Peer Review is corrupt as publisher retracts 43 scientific papers

A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews amid signs of a broader fake peer review racket affecting many more publications.

The publisher is BioMed Central, based in the United Kingdom, which puts out 277 peer-reviewed journals. A partial list of the retracted articles suggests most of them were written by scholars at universities in China, including China Medical University, Sichuan University, Shandong University and Jiaotong University Medical School. But Jigisha Patel, associate editorial director for research integrity at BioMed Central, said it’s not “a China problem. We get a lot of robust research of China. We see this as a broader problem of how scientists are judged.”

Meanwhile, the Committee on Publication Ethics, a multidisciplinary group that includes more than 9,000 journal editors, issued a statement suggesting a much broader potential problem. The committee, it said, “has become aware of systematic, inappropriate attempts to manipulate the peer review processes of several journals across different publishers.” Those journals are now reviewing manuscripts to determine how many may need to be retracted, it said.

Peer review is the vetting process designed to guarantee the integrity of scholarly articles by having experts read them and approve or disapprove them for publication. With researchers increasingly desperate for recognition, citations and professional advancement, the whole peer-review system has come under scrutiny in recent years for a host of flaws and irregularities, ranging from lackadaisical reviewing to cronyism to outright fraud.

Last year, in one of the most publicized scandals, the Journal of Vibration and Control, in the field of acoustics, retracted 60 articles at one time due to what it called a “peer review and citation ring” in which the reviews, mostly from scholars in Taiwan, were submitted by people using fake names.

Ivan Oransky and Adam Marcus, the co-editors of Retraction Watch, a blog that tracks research integrity and first reported the BioMed Central retractions, have counted a total of 170 retractions in the past few years across several journals because of fake peer reviews.

here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...ct-other-journals/?postshare=5031427452343393

Them damn Chinese and their fake shit! Fake medical reviews, fake milk, fake candy! What's next, fake humans!! Fake weed!! If there wasn't a couple billion of them MFers I'd say WWⅢ is in order. But they'd kill us all with fake weapons!

I love the integrity of the scientific method, it sickens me to see corruption in something so pure. I'm glad these watchdogs are on top of this, it should help to tighten up the peer review process. Thanks for posting, you may also want to post this thread again in the science/tech subforum...

Ok, so you don't have to call me Dr. Baldrick anymore.

vostok said:

See at the end of a hard bitching RIU. type of day, .. you want the defender of the argument to support himself by quoting a peer review,
but if that world turned to sh!t cause the capitalist fucks can't pay their staff enough,
then who are you gonna turn too...?

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GOSSIP HAS IT THEY ARE ABOUT TO RE MAKE THAT FLIC
K FOR THE UP AND COMING GENERATION ..! srry capslock

vostok said:

GOSSIP HAS IT THEY ARE ABOUT TO RE MAKE THAT FLIC
K FOR THE UP AND COMING GENERATION ..! srry capslock

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Yeah, I heard that too.

They ought have a school and teach a Russian ghostbusting crew, that could have huge mileage