https://www.wsj.com/science/academic-studies-research-paper-mills-journals-publishing-f5a3d4bc
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/05/15/wiley-shutter-19-journals
Wiley, a publisher of academic journals for 217 years has announced that 19 of the journals it publishes are being closed due to large scale research fraud.
Wiley has retracted over 11,300 papers for fraud, and two other publishers have retracted hundreds of others. IOP Publishing retracted almost 900 fraudulent papers in 2022 alone.
For years I've been told that being published in an academic journal was the gold standard for accuracy. That the peer review process was sacrosanct and guaranteed that only excellent research was published in these academic journals. For years, I've pointed out that the situation isn't so rosy as some need to believe, and that academic fraud was real and a problem.
I wonder what it'll take for those who worship the sanctity of the whole peer reviewed journal establishment to acknowledge that this is just one more naked emperor. I also wonder what will take the place of the worship of this problematic establishment.
4 comments:
WOW!
How did you stumble across this treasure?? (Rhetorical. No response required.)
This is actually incredibly sad. How can we trust anybody these days when those tasked to verifying facts...don't?
I'd suggest that this inability to trust in the wonders of the peer review system probably goes back longer than we suspect. Much like the recent increase in plagiarism, I think that the increasing amounts of money available to academics is driving both the plagiarism and the falsifying of peer reviewed papers. I'd guess, since the late '90s??
The peer review system does lean toward protecting established theories against newer evidence which threatens those making their living on what's already in place. It's understandable, but not at all moral when the new evidence suggests a better way more advantageous to all.
Given the amount of money in reseacrh, and the fact that the professors that do the research are heavily subsidized (the university pays for almost everything as opposed to private business), it makes total sense that both plagiarism and this falsified research being published are running rampant.
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