Science is not as objective as they think.

[Influx]

http://mobile.theverge.com/2013/10/3/47 ... s-journals

Something I always suspected.

[viscount aero]

That's pretty hilarious He submitted a paper that states outright in its text that it is utter nonsense and it was accepted!

[303vegas]

So these 'science' types are more interested in cash than data? I thought scientists were meant to be infallible and beyond corruption. That's my world-view down the dumper then...

[ThickTarget]

So these 'science' types are more interested in cash than data? I thought scientists were meant to be infallible and beyond corruption. That's my world-view down the dumper then...

This is about the Journal "Science" not science in general. This is to do with the publishing world and it's flaws. It's been known for a long time that publishers make a killing off the back of science, researchers are not profiting from this. They're the ones paying the publishing fees or the subscription fees, not to mention being unpaid (in the vast majority of cases) reviewers.

[Aardwolf]

So these 'science' types are more interested in cash than data? I thought scientists were meant to be infallible and beyond corruption. That's my world-view down the dumper then...

This is about the Journal "Science" not science in general. This is to do with the publishing world and it's flaws. It's been known for a long time that publishers make a killing off the back of science, researchers are not profiting from this. They're the ones paying the publishing fees or the subscription fees, not to mention being unpaid (in the vast majority of cases) reviewers.

Having their work published in a journal can be quite lucrative for the researcher if they want to sell some books based on it or apply for a research grant.

[Influx]

The scientific process as it exists in some professor's classroom is all good and well, but in the real world everything is messy and subject to human whims.

Scientists like to think they have divorced their own emotional subjective selfish desires from the scientific process but I don't think so. Granted it is my own personal opinion, but seeing how human greed and stupidity has no limits I am inclined to believe scientific objectivity is a fairy tale. What we have is the result of trail and error driven by greed for power and material possessions. All the result of the human beings inability to acknowledge and heal deep seated scars left by the now consciously forgotten catastrophic earth wide disasters. This is the only reason why we still act like there is a massive shortage of food stuffs when we the US alone harvests enough food to feed the whole earth. We are still acting as if we are amidst the chaos that was unleashed by the catastrophes.

[ThickTarget]

Having their work published in a journal can be quite lucrative for the researcher if they want to sell some books based on it or apply for a research grant.

I would argue that neither of those things are strictly true, it's the impact of the paper that matters not so much where it was published. A bunk article won't be cited and so won't improve the standing of the researcher. Simply publishing papers doesn't make you more likely to sell books or get grants (in most funding associations), they need quality.

[Aardwolf]

Having their work published in a journal can be quite lucrative for the researcher if they want to sell some books based on it or apply for a research grant.

I would argue that neither of those things are strictly true, it's the impact of the paper that matters not so much where it was published. A bunk article won't be cited and so won't improve the standing of the researcher. Simply publishing papers doesn't make you more likely to sell books or get grants (in most funding associations), they need quality.

A citaition is no proof of quality. Only time can reveal an article to be bunk or quality.

[ThickTarget]

Citations are how you determine the impact of a paper, which is a measure of quality. Quality itself has no unique definition so you just need to pick something.

[Aardwolf]

Citations are how you determine the impact of a paper, which is a measure of quality. Quality itself has no unique definition so you just need to pick something.

If your measure of quality is how many individuals agree with or wish to reference part or all of the said article then you have a very poor measure of quality. I prefer reproductability and/or observational proofs (if its a theoretical paper) which can take years. Sometimes decades. Occasionally even longer with grant money long spent and individuals already retired or moved on to other research.

[ThickTarget]

If your measure of quality is how many individuals agree with or wish to reference part or all of the said article then you have a very poor measure of quality. I prefer reproductability and/or observational proofs (if its a theoretical paper) which can take years. Sometimes decades. Occasionally even longer with grant money long spent and individuals already retired or moved on to other research.

That's a good way to test the quality of the science but a bad way to test the quality of papers simply many papers will never be reproduced, not because they're wrong but simply because people don't want to reproduce boring results. You need a measure which will return a good estimate in just a few years and is simple for a grant agency.

[Aardwolf]

If your measure of quality is how many individuals agree with or wish to reference part or all of the said article then you have a very poor measure of quality. I prefer reproductability and/or observational proofs (if its a theoretical paper) which can take years. Sometimes decades. Occasionally even longer with grant money long spent and individuals already retired or moved on to other research.

That's a good way to test the quality of the science but a bad way to test the quality of papers simply many papers will never be reproduced, not because they're wrong but simply because people don't want to reproduce boring results. You need a measure which will return a good estimate in just a few years and is simple for a grant agency.

A citation doesn't reproduce or test the theory so how does that help a grant agency selection of quality? However, as you have now defined quality I can just rephrase my initial comment;

Having their work published in a journal and referenced by as many individuals as possible, can be quite lucrative for the researcher if they want to sell some books based on it or apply for a research grant.

It seems the route to success would be to have a number of other researcher friends in the same field and just ask them to reference my work and vice versa. I'm sure that never happens...

[ThickTarget]

A citation doesn't reproduce or test the theory so how does that help a grant agency selection of quality? However, as you have now defined quality I can just rephrase my initial comment;

Having their work published in a journal and referenced by as many individuals as possible, can be quite lucrative for the researcher if they want to sell some books based on it or apply for a research grant.

It seems the route to success would be to have a number of other researcher friends in the same field and just ask them to reference my work and vice versa. I'm sure that never happens...

You need some way of testing quality versus quantity of papers. A citation says people have read the paper and consider the work to be valid, meaning they can't see structural flaws in what was done. A big paper with lots of citations will be investigated and repeated, because it must have been interesting.

I see nothing wrong with basing researchers potentially profiting from high numbers of citations because in all likelihood their work is of high quality and they are rewarded. In reality researchers rarely make any significant money.

Could you ask people to cite your paper? Yes, but realistically you won't get many, a really good paper is one that gets hundreds of citations. The review process will sometimes remove irrelevant citations. In some fields it isn't possible because the field is very specialised.

What better option is there realistically?

[Aardwolf]

A citation doesn't reproduce or test the theory so how does that help a grant agency selection of quality? However, as you have now defined quality I can just rephrase my initial comment;

Having their work published in a journal and referenced by as many individuals as possible, can be quite lucrative for the researcher if they want to sell some books based on it or apply for a research grant.

It seems the route to success would be to have a number of other researcher friends in the same field and just ask them to reference my work and vice versa. I'm sure that never happens...

You need some way of testing quality versus quantity of papers. A citation says people have read the paper and consider the work to be valid, meaning they can't see structural flaws in what was done. A big paper with lots of citations will be investigated and repeated, because it must have been interesting.

I see nothing wrong with basing researchers potentially profiting from high numbers of citations because in all likelihood their work is of high quality and they are rewarded. In reality researchers rarely make any significant money.

Could you ask people to cite your paper? Yes, but realistically you won't get many, a really good paper is one that gets hundreds of citations. The review process will sometimes remove irrelevant citations. In some fields it isn't possible because the field is very specialised.

What better option is there realistically?

I wasn't really offereing any alternatives. My point is that due to a very poor system of poor control, bias review and insufficient quality checking, researchers are indeed able to profit from bogus research. Although it's not neccesarily deliberate or fraudalent as they may actually have some faith in what they do.

[Aardwolf]

Here's a link to a recent article pertinent to our discussion;

http://narrative.ly/pieces-of-mind/nick ... lled-bull/

And a couple of quotes from it;

The theory was well credentialed. Now cited in academic journals over 350 times, it was first put forth in a 2005 paper by Barbara Fredrickson, a luminary of the positive psychology movement, and Marcial Losada, a Chilean management consultant, and published in the American Psychologist, the flagship peer-reviewed journal of the largest organization of psychologists in the U.S.

“For me, the real question is not about Fredrickson or Losada or Seligman,” Sokal says. “It’s about the whole community. Why is it that no one before Nick—and I mean Nick was a first semester part-time Master’s student, at, let’s be honest, a fairly obscure university in London who has no particular training in mathematics—why is it that no one realized this stuff was bullshit? Where were all the supposed experts?”

“Is it really true that no one saw through this,” he asks, “in an article that was cited 350 times, in a field which touts itself as being so scientific?”