And you found one in me. I have not done it for journals but I have taught the process at post grad studies - as I have said it is almost impossible, given the plethora of journals being published world wide to ensure all publications meet criteria. Learning how to critique research is part of masters degree here especially in my field as we will write medical guides to care and the MUST be “evidence based”
OK, but you still don't actually participate in the writing or review of actual papers in a scientific field, you essentially teach technical writing which I have also done, although not in a medical field. What I am hoping to get is someone with actual field experience in the process as it currently exists. If someone writes a paper about, say, the physics of climate change, who exactly reviews it before submission and what are the mechanics of getting it reviewed properly (however you would define that) before publication?
It is more than that as it is not “technical writing” but critiquing research https://students.flinders.edu.au/content/dam/student/slc/critiquing-research-articles.pdf https://education.nova.edu/summer/2016-presentations/SI2016JoslinPannHowToReadResearch.pdf https://www.unm.edu/~unmvclib/cascade/handouts/critiquingresearchpart1.pdf it is vital in medicine to determine what is called “best practice”. You not want your doctor to just put on a voodoo mask and start cooking up chicken entrails whilst you are gasping for breath
If that was actually done, perhaps. But the fact is, most "peer review" is rather sloppy, facts and claims are not checked, and it is largely an echo chamber. You see, that is the very problem. And I am amazed that you either do not see that, or simply do not care. And actually, yes. Both in the military as well as in the Corporate world. I also learned a lot about it from my uncle, who worked in academia. Who constantly complained about "Publish or Die", and how he was expected to release a paper every year or so. And at one point he simply did some minor editing and changed the titles before submitting them again, and nobody ever noticed. And there are tons of cases where completely false papers were submitted, or ones with purposeful errors to see if they were ever caught. I am actually surprised in that I know that, and you seem to think "systemic reviews" are a "gold standard". That is hardly the case, or so damned many frauds, mistakes, and outright falsifications would not make it through.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. People make mistakes. Does having more people review it make things better or worse? If better, but not in a cost-effective way, how could it be streamlined. Peer review in one form or another is inherent to the scientific process, though. The story of submitting barely different papers doesn't alarm me much. Lots of science is me-too, and some of that is on purpose. We need to make sure things are reproducible when we can. Publish or die does seem to be a counterproductive cultural norm for science in that it results in more noise and useless papers.
In medicine Systematic reviews/Meta analysis are part of what is termed “Best Practice and there are multiple best practices sites that are free Cochrane is one of them - and is free, many of the others you have to pay for. https://www.cochranelibrary.com/ Let’s look at something simple - is Ginger good for nausea? https://www.cochranelibrary.com/search And let’s choose one that is a dodgy therapy - aromatherapy for nausea https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cds...8.CD007598.pub3/full?highlightAbstract=ginger So basically you know that if the patient rocks up with some incense sticks for post op nausea it probably won’t help beyond what a placebo would but on the other hand it probably won’t hurt - now the risk of setting off the fire alarms is another matter all together Some UHCs also have extensive best practice libraries - this one was developed to assist everyone no matter where you were working - even if it was a remote single nurse station - what the recommendations around maternity care are https://www.health.qld.gov.au/qcg/publications The Brits have the NICE guidelines
And less actual "review". My uncle for example learned exactly where to submit his papers, and which ones were more likely to publish them and which would never publish them at all. Not a thing to do with his papers themselves, but the internal review bias of those he was submitting them to. Now my uncle was a bit of an odd duck. A devout Marxist, and involved in "Oriental Studies". And if say he was submitting a paper about the Mao era in China, he would submit to one. But if he was writing about the early Showa era in Japan, he would submit to another. Because he knew that ones that would publish the first would not touch one on the latter because his conclusions were not what they wanted to publish. The thing is, I and other recognize this internal flaw in the system, and reviewer bias is a major issue. And I do not see it as a problem, so much as it is one that the "system" almost refuses to recognize it. Hence, the large numbers of papers tailored not so much for the facts, but to reinforce the bias of the system in order to get published. And it is not even unique in academia. But like so many things, this constant parading of "peer review" as the ultimate judge if something is valid or not and people almost demanding that we bow down to it is something that disturbs me. Because that is not the intent of the system, but that is how many are presenting it. Just the "Climategate" scandal at East Anglia. Where "peer reviewers" were actively working together to dismiss any papers that were contradictory to papers they themselves had published earlier. But this is an issue in all areas.
Ignoring what a systematic review means in science? Very different, say in English lit but it is much harder to do what your Uncle did in the field of medicine because places like BMJ, Lancet, Cochrane, DynaMed etc etc etc are constantly conducting systematic reviews and do you not think that would show up that someone has resubmitted multiple papers on the same subject?
And you are purposefully ignoring the reality that there is a lot of fraud, abuse, and other issues. Just as you purposefully ignore anything you do not like, and ignore any facts that contradict your beliefs. In fact, you apparently have completely missed what I have been saying, and appear to want everybody to believe anything just because it is published. And I am not saying they should not, just that awareness of those issues should be considered, and that just because something is published, does not make it a fact.
No I am pointing out the ways in which that is discovered Now read my sig because I am not bothering if my points are being dismissed out of hand
And what I said is not an insult. BB and I have had many very enjoyable interactions over the years. However, I simply have little interest in beating a dead horse. She has her view, and is welcome to it. I simply wish that others who claim to be "enlightened" would be equally content in allowing others to have their own point of views that is not theirs.
Bingo! You are NOT listening to me and my experience with how medical science works to ensure best practice so toodles!
I am listening, I simply do not agree in your apparent blind acceptance. And even in the medical field, it should not be blind acceptance. After all, it was not all that long ago that prefrontal lobotomies were well covered in medical journals, and seen as a breakthrough treatment for the mentally impaired. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1933933/?page=1 So once again, forgive me if I simply do not bend down and refuse to worship at the altar of "medical science" without using my own common sense and judgement. And remember, I am not some lunatic screaming conspiracies, a vaxxer, or anything even remotely like that. Yet you seem all to ready to throw me under that bus, so I will just depart as there really is nothing else to say. But do not confuse my not agreeing with not "listening to you". As is so common in here, I am simply stating my opinion, others are free to accept it or not. You are the one demanding that everybody accept your beliefs, and nothing else.
I once worked for a foundation developing programs. I once issued a request for proposal to a few universities on a project I was developing. The specifications required responses to be within 10 pages with an addendum added on how, precisely, the foundation's funds would be spent. The most complex response was over 200 pages of gobbledegook. Only one provided the addendum aimed providing data for future audits and got the proposal down pretty close at 12 pages. It is the only proposal I read and the one that won the grant. Science isn't the only place where people are wedded to the concept of "we have always done it this way." I think the fear of misinformation people have is silly. With both government and the private sector lying constantly we still have managed to weed out the truth most of the time. If scientific research is fraudulent then the fraud will eventually be discovered and communicated. I like the idea of peer review as long as it is done after publication. I don't care for the idea of quashing the free exchange of ideas because of someone's opinion of what is misinformation. Science is sometimes wrong. I remember taking a course in basic geology in college. I was taught that the Rocky Mountains resulted from a "dome uplift." That means that rivers filled an inland sea with stuff. The weight of the stuff pushed everything down into the earth's mantle and the pressure eventually caused a rebound raising the land. It was even in one of he text books. We know now that the mountain range was caused by plate tectonics, something outside of the science at the time that I took the course. Cosmologists are just now beginning to question the big bang theory. Science is a process, not a perfect truth. I think more input to the process is superior to less. The solution to misinformation is more information.
The reason this is a monumentally stupid way of determining the value of scientific papers is that it compares to NOTHING. How many stories does Fox retract? LOL!!! Plus, this idea that "publishers announced they were retracting several times that number" is also stupid, as it says nothing about why they got retracted or how many were NOT retracted. Also, there are LOTS of "stories" that do get retracted. But, "stories" are NOT scientific studies that go through a process of review. This whole direction as presented here in this thread is nothing more than a sophomoric attempt to discredit ALL SCIENCE.
You have it exactly backwards. Read on: What people are saying about Retraction Watch Here's a sample from the many linked above. “…Retraction Watch is one of my favorite websites and I use it as a teaching tool in my Research Methods class. While my goal has always been to not be mentioned on your site, I realize that, now as a journal editor, it very well may occur.” — Gary Miller, associate dean for research, Emory “Nobody believes that scientific progress is about finding absolute answers anymore. At best, every new experiment makes scientists just a little less wrong about how the universe works. But despite that healthy journey-over-destination mindset, scientists hate telling other scientists when they’ve made a mistake. And scientific journals really hate it. That’s why retractions—the pulling of results from the canon of scientific literature—used to happen quietly. Then came Adam Marcus and Ivan Oransky’s Retraction Watch, a bright light shining on the blunders of scientists everywhere. Think of it as a front-row seat for the messy business of sorting out the world, with a little walk-of-shame schadenfreude thrown in for laughs.” — WIRED‘s 101 Signals, Science: The best reporters, writers, and thinkers on the Internet–the people who understand what’s happening “Retraction Watch is one of the best innovations in science in recent years. The wit enhances the message. Tune in.” — former BMJ editor-in-chief Richard Smith
Since your OP's argument replies wholely on your linked article, they both fail, together. Not that I don't understand that-- 1) most people are not as competent as they are thought of, as being, both by the public, and by themselves; and 2) the idiocy that comes from groupthink, and intellectual peer pressure-- but the fact that only about a third of errors were found in peer reviewed papers, does not prove the assertions made by the author, that peer review is useless, or even worse than a lack of peer review. So, ironically, you have signed on, to a poorly made (and unreviewed) argument.
And that is very common. My mom had an old college textbook on astronomy when I was growing up, and I still remember it quite well. The cover had a spectacular photo of the "Andromeda Nebula", as it was written before Edwin Hubble finally proved that it was an actual galaxy. And it was really not all that long ago that most who accepted the idea of "Black Holes" were labeled as lunatics. And I also remember that explanation for the Rocky Mountains. I even remember the "radical" explanation in the 1970's that Yellowstone was a volcano, and the Snake River Plain was caused by successive events going back over 10 million years (it was pretty much utterly rejected at the time). And I have been watching with particular interest in newer discoveries in the PNW, like the supervolcano calderas found in Oregon and Washington, and even chunks of Mexico up in the Washington-British Columbia area (and I am still waiting for an explanation for the segment of the Snake River Plain where it turns NW and continues cutting through the Owyhee mountains). What I find fascinating is that most of the people like that only want things published they agree with, and reject anything that does not agree with their beliefs. Then for some reason feel it is fine to call others "anti-science".
Retraction Watch is science and is supported by scientists. Read and learn. The Center For Scientific Integrity Board of Directors Ferric Fang, MD, editor in chief, Infection and Immunity; professor of laboratory medicine, microbiology, medicine and pathobiology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA Jasna Markovac, PhD, Senior Advisor, Academic Publishing, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA Miguel Roig, PhD, professor of psychology, St. John’s University, Staten Island, New York, USA Steven Shafer, MD, former editor in chief, Anesthesia & Analgesia; professor of anesthesiology, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, USA Mary Simmerling, PhD, assistant professor, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, New York, USA Richard Smith, MBBS, CBE, former editor in chief, British Medical Journal and chief executive of the BMJ Publishing Group; chair of Patients Know Best and icddr,b [formerly International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh] and adjunct professor Imperial College, London, UK David Vaux, MBBS, PhD, deputy director and joint division head, Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia
The issue is not about science. It is about peer review. The scientific method has worked well for a long time. Nobody questions its efficacy. Peer review? Possibly not so well. Peer review is a good thing and necessary for the scientific method to work right. The question is how peer review is actually employed in practice. That is the issue. I think it is the issue defined by the author of the article. The scientific community employs it as a pass/fail form of preventing free speech. A scientific journal should choose which papers it publishes and which it does not prior to any peer review. Then the scientific community as a whole can review, experiment and report to its heart's content. Preventing free speech based on a closed peer review system seems to me to be deficient. I would recommend opening it to the scientific community to work with it. I gave an example of geological "dome uplift" and another poster gave one about the Andromeda "nebula." Peer review didn't prevent these ideas from being wrong. They were corrected over time by the scientific community is a whole. To me this is how the scientific method should work.
