Seems some profiling of the papers and journals that publish these nonsensical mumbo jumbo should clearly spot most of the frauds initially. Such as papers authored and published from china, india and developing third world countries.
He’s definitely revealing all the quiet parts. Much to my pleasure of course. lol
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I hope my cannabis sources are still published. Don’t fail us now, NIH! 
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There are a couple of members of this forum conspicuous in their absence from this thread.
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CASE STUDY
(This is an example of a retracted paper. My comments & insight will appear on a second post to follow)
When researchers want to express the degree of difference between two groups, they sometimes rely on something called a “Cohen’s d.”
It has been way too long since my last math or stat course so I won’t try to explain it, but a contributor on Pubpeer illustrates it this way in 2019:
He was discussing a study by two professors, (Jayati Sinha, who holds the Macy’s Retailing Professorship at Florida International University and Rajesh Bagchi, of Virginia Tech University) who found a significant correlation between ambient temperature and auction behavior. (Low temp = 67°F, High temp = 77°F.) Having been reviewed by at least two other people (at least one hand-selected and at least one assigned) the study appeared in Journal of Marketing in 2019. LINK
In that study, the degrees of difference the researchers found were large, very large in comparison to the examples above.
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Hat’s off to the contributor at PubPeer
When the data is expressed that way it clearly raises some questions.
Eventually, a reader contacted the Journal of Marketing:
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An investigation ensued and the article was retracted on 08/20/2021
End of Case Study
COMMENTS on the Case Study Above
Well, an investigation occurred and the study was retracted.
End of story right?
The multibillion dollar industry polices itself, right?
Besides, the study is pretty mundane and unimpactful so no harm done, right?
Not exactly.
1.) That retraction was neither the first, nor the last for Dr. Jayata Sinha. (I previously referred to her a a dept chair. she is not.)
In addition to that study being retracted, three other studies by Dr. Sinh have been retracted. One on 03/05/2016, one on 11/09/2021, and one on 05/27/2022.
2.) Each of those studies has one or more co-authors including
- Jing Wang, U of Iowa
- Pronobesh Banerjee, Winston-Salem U
- Promothesh Chatterjee, U of Kansas
- Rajesh Bagchi, Virginia Tech
- Randall L Rose, U of South Carolina
And each of the four retracted papers has at least one “pal reviewer” and one independently-assigned referee. Meaning, in addition to Dr. Sinah ~13 people, (co-authors to reviewers to referees) signed-off on these papers.
There may be only one big liar here (Dr Sinah) but why were 13 other people asleep at the switch? That’s a lot of people. Being a sleep at the switch seems to be the industry norm.
3.) Dr Sinha still has her job. The official FIU link below lists her as being on the staff and notably, she lists at least two of her retracted papers among the (total 16) publications that appear on the page,
https://business.fiu.edu/about/directory/profile/sinhaj
I’m thinking
"How can we trust this woman to do anything like
- lecturing to students,
- publicly advocating for gov’t policy
- doing further research etc.?
This woman should be fired and perhaps even brought up on charges as a repeat for-profit con artist"
I am also thinking her numerous con-conspirators should also be very closely examined. (a colonoscopy) They cannot be trusted to do their jobs judiciously. At the very least they are like the Walmart employee slacker who claims “I did this task , boss” and did not actually do it. They lack integrity and need to be held to a higher standard than a McWorker making McFries.
Dont know if theres a universal standard but many colleges, institution of higher education and research institute already established their own academic reseach ethics policies.
Perhaps if any egregious knownly use of fraud in violation of these research ethic policies, the institutions and colleges will lose their accreditations permanently
Well apparently when institutions do their self-assessments for accreditation purposes they find themselves A-1 ok. (No surprise there.)
It remains pretty clear that use of papermills is widespread.
Why would a person publish via a papermill if doing so leads to nothing, (no job offer, no promotion etc.?) Obviously one would not.
– Ergo, we know that academics receive some positive benefit from publishing via papermills.
Who is in a position to handout these benefits (jobs, promotions etc.?) Obviously not your local grocer, your local man on the street etc…
– Ergo, we can surmise that mainstream academia, (even those who have never published via papermills) is willfully giving jobs promotions etc. to people who publish at papermills etc…
Note also that https://retractionwatch.com/ maintains a database of retracted academic papers. It does not claim it’s database is complete or comprehensive, just a list of those retractions that came to its attention.
Their database contains over 49,000 retractions, but (only) 4,432 of those were retracted for being the product of papermills. The other 44,000+ were retracted for such reasons as
- Results Not Reproducible,
- Unreliable results,
- Data not Provided,
- Falsification/Fabrication of Data
- Falsification/Fabrication of Results
or, (my favorite) - Fake Peer Review. (there is no hiding when you’ve done that one. There is no wiggle room, or “lost notes” for that one. It’s a flat-out lie.)
EX Paolo Gardoni, an engineering professor with U of Illinois Urbana has had two papers retracted because of “Fake Peer Review”
He remains on staff there, active there, even heads up one of their research centers.
The university website notes
"He has received over $50 million in research funding from multiple national and international agencies including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Qatar National Research Funds (QNRF), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the United States Army Corps of Engineers.
Hopefully this leads to less worship of human beings and more dismissal of the know-it-alls who think they’re actually learning anything from hasty internet searches in the heat of an online argument.
For example, edumacated people have been caught saying things like this out loud:
Looks pretty common to me
I wonder
- Did all these researchers keep their jobs?
- Is this the first time for all of them? Or were there telltale signs that were (willfully) ignored by the people who interviewed them for hiring and promotion?
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June 6, 2024
June 5
(cited nearly 2,500 times)
March 20
Feb 7
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