the temptation to use or promote predatory practices
- publishers, libraries, indexing and conferencing services to
improve and promote minimum standards of quality and practice
- action from: (a) leading multilateral organizations, such as
UNESCO, and international science networks, such as the International
Science Council, (b) higher education institutions, (c) government
organizations, (d) science funders, (e) learned societies, and
(f) national academies
- transitioning to less profit-motivated economic models of open-access
publishing, including alternatives to author-pay or pay-to-present
models, to cover the costs associated with academic publishing
- reform the research evaluation systems used by universities,
research funders, and professional bodies
- improving the peer-review process by increasing its transparency,
training, and rewarding of good practice.
Retraction
Watch highlights new tactics being used to publish fake scientific
papers (Consumer
Health Digest #24-03 - January 21, 2024)
Frederick Joelving,
an editor for Retraction
Watch, has described how paper mills operate to exploit “the
growing pressure on scientists worldwide to amass publications
even if they lack resources to undertake quality research.”
These mills generate “possibly
tens or even hundreds of thousands of articles every year”
that contain made-up data, are plagiarized, or are of low quality.
Their preferred targets are open-access journals to which authors
pay to have their articles considered for publication. In addition
to selling papers to prospective authors and influencing manuscript
reviewers, paper mills have exploited the lax vetting processes
for hiring open-access journal editors and guest editors of special
issues of the journals. They plant their own editors, who in some
cases employ made-up identities rather than their own. They also
pitch special issues to journal editors, get their own agents
placed on editorial boards of journals, and attempt to bribe journal
editors to publish papers. While some journal publishers have
recently made significant efforts to retract fraudulent papers,
it remains a challenge for editors to safeguard their journals
against the efforts of paper mills. [Joelving F. Paper
trail. Science, Jan 18, 2024]
Highlighting
low expertise can be effective in fighting health disinformation
spreaders (Consumer
Health Digest #24-44 - November 3, 2024)
Researchers from Northeastern
University and Huntsman Cancer Hospital conducted three preregistered
experiments with a total of 1,568 participants in the U.S. to
investigate how people evaluate dubious sources of health information
and their disinformation (false information spread intentionally).
[Swire-Thompson B, and others. Discrediting
health disinformation sources: Advantages of highlighting low
expertise. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 153(9):2299-2313,
2024]
Two of the experiments addressed cancer information. There were
no significant differences in effectiveness at reducing belief
in disinformation among three interventions: (a) correcting disinformation,
(b) highlighting low expertise, and (c) the two approaches combined.
In the third experiment, highlighting low expertise was more effective
than either highlighting a conflict of interest or correcting
disinformation for reducing belief in COVID-19 vaccine disinformation.
Highlighting low expertise was more effective in reducing belief
in vaccine disinformation for unvaccinated as well as vaccinated
populations, but the effect was sustained for greater than a week
only among the vaccinated.
In all three experiments, people who endorsed “complementary
and alternative medicine” were more likely to believe in
disinformation initially but less likely to reduce belief in disinformation
following interventions. In the third experiment, vaccine-hesitant
individuals tended to have more initial belief in disinformation
and were less likely to reduce belief in disinformation following
interventions. The researchers concluded:
In sum, we found that highlighting low expertise was
equivalent to or more effective than other interventions for reducing
belief in disinformation and reducing the perceived
credibility of dubious health sources. One unfortunate implication
of the current findings is that people who do have expertise
but spread disinformation nonetheless are the most damaging
to the public (such as doctors). More nuanced interventions will
need to be developed and tested to discredit these individuals.
Nonetheless, for typical health disinformation sources who lack
expertise, it appears that highlighting that they are unqualified,
inexperienced, or unable to provide accurate information is a
promising option for fact-checkers and practitioners.
page
created: August
3rd, 2017 and last updated:
November
9th, 2024