Investigation Reveals Epidemic Surge Of Fraudulent Scientific Research

After journal Nature sounded an alarm about a surge in fraudulent scientific and medical research many other organizations are finding the same.

Many have cried foul over the massive increase of scientific studies to push the agendas of mega-corporations and special interest groups only to be labeled as wing-nut conspiracy theorists.

They are now being vindicated as scientific organizations who started looking into the studies being submitted have uncovered an epidemic of fraudulent research and a record number of papers being retracted for various reasons.

his is the reality of living in a day and age where science has become the predominant ideology and the media exerts pressure on the masses to accept the ideology with a religious fervor.

The manufactured status quo has become to treat the questioning scientific research as if were blasphemy.

This all even though it is the same scientific community that played the key role in decades long cover up after cover up of  mass murder of millions of Americans so mega-corporations could make even more profits.

To be clear, it is not all scientists that are to blame just those who allow their credibility to be bought by the highest bidder in conjunction with their peers who work to silence the research of non-funded ethical scientists.

Still even with the massive surge of retracted research some are still defending the community by justifying the plague of retractions in Orwellian fashion.

The claim being made is the massive increase in retractions is only due to the emergence of new sophisticated software.

This software can scan some of the nearly 30,000 research papers published on a weekly basis to anomalies such as  plagiarism or the manipulation of data and images.

So in short, the reassuring excuse we are given is not that fraud, manipulation and plagiarism has increased just the methods of detecting such unethical practices have become better.

The Scientific Journal Nature reports:

Science publishing: The trouble with retractions

A surge in withdrawn papers is highlighting weaknesses in the system for handling them.

Richard Van Noorden

Download a PDF of this story.

This week, some 27,000 freshly published research articles will pour into the Web of Science, Thomson Reuters’ vast online database of scientific publications. Almost all of these papers will stay there forever, a fixed contribution to the research literature. But 200 or so will eventually be flagged with a note of alteration such as a correction. And a handful — maybe five or six — will one day receive science’s ultimate post-publication punishment: retraction, the official declaration that a paper is so flawed that it must be withdrawn from the literature.

It is reassuring that retractions are so rare, for behind at least half of them lies some shocking tale of scientific misconduct — plagiarism, altered images or faked data — and the other half are admissions of embarrassing mistakes. But retraction notices are increasing rapidly. In the early 2000s, only about 30 retraction notices appeared annually. This year, the Web of Science is on track to index more than 400 (see ‘Rise of the retractions’) — even though the total number of papers published has risen by only 44% over the past decade.

Click for larger image.

Perhaps surprisingly, scientists and editors broadly welcome the trend. “I don’t think there’s any doubt that we’re detecting more fraud, and that systems are more responsive to misconduct. It’s become more acceptable for journals to step in,” says Nicholas Steneck, a research ethicist at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. But as retractions become more commonplace, stresses that have always existed in the system are starting to show more vividly.

When the UK-based Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) surveyed editors’ attitudes to retraction two years ago, it found huge inconsistencies in policies and practices between journals, says Elizabeth Wager, a medical writer in Princes Risborough, UK, who is chair of COPE. That survey led to retraction guidelines that COPE published in 2009. But it’s still the case, says Wager, that “editors often have to be pushed to retract”.

Other frustrations include opaque retraction notices that don’t explain why a paper has been withdrawn, a tendency for authors to keep citing retracted papers long after they’ve been red-flagged (see ‘Withdrawn papers live on’) and the fact that many scientists hear ‘retraction’ and immediately think ‘misconduct’ — a stigma that may keep researchers from coming forward to admit honest errors.

Perfection may be too much to expect from any system that has to deal with human error in all its messiness. As one journal editor told Wager, each retraction is “painfully unique”.

But as more retractions hit the headlines, some researchers are calling for ways to improve their handling. Suggested reforms include better systems for linking papers to their retraction notices or revisions, more responsibility on the part of journal editors and, most of all, greater transparency and clarity about mistakes in research.

[...]

Read The Rest…

More From Natural News:

Investigation reveals epidemic of fraudulent research by scientists and doctors

(NaturalNews) The journal Nature sounded an alarm in the scientific and medical communities in 2011 by reporting that the number of research papers that had to be retracted was soaring to over 300 a year. The findings were often excused as simply honest mistakes. But now the real truth is coming out. Greed, forgery, and downright lies are behind much of this scientific fraud. And the researchers who make up facts and figures to snag lucrative grants and commit these crimes usually get away with little punishment.

Dr. Arturo Casadevall of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx and Dr. Ferric C. Fang of the University of Washington collaborated with R. Grant Steen, a medical communications consultant in Chapel Hill, N.C., to get to the bottom of the real reasons for the retracted papers in the biomedical and life sciences journals. In all, they looked at 2,047 of these articles that were retracted and they found the most common cause was far worse than they had imagined.

Their analysis, just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that misconduct was the reason for three-quarters of the retractions for which they could definitely find a cause. What kind of misconduct exactly? Making sloppy mistakes and, far worse, making up false data for incentives that include raking in hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars in grant money as well as academic recognition leading to raises.

These retracted papers (up 10 times in the last decade, according to the Nature article) contain research conclusions that aren’t just gaffes or meaningless BS. They can influence the way drugs are pushed and prescribed — with potentially deadly consequences. Take the case of Boris Cheskis, a senior scientist at Big Pharma’s Wyeth Research in the mid-2000s, and his colleagues who published two papers on the benefits of estrogen. When too many questions were raised, the scientists retracted both papers, admitting that some of their findings and data were “unreliable.” The truth: two years ago, the Office of Research Integrity at the federal Department of Health and Human Services announced Dr. Cheskis had actually falsified the figures he used.

So did Dr. Cheskis go to jail or pay back grant money? Or was he liable for any women who took estrogen based on his phony baloney research? Incredibly, the answer is no.

The government allowed Dr. Cheskis to neither accept nor deny the charges if he agreed not to serve on any advisory boards for the United States Public Health Service and to be supervised on any Public Health Service-financed research for two years. What’s more, a search for his two retracted papers reveals no notice or mention that the reason they were retracted was because of fraud.

In all, Dr. Fang, Dr.Casadevall and co-researcher Mr. Steen found 158 scientific papers in the group of retracted articles they studied that should be classified as fraudulent. In a statement to the press, Dr. Casadevall said he’s convinced the fraudulent research papers show there’s a significant problem in science. It appears to be sparked by a culture that rewards getting a paper published in an important journal with scoring grants, heading labs and more perks.

What’s more, publishing made-up research isn’t just a U.S. phenomenon. The Dutch media is reporting this week that Diederik Stapel, a Tilburg University social psychologist, is suspected of concocting bogus data in dozens of studies which he used to collect 2.2 million euros (roughly $2.8 million U.S.) in government grants.

Stapel is facing a criminal probe and if convicted may be jailed — something that virtually never happens to American scientists when they are busted for dangerous, faked, exaggerated and otherwise intentionally inaccurate research. That’s right. Countless U.S. citizens are in jail for smoking marijuana but PhDs and MDs who publish fraudulent research and collect grant money based on lies are walking around free.

A search of the news finds only two who landed in jail — anesthesiologist Scott Reuben served a light six-month sentence despite being convicted of healthcare fraud involving making up data and Eric Poehlman, a University of Vermont scientist in the field of human obesity and aging, used totally false data in a grant application to get big bucks. He was finally turned in by a lab worker who contacted authorities.

Poehlman used fake research to claim there were benefits to using hormone replacement injections as a therapy for menopause. The truth was these hormone treatments had no proven medical benefits at all and potentially serious health risks. Poehlman’s sentence? Accused by government prosecutors of defrauding government agencies out of an astounding $2.9 million, the crook scientist plea bargained his way into a minimum jail sentence.

In 2006, Poehlman was ordered to serve only a year and a day in federal prison for using falsified data in federal research grants that he submitted for funding. At Poehlman’s trial, U.S. attorney David V. Kirby said: “Dr. Poehlman fraudulently diverted millions of dollars. This in turn siphoned millions of dollars from the pool of resources available for valid scientific research proposals. As this prosecution proves, such conduct will not be tolerated.”

Unfortunately, the Poehlman prosecution turned out to be a rarity, as the new study by Casadevall’s team shows, bogus research papers are still being published. Where are the arrests and prosecutions for knowingly publishing fraudulent research papers and taking grant money based on lies?

Sources:

http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111005/full/478026a.html
http://www.nytimes.com
http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2010/12/23/jme.2010.040923
http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/

About the author:
Sherry Baker is a widely published writer whose work has appeared in Newsweek, Health, the Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Yoga Journal, Optometry, Atlanta, Arthritis Today, Natural Healing Newsletter, OMNI, UCLA’s “Healthy Years” newsletter, Mount Sinai School of Medicine’s “Focus on Health Aging” newsletter, the Cleveland Clinic’s “Men’s Health Advisor” newsletter and many others.

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