Over the past four centuries, an implicit contract has been established between scientists and states: in exchange for the production of useful knowledge for economic and social development, governments and other benefactors offer stable careers researchers, good wages and public recognition. This model, similar to that of a commercial company, has shown that it is efficient and has been replicated in most of the world regions.
However, recent searches published in the magazine Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNA) reveals that, in recent years, this system – composed of researchers, academic institutions, government agencies, private companies and diffusion platforms – shows signs to break down.
The authors argue that due to the large scale and the specialization of contemporary science, the contribution of each actor is no longer assessed by the intrinsic merit of their work, but by quantitative indicators, such as the number of published research documents, with what frequency the articles are cited by other research, university rankings or prizes and other awards obtained.
“These indicators have quickly become objectives to measure the institutional and personal impact, which has generated unbridled competition and growing inequality in the distribution of resources, incentives and prizes”, warn the authors.
This in turn has led to the proliferation of fraud in some sectors of the scientific community, since researchers seek quick ways to acquire successful indicators. “The use of numerical metrics to evaluate projects and professionals … encourages the search for shortcuts”, says Pere Puigdomènech, president of the research committee of research in Catalonia (Cir-cat) in Spain. The types of fraud detected range from the creation of fictitious research, plagiarism, purchase and sale of paternity and quotes in articles.
A mafia that threatens scientific integrity
Northwestern’s research shows that fraud cases are often not isolated accidents, but rather the result of complex networks that systematically operate to undermine the integrity of science.
The research team behind this document, led by Luis a Amaral, professor of engineering and mathematics sciences applied at the McCormick School of Engineering of Nordwestern, reached this conclusion after analyzing great volumes of data on retracted publications, editorial registers and duplication of the images.
The sources included the main aggregators of scientific literature, such as Web of Science, Scopus, Pubmed/Medline and Openalex, as well as lists of magazines removed from these databases for violation of quality or ethical standards. In addition, the data on the articles portrayed marked by the investigative clock on the website were collected, comments on the revision site of the pubpeer scientific card and editorial metadata (dates of sending and sending and acceptance).
This analysis highlighted the work of “Papermills”: crossed organizations that produce low quality manuscripts and sell these, sometimes through intermediaries, to academics trying to publish material quickly. These articles often contain falsified data, manipulated images or in fact by copyright, plagiate content and even absurd or physically impossible requests. “These networks are essentially criminal organizations, acting together to pretend the science process,” said Amaral in a declaration Published by Northwestern University.
Be First to Comment