2013 Nobel Winner Randy Schekman (Medicine) Cautioned Us — about the Science-Distorting Effect of Artificially Prestigious Science Journals  — a Point Coincidentally Illustrated by the Journal Nature Getting Caught Acting Badly

© 2013 Peter Free

 

17 December 2013

 

 

Citation

 

Randy Schekman, How journals like Nature, Cell and Science are damaging science — The incentives offered by top journals distort science, just as big bonuses distort banking, The Guardian (09 December 2013)

 

 

Greed distorts science and medicine in multiple ways

 

I have addressed this subject before because it is vital to understanding the distortions of truth that are everywhere in science and medicine these days.  See, for example, here and here.

 

It is impossible for me to read anything in both disciplines, without simultaneously trying to unravel what incentives the research team might have for consciously or unconsciously manipulating or falsifying their methods and findings.

 

 

Enter Nobel winner, Randy Schekman

 

Dr. Randy W. Schekman, one of 2013’s three Nobel winners for medicine, addressed this subject with identical concerns this last week.

 

He pointed out that the most prestigious science journals artificially limit the numbers of papers they publish.  This leads subscribers to believe that they publish only outstanding science, which is not true.

 

Further, the prestige that goes with being published by these “brands” deincentivizes doing good (meaning methodologically sound and properly interpreted) science with integrity:

 

 

These luxury journals are supposed to be the epitome of quality, publishing only the best research. Because funding and appointment panels often use place of publication as a proxy for quality of science, appearing in these titles often leads to grants and professorships.

 

But the big journals' reputations are only partly warranted. While they publish many outstanding papers, they do not publish only outstanding papers. Neither are they the only publishers of outstanding research.

 

In extreme cases, the lure of the luxury journal can encourage the cutting of corners, and contribute to the escalating number of papers that are retracted as flawed or fraudulent.

 

There is a better way, through the new breed of open-access journals that are free for anybody to read, and have no expensive subscriptions to promote. Born on the web, they can accept all papers that meet quality standards, with no artificial caps.

 

© 2013 Randy Schekman, How journals like Nature, Cell and Science are damaging science — The incentives offered by top journals distort science, just as big bonuses distort banking, The Guardian (09 December 2013) (extracts)

 

 

Coincidentally, Science had just published an article documenting a Nature screw-up — that illustrates Dr. Schekman’s point

 

From Kai Kuppferschmidt:

 

 

After years of wrangling, a 2005 study on symmetry and dance published in Nature has been retracted.

 

The retraction notice gives no reason.

 

Biologist Robert Trivers of Rutgers University . . . one of the authors, says he became aware of problems with the data after publication. He accuses co-author William Brown of preselecting the dancers and changing the values on some of the dancers' measures of symmetry.

 

When Trivers's early attempts to have the paper retracted failed, he wrote a short book about it called The Anatomy of a Fraud that he sent to researchers who cited the paper.

 

"Everybody in the fraud network, that is the journal, the university, the fraudster, they all benefit by stringing the thing out," he said earlier this year.

 

In April, an investigation at Rutgers University finally concluded that "substantial (clear and convincing) evidence exists that research fraud has occurred in several areas" including "biased selection of subjects who were to be included in the symmetry/asymmetry comparison groups so as to artificially obtain desired results."

 

At the time, Brown denied the accusations. He could not be reached for comment.

 

Trivers says he is not entirely happy.

 

"It took them 8 years after publication of the paper, and 5 after we submitted a retraction, and 4½ years after we published proof of fraud (later borne out by Rutgers' investigation) for them finally to ‘retract’ a paper now cited 136 times," he writes in an e-mail.

 

"Journals see no upside in admitting fraud . . . .”

 

© 2013 Kai Kuppferschmidt, Controversial Dance Paper Finally Retracted, Science 432(6163): 1152 (06 December 2013) (extracts)

 

 

The moral? — “Ya can’t trust no one, these days”

 

Skepticism about everything is warranted.