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First, a couple of caveats, porn/sex addiction is a highly debated diagnosis. I will not enter that debate since it seems to be yet another can of worms.

Most of the linked articles concerns self reported problematic behavior. They do not show causality, i.e. porn causing problematic behavior, just that some report their porn use as problematic. I have mostly skipped those articles and may have missed something interesting.

The first section contains 20 reviews so it seems like a good place to start:

The first 8 concern addiction and Compulsive Sexual Behaviour (CSB). Thus not any causal effects of porn.

Number 9 sounds better: Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports. Behav. Sci. 2016, 6, 17
It suggests causality and claims to be a review but is makes some dubious claims. Let's see if someone who knows more has reviewed it... ooops:
https://retractionwatch.com/20...
That was a lot more damning than I had imagined.

Turns out, one of the authors, Gary Wilson is also the author of the book "Your brain on porn" which may be related to the website you linked to (yourbrainonporn). Also, he is donates all the proceeds from the book to the Reward Foundation which has a clear anti-porn agenda. This was not disclosed in the original paper but was later corrected.

In short, I doubt I'll find anything useful further down the list but let's continue. The linked articles are not suspect even if Gary is.

10-16 is more addiction and CSB. I stopped at 17 but that was another addiction study, not showing a causal connection between porn and addiction (that is, there are people with problematic porn habits but it isn't necessarily porn causing those habits). 19-20 are more about addiction.

Ok, so out of the first 20, one was perhaps relevant but it turned out to be utter shite. Up next 20 neuroimaging studies.

Again, 1-3 are studies about self reported problematic behavior / addiction.

Number 4 is interesting though. It is a small study (28 ppl) but it showed a worse performance in a working memory test right after watching pornographic pictures (compared to controls). They did not test how long the effect lasts though so it may be a very short lived effect.

Number 5 is similar showing "negative impact on decision making" when porn pics are right on a "bad" deck of cards vs a "good". (i am getting a bit tired now so won't go into details). Again, probably a very short lived effect and difficult to extrapolate the effect into real life.

Number 6 is another addiction study (I think).

Number 7 is a funny one. Psychology Today summarizes it as NOT showing porn addiction exists. Yourbrainonporn interprets it differently of course.

Number 8, correlation between something in the brain and self reported porn use. Not causation. Did I mention I'm tired now?

Number 10-20 seem to be about self reported addicts, CSB or showing some kind of correlation and not causation.

Number 21 is a bit interesting. Basically, abstaining from porn is different than abstaining from your favorite food when it comes to delay discounting.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

Number 22-40 is more of the same (but I reading through it a lot quicker now). A lot of studies on people with self reported problematic behavior, some correlation studies etc. Nothing about how porn actually affects people. Just that some people have problems with it (and a lot of specifics about them).

Many of the web authors claimed conclusions are just conjectures. It is often claimed that study X shows that porn "causes" Y but when you read the study it did not show causality or if the effect transfers to ordinary life. Reduced decision making skills while watching porn is hardly a problem as long as you don't watch porn while making important de

https://retractionwatch.com/

Notice that papers that have been used to direct research and being used as supporting data often have been detected as frauds long after the publication. That means that the falsified data have already escaped most scrutiny and have already wasted time, money and effort.

If a person with a degree in astrophysics published a paper "proving" that the Earth is flat, could that person still be accurately described as an actual astrophysicist?
Or would a description like "a fuckin flatearther loon" be more appropriate?

I.e. Should we blindly accept the authority of a piece of paper they have hanging on the wall in their office, OR should we take in account their actual words, actions and results when deciding on the validity of their work?

Similarly, if a person with a degree pushes marketing nonsense with little to no scientific proof behind it - should we consider that person a scientist and their thinly veiled marketing campaign a work of science?
Particularly when we're talking about fields with known "issues".

Thank you, but that's not what I said. To illustrate the problem, you can read about a recent investigation by the Chinese government here: https://retractionwatch.com/20...

Why is that all dystopias and apocalypses are always predicted to happen in the lifetime of people hearing the prediction? You never hear about an apocalypse that will happen a few 1000 years from now even though we can do more to avert it.

Humans have lived for hundreds of thousands of years, if not millions. How unlucky would we have to witness the last of us?

Statistically Significant results are three times more likely to be published than papers with null results.

By framing the hypothesis to align with your agenda, you can get anything to be science. And from that point onward scientific legitimacy is equivalent to political legitimacy, because all that matters is who gets to gather enough legitimacy by political means to frame the hypothesis.

It would take political clout to grant money to only one type of hypothesis but it can be done, if you are a rich enough donor in grant-making NGOs or a rich lobbyist in government agencies.

The great thing about this technique is that you do not have to ask the scientists to meddle with p-values and create data mining bias because that is prone to whistleblowing. This method is also resistant to meta-analyses and reviews.

There have been cases in science where 40,000 papers by experts had to be considered questionable. It is possible for a large number of experts to be wrong.

2 or 3 that I can think of. In the US the major one is ATCC. There are known cases where the cell line was mixed up before it was deposited in ATCC. Consequently everyone who got it from there was working with the wrong cell line. It is also common practice for people to borrow cell lines from the lab next door, rather than buy them for a supplier. My guess is that most of the cell lines used for research were not directly purchased from a supplier. Even if you did, it is not hard for careless worker to mix up cell lines in the lab - mislabeled tubes, handling many cell lines simultaneously while being distracted, forgetting to swap the dirty pipette ...

Aside from my earlier post about GMO actually being able to increase biodiversity, Greenpeace, who is behind every talking point you've ever made on this topic, has blatantly lied to you, multiple times.

https://www.washingtonpost.com...

Greenpeace also likes to hold two opposing arguments at the same time about GMO Bt, depending on which side best fits their pre-conceived narrative (without doing any actual research) on that particular day:

http://www.slate.com/articles/...

Further reading where Greenpeace holds double standards:

https://geneticliteracyproject...
https://geneticliteracyproject...

Drop the anti-GMO crusade. It's pure post-truth populism and anti-science bullshit. To date there is not a single good argument against GMO. And if that's not enough, the most of the anti-GMO scientific papers about health impact were authored by a guy who has an established history of manipulating his data in order to fit his activist narrative:

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

He's currently under investigation by the Italian senate for scientific fraud. And by the way, GMO has been saving the lives of diabetics allergic to cow and pig insulin since 1982.

You feel FOR other's pain.
You get an emotional reaction AS IF you're being hurt - minus the pain.
And even that is if you're REALLY susceptible to empathy. Most cases you just feel a bit sad.

Otherwise, doctors in hospitals would be dead from shock in a few days from all the pain they'd empathize with.
Similarly, we don't get carted out of theaters on a stretcher after watching a comedy surrounded by other people and their happiness.

It's a psychological study.
It's a safe bet that it is either bullshit or overblown bullshit.

That isn't the important part of the quote, and it's hardly a "far cry". The journal and court said nothing about the data or conclusions. The journal accepted it to begin with, so it clearly thought the data and conclusions were fine then; they retracted it for other reasons. If the data and conclusions weren't still robust, they would have specifically pointed that out. Tufts conducted an internal review (quoted in the Retraction Watch article) that reiterated the science was good.

The AC was being disingenuous. They were attacking the evidence supporting golden rice by pointing out a paper retraction without saying the retraction wasn't based on the data or conclusions.

If only we could get some decent peer review. Maybe it was different back then?

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
http://www.economist.com/news/...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ha...
http://retractionwatch.com/201...
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21s...
https://www.theguardian.com/sc...

"My definition of evidence is any data-point that indicates indicates you better have a good explanation"

Ok, but for me that definition leaves too much room for mischief.

It's a simple term. If you have any reason to believe something, you have evidence. It may not be strong evidence, but it is (by definition) evidence.

I'm not gonna gonna bother dancing around it for ten pages in case it turns out to be bullshit.

"the consultant [nature.com] who ran the software has used it to get a a previous researcher from the same University for faking evidence with copied images in the past"

Yes, and it found this too: "the 2013 Food and Nutrition Sciences paper was retracted, with a citation of “self-plagiarism”. However, the journal noted that the results were still valid and that it considered the issues an “honest error” -- Nature.com

Read the links at the bottom of the article.

In December of '13 this exact computer researcher (Enrico Bucci) used this exact method to completely discredit a researcher who is only related to the GM team in that they worked at the same University. It was bad enough there was a police investigation of the guy:
http://www.nature.com/news/ima...
It's just gotten worse for poor Alfredo Fusco since then:
http://retractionwatch.com/201...

But even with those results it doesn't change the fact that the software isn't enough to go on by itself because it produces way too many false positives to be able to rely on its results alone.

"A good explanation should be fairly trivial for the article's authors to come up with (you aren't supposed to trash all the data you use to write a paper just because it's been published), if they are actually innocent"

If you read the link to La Rebublica in Nature: "according to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Infascelli said that there is no substance to these allegations, and that an expert that he consulted about the papers had ruled out the possibility of data manipulation" (Nature.com), it appears the rector's investigating committee has consulted an expert on images and the expert said there was no evidence of any problems. Nature seems to have confused things a bit and its in fact the committee that's consulted the expert.

What I'd like to know, and what Nature doesn't tell us, is the content of the leak to the press: "details of the confidential findings of the investigation committee — composed of scientists in and outside of Naples — were leaked to the Italian press" (Nature.com).

Senator Cattaneo hired the guy who destroyed Alfredo Fusco. This piece has a much longer (and much more hostile to Infascelli) write-up:
http://www.biofortified.org/20...

Maybe the University also hired the same guy, to look into the same thing, at the same time. He would be the logical go-to-guy for all involved.

there are others who try to duplicate the results

Please don't give us that Popper crap. Journals don't generally publish negative results do they. If you want to get published (and you usually do for career and funding reasons) there's a strong motivation to make sure you show what you set out to show. I would trust an area like physics more though, because it's so competitive and tightly focused. Everything else is up for grabs. Replicability of studies is pretty bad elsewhere.

No sorry, you are simply wrong. Your idea of scientists marching goosestep in lockstep, crushing any dissent, and deciding what the truth is and making certain no one strays from it is a ridiculous completel;y incorrect politically based view brought about by politically based people who simply are incapable of understanding that not everyone thinks as they do.

I've worked with scientists for 30 plus years. None of them fit your mold, and since anyone caught falsifying their research is instantly disgraced. Sometimes with terrible results, as when Yoshiki Sasai, the senior researcher who supervised and co-authored a falsified stem cell research paper, committed suicide by hanging himself. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new... Haruko Obokata, the scientist who actually committed the fraud, had her doctorates degree rescinded by Waseda University. http://ajw.asahi.com/article/s...

The Italian group was not found engaging in fraud by politicians, Ir was other scientists who found them engaging in fraud.

The Japanese researcher who committed fraud was not found out by politicians, but by other scientists.

Remote sensing, the open access journal, found itself in a mess after Roy Spencer and Danny Braswell published a paper in it named, "On the Misdiagnosis of Surface Temperature Feedbacks from Variations in Earth’s Radiant Energy Balance” which in title alone raised some red flags since scientists seldom name reports that way, but http://www.realclimate.org/ind... It was debunked soon afterwards, retracted, and important questions raised about the impartiality of the journal raised due to it's benefactors. http://retractionwatch.com/201... Even a pro AGW paper linking Conspiracy ideation to denials has been retracted, scientists will go after anyone.

http://retractionwatch.com/2014/03/21/controversial-paper-linking-conspiracy-ideation-to-climate-change-skepticism-formally-retracted/ All of the scientists I have worked with take this kind of stuff seriously. Deadly seriously.

Well, I don't know whether it's inborn, although if sometimes seems this way. But without taking a position on whether programmers are born or made

This says no. In short, if you claim it is inborn, you need to be able to make a test that distinguishes between those who "have it" and those who "don't have it." Alan Kay has good things to say, too as usual.

This is great- Elsevier and Springer (and other for-profit publishers) have been charging exorbitant prices for journals and there have been some other mass resignations where people started a free or at least affordable alternative with pretty much the same board. One of the first big ones was the journal Topology, which reconstituted itself with the exact same editorial board in a non-profit setting, described here. That was in 2006 and though I'd hoped this would spread like wildfire, it has only happened about a dozen times since then.

There are good quality affordable journals, run by professional societies or universities, which are an excellent alternative to Elsevier and other expensive for-profit journals. For the health of science, it is important that people choose to submit there. For untenured people who are under a great deal of pressure to submit to "top journals" it poses a difficult quandary, but for those of us for whom that isn't a concern, I don't see a reason to continue to support journals and publishers which have repeatedly done poorly.

The Cost of Knowledge has lots of information about efforts to improve the scientific publishing culture.

There have been other cases of prominent people are resigning from Elsevier boards; here's a senior researcher in malaria who resigned from an editorial board on the life-sciences side. His motivation was particularly strong- he is working in malaria research, and the idea that people who could benefit from the research may well be not able to pay for the paywall is abhorrent. But I think the same rationale applies to all of science- why keep research from people who cannot pay for it?

In other Elsevier news, more journal shenanigans are described here which include both rigging the reviews to be sock-puppet reviews and getting into their editorial board systems, resulting in yet more retractions. It's not clear what the high prices of journals are paying for when there are intermittent episodes like this.

You can search the Springer page for the list:
http://link.springer.com/search?query=The+Publisher+and+Editor+retract+this+article+in+accordance+with+the+recommendations+of+the+Committee+on+Publication+Ethics+(COPE)&date-facet-mode=between&facet-start-year=2015&previous-start-year=1995&facet-end-year=2015&previous-end-year=2015

More commentary at RetractionWatch: http://retractionwatch.com/2015/08/17/64-more-papers-retracted-for-fake-reviews-this-time-from-springer-journals/

The first study doesn't deal directly with pain, and should never have been published, IMO, it is appallingly bad science. Some (probably not all) of the flaws:

• - It mixes a range of quite different chronic conditions including headaches, allergies, dermatitis, rhinitis (all of which can be caused by stress or psychosomatic effects as well as physiology);
• - it doesn't present a list of all the conditions studied, only "the most frequent diagnoses";
• - the authors "replace" missing data if a patient dropped out (page 3);
• - the authors make arbitrary assumptions about the models without any explanations for their reasoning (page 3 again);
• - and, most damningly, the patients were allowed to use conventional medications during the study (page 6). In other words no useful conclusions about the efficacy of homeopathy can be drawn from it.

as I said, I'm surprised it was published, but given that BioMed Central recently retracted 43 papers for fake peer review, perhaps I shouldn't be.

The second paper is not about homeopathy but about acupuncture, which is (a) naturopathy and (b) an actual physical process involving sticking needles into specific parts of the body (AFAIK nerve clusters).

The "conclusions" of "abnormal behavior" were made from observations that kids would rather be at home playing instead of sitting in a class AND from the fact that young humans will seek sexual satisfaction but avoid rejection.

That sounds like something a ROBOT might find strange.
Not a human being. Particularly not one who actually went through puberty at some point in their life.

In short... like most psychology studies out there, this too is most probably bullshit.

A lot of people claim the soft sciences are not 'really science' due to the intangibility of their results - and this plays directly into that bias.

However, it's very much not just the softer sciences that have this issue. There's a growing realization that it's pervasive across many hard science disciplines:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB... : 64% of pharma trials couldn't be reproduced.

http://retractionwatch.com/201... - half of researchers couldn't reproduce published findings.

We're inundated with data that, due to the specificity of the field or detail of the results, has to come from 'experts' and doesn't lend itself to a sort of common-sense vetting that we can use to filter bullshit in the usual course of our lives. Whether it's from ignorance of statistical methods, poor experimental technique, motivated mendacity (for whatever reason), or simply experimental results that represent only an unusual end of a bell-curve, there are many, many reasons that scientific data has to be taken with a serious grain of salt. It can't be assumed to be conclusive until we've reproduced it in whatever context we're trying to apply it.

With the exception of climate science. It's settled and you're a heretic if you suggest any uncertainty exists in any part of that field...

A lot of people claim the soft sciences are not 'really science' due to the intangibility of their results - and this plays directly into that bias.

However, it's very much not just the softer sciences that have this issue. There's a growing realization that it's pervasive across many hard science disciplines:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB... : 64% of pharma trials couldn't be reproduced.

http://retractionwatch.com/201... - half of researchers couldn't reproduce published findings.

We're inundated with data that, due to the specificity of the field or detail of the results, has to come from 'experts' and doesn't lend itself to a sort of common-sense vetting that we can use to filter bullshit in the usual course of our lives. Whether it's from ignorance of statistical methods, poor experimental technique, motivated mendacity (for whatever reason), or simply experimental results that represent only an unusual end of a bell-curve, there are many, many reasons that scientific data has to be taken with a serious grain of salt. It can't be assumed to be conclusive until we've reproduced it in whatever context we're trying to apply it.

Bad data routinely gets questioned by other scientists.

http://retractionwatch.com/

It is difficult to give exact figures because there are so far few formal studies quantifying the extent of the problem. We know that for example psychology retractions have quadrupled since 1989, a rate higher than the growth in the number of publications in the same period. It is also likely that most scientific misconduct remains uncovered or unacknowledged. It seems that few scientists admit misconduct, but many more know someone else who is committing it:

How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data

"an average of 1.97% of scientists admitted to having "fabricated, falsified or modified data or results at least once – a serious form of misconduct by any standard – and up to 33.7% admitted other questionable research practices. In surveys asking about the behaviour of colleagues, admission rates were 14.12% for falsification, and up to 72% for other questionable research practices." (from http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/sep/13/scientific-research-fraud-bad-practice)

I suspect that since the vested interests are choosing the political attack route, they probably do know it is credible, they just don't care.

The problem is who are the vested interests? The AGW scientists attack anything skeptical of AGW, and prevent everything being published. What science do you consider credible when it cannot be published in the journals?

Much of the money comes form "Dark sources", like DonorsTrust, and DonorsCapital, meaning they won't tell us, Kind of like legal money laundering. Koch Industries and ExxonMobil money has in large part gone away. It might not be unlikely that they have gone to the untraceable route.

Whic is all very convenient, doing this in secret. How many scientific reports have you see that have no names, because the scientists are too big of pussies to put their name on it?

http://www.scientificamerican....

Regardless, some reseach has shown that from 2003 to 2010:

DonersTrust / DonorsCapital 14%

Sciafe Affiliated Foundations 7%

Lyle and Harry Bradley Foundation 5 %

Koch Affiliated Foundations 5 %

Howard Charitible Foundation 4% John William Pope Foundation 4%

John William Pope Foundation 4%

Searle Freedom Trust 4%

John Templeton Foundation 4%

Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking 2%

SMith Richardson Foundation 2%

Vanguard CharitableEndowment Program 2%

THe Kovener Foundation 2%

Annenberg Foundation 2%

Lilly Endowmwnt Inc 2%

Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation 2%

Exxon Mobiil Foundation 1%

Brady Education Foundation 1%

The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation 1%

Coors Affiliated Foundation 1%

Lakeside Foundation 1%

Herrick Foundation 1%

A number of others at less than 1 percent

The source of this information

http://phys.org/news/2013-12-k...

Unfortunately, there will be less and less information as these defenders of freedom move to untraceable donorship, which is almost always a sure sign of standing by your principles.

What science do you consider credible when it cannot be published in the journals?

Perhaps it might be better explained what I do not consider credible

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

or this: http://retractionwatch.com/201...

This one was pretty egregious on many levels.

Anyhow, before you put Retrsction watch on your hitlist of liberal organizations, they also hae published retractions of pro AGW papers.

Part of self policing and transparency, rather different than what has become "secret contributors" of the Deniers movement.

I suspect that since the vested interests are choosing the political attack route, they probably do know it is credible, they just don't care.

The problem is who are the vested interests? The AGW scientists attack anything skeptical of AGW, and prevent everything being published. What science do you consider credible when it cannot be published in the journals?

Much of the money comes form "Dark sources", like DonorsTrust, and DonorsCapital, meaning they won't tell us, Kind of like legal money laundering. Koch Industries and ExxonMobil money has in large part gone away. It might not be unlikely that they have gone to the untraceable route.

Whic is all very convenient, doing this in secret. How many scientific reports have you see that have no names, because the scientists are too big of pussies to put their name on it?

http://www.scientificamerican....

Regardless, some reseach has shown that from 2003 to 2010:

DonersTrust / DonorsCapital 14%

Sciafe Affiliated Foundations 7%

Lyle and Harry Bradley Foundation 5 %

Koch Affiliated Foundations 5 %

Howard Charitible Foundation 4% John William Pope Foundation 4%

John William Pope Foundation 4%

Searle Freedom Trust 4%

John Templeton Foundation 4%

Dunn's Foundation for the Advancement of Right Thinking 2%

SMith Richardson Foundation 2%

Vanguard CharitableEndowment Program 2%

THe Kovener Foundation 2%

Annenberg Foundation 2%

Lilly Endowmwnt Inc 2%

Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation 2%

Exxon Mobiil Foundation 1%

Brady Education Foundation 1%

The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation 1%

Coors Affiliated Foundation 1%

Lakeside Foundation 1%

Herrick Foundation 1%

A number of others at less than 1 percent

The source of this information

http://phys.org/news/2013-12-k...

Unfortunately, there will be less and less information as these defenders of freedom move to untraceable donorship, which is almost always a sure sign of standing by your principles.

What science do you consider credible when it cannot be published in the journals?

Perhaps it might be better explained what I do not consider credible

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

or this: http://retractionwatch.com/201...

This one was pretty egregious on many levels.

Anyhow, before you put Retrsction watch on your hitlist of liberal organizations, they also hae published retractions of pro AGW papers.

Part of self policing and transparency, rather different than what has become "secret contributors" of the Deniers movement.

A more useful article than TFA is over at retractionwatch.

It certainly is. Thanks!

A more useful article than TFA is over at retractionwatch.

This has nothing to do with file formats and everything to do with not using the features available to you in the best possible way. Far be it from me to praise MSWord (I use LaTeX for all my papers), but if the authors had used the quite good change tracking and commenting features of MSWord, then this would not have happened. You'll sadly find that those features are pretty crap in LibreOffice/OpenOffice and are essentially non-existent in LaTeX (and tools like latexdiff and FiXMe only go some way to filling that void -- they're not nearly as good as the built-in change tracking features of MSWord).

Some real details would be worth including including an quotes from the corresponding author.

Peer review filters out the stuff that is obvious crap, stuff that doesn't even fit the form of a proper scientific article. The purpose is not to say that articles are true, but rather to get rid of articles that are obviously wrong. If the scientists are lying about their data, it's hard for peer review to catch that. That's why reproducibility is important. If it's a result you care about, you can reproduce it.

However in this case, the reviewers at science did indeed complain about aspects of the paper that ended up being part of the faked results http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...:

For the Cell submission, there were concerns about methodology and the lack of supporting evidence for the extraordinary claims, says [stem cell scientist Hans] Schöler, who reviewed the paper and, as is standard practice at Cell, saw the comments of other reviewers for the journal. At Science, according to the 8 May RIKEN investigative committee’s report, one reviewer spotted the problem with lanes being improperly spliced into gel images. “This figure has been reconstructed,” the RIKEN report quotes from the feedback provided by a Science reviewer. The committee writes that the “lane 3” mentioned by the Science reviewer is probably the lane 3 shown in Figure 1i in the Nature article. The investigative committee report says [co-author Haruko] Obokata told the committee that she did not carefully consider the comments of the Science reviewer.

and even the nature reviewers complained http://news.sciencemag.org/sit...

All three Nature reviewers concluded that the data presented in the submitted manuscripts were not enough to support such radical claims. “I would recommend the authors to be extremely cautious in their claims . The authors should look into the actual effect that the treatment elicits in the genome and they should assess genomic instability,” one writes. “There are several issues that I consider should be clarified beyond doubt because of the potential revolutionary nature of the observations,” writes another.

So in the end the editors seemed to just want the sensational paper published and let the community sort it out later. Retraction watch has a nice compilation about it all http://retractionwatch.com/cat...

prove it

What, that scientists lie and falsify data? The NIH alone publishes 1-2 Findings of Scientific Misconduct every month. Retractionwatch has stories every day. The vast majority of scientists are rigorous, honest people who know that their livelihood and career depend on maximum transparency, but there's an awful lot of pressure on grad students who just want a degree without a career, on research staff, and on faculty trying to support their labs. People make mistakes.

Disclaimer: I work in bioscience, so I actually know a thing or two about the process.
If there is a comparatively trivial way to produce stem cells THAT ACTUALLY WORKS, people will go heads over tail to do it themselves. I'd assume every lab that is even remotely connected to the stem cell field would set people on replicating this since the method is basically the equivalent of turning lead into gold. It is the holy grail. No matter how much money you have, no matter how much influence you have, you can't contain such a breakthrough, especially not after it's published. That is, if it actually is what it is claimed to be.
On the other hand, if you claim to have made such a breakthrough, everyone tries it out and no one can replicate it, weeeellll, you'll piss a few people off. Considerably more people than when you just say you found that protein X interacts in subcascade Y under conditions Z and it turns out it doesn't after all.
And if serious intentional misconduct is found, the result is burning at stake. I suggest having a look at http://retractionwatch.com/
And finally, Sasai wasn't the main author behind the whole thing but rather the seniour guy who slapped his seal of approval on it. So even IF the conspiracy nutjobs were true, it's the wrong man that's dead.

Sounds like the same drive to produce global warming results.

Not even close. You need to go to retraction watch http://retractionwatch.com/ and read up. Papers get retracted all the time, and these guys cover it.

Right now, plagiarism is a big thing, even self plagiarism, which is now detected via software. It isn't as nasty a thing as what the japanese researchers pulled, but it is a violation regardless.

Unfortunately for your thesis that AGW scientists are corrupt, much of the retractions have been on the side of those researchers that are trying to disprove it.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

These guys had a journal funded by an oil institute, plagiarized themselves, and engged in good old fashioned political nepotism in hteir anti- AGW publication.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Another retraction

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Interestingly enough, the most evil person in the deniers universe has decided that he would use their own tactics

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

I know that there is zero chance of you changing your mind, as you'll just write this off as more proof of the gigantic cabla of Climate scientists sipping on their mojitos, in their carribean "laboratories",, whilst enjoying billions of dollars the have in their Cayman island bank accounts for making sure nothing anti-AGW gets past them.

Anyhow, read if you dare.

Sounds like the same drive to produce global warming results.

Not even close. You need to go to retraction watch http://retractionwatch.com/ and read up. Papers get retracted all the time, and these guys cover it.

Right now, plagiarism is a big thing, even self plagiarism, which is now detected via software. It isn't as nasty a thing as what the japanese researchers pulled, but it is a violation regardless.

Unfortunately for your thesis that AGW scientists are corrupt, much of the retractions have been on the side of those researchers that are trying to disprove it.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

These guys had a journal funded by an oil institute, plagiarized themselves, and engged in good old fashioned political nepotism in hteir anti- AGW publication.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Another retraction

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Interestingly enough, the most evil person in the deniers universe has decided that he would use their own tactics

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

I know that there is zero chance of you changing your mind, as you'll just write this off as more proof of the gigantic cabla of Climate scientists sipping on their mojitos, in their carribean "laboratories",, whilst enjoying billions of dollars the have in their Cayman island bank accounts for making sure nothing anti-AGW gets past them.

Anyhow, read if you dare.

Sounds like the same drive to produce global warming results.

Not even close. You need to go to retraction watch http://retractionwatch.com/ and read up. Papers get retracted all the time, and these guys cover it.

Right now, plagiarism is a big thing, even self plagiarism, which is now detected via software. It isn't as nasty a thing as what the japanese researchers pulled, but it is a violation regardless.

Unfortunately for your thesis that AGW scientists are corrupt, much of the retractions have been on the side of those researchers that are trying to disprove it.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

These guys had a journal funded by an oil institute, plagiarized themselves, and engged in good old fashioned political nepotism in hteir anti- AGW publication.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Another retraction

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Interestingly enough, the most evil person in the deniers universe has decided that he would use their own tactics

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

I know that there is zero chance of you changing your mind, as you'll just write this off as more proof of the gigantic cabla of Climate scientists sipping on their mojitos, in their carribean "laboratories",, whilst enjoying billions of dollars the have in their Cayman island bank accounts for making sure nothing anti-AGW gets past them.

Anyhow, read if you dare.

Sounds like the same drive to produce global warming results.

Not even close. You need to go to retraction watch http://retractionwatch.com/ and read up. Papers get retracted all the time, and these guys cover it.

Right now, plagiarism is a big thing, even self plagiarism, which is now detected via software. It isn't as nasty a thing as what the japanese researchers pulled, but it is a violation regardless.

Unfortunately for your thesis that AGW scientists are corrupt, much of the retractions have been on the side of those researchers that are trying to disprove it.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

These guys had a journal funded by an oil institute, plagiarized themselves, and engged in good old fashioned political nepotism in hteir anti- AGW publication.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Another retraction

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Interestingly enough, the most evil person in the deniers universe has decided that he would use their own tactics

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

I know that there is zero chance of you changing your mind, as you'll just write this off as more proof of the gigantic cabla of Climate scientists sipping on their mojitos, in their carribean "laboratories",, whilst enjoying billions of dollars the have in their Cayman island bank accounts for making sure nothing anti-AGW gets past them.

Anyhow, read if you dare.

Sounds like the same drive to produce global warming results.

Not even close. You need to go to retraction watch http://retractionwatch.com/ and read up. Papers get retracted all the time, and these guys cover it.

Right now, plagiarism is a big thing, even self plagiarism, which is now detected via software. It isn't as nasty a thing as what the japanese researchers pulled, but it is a violation regardless.

Unfortunately for your thesis that AGW scientists are corrupt, much of the retractions have been on the side of those researchers that are trying to disprove it.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

These guys had a journal funded by an oil institute, plagiarized themselves, and engged in good old fashioned political nepotism in hteir anti- AGW publication.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Another retraction

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Interestingly enough, the most evil person in the deniers universe has decided that he would use their own tactics

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

I know that there is zero chance of you changing your mind, as you'll just write this off as more proof of the gigantic cabla of Climate scientists sipping on their mojitos, in their carribean "laboratories",, whilst enjoying billions of dollars the have in their Cayman island bank accounts for making sure nothing anti-AGW gets past them.

Anyhow, read if you dare.

Give me the publicantions (sic) and research where Pro-AGW factions engaged in scientific fraud.

Well, this comes to mind. Why cover up the data? Maybe he was cleared of all wrong-doing, but this was one of the first hits when I searched for "Global Warming Fraud".

Okay, I read the report, and personally if that is fraud, then most everything is.

It boils down to a researcher was worried about some of the data. Then he was reluctant to release some of the data to a climate change "skeptic".

Okay, I hope that what you not are saying that this incident completely disproves AGW?

You need to go here. http://retractionwatch.com/ Lots and lots of retractions. And they have real ones, not just the ones that the press and the deniers orgasm over.

But there is a reason for that. Hackers that worked their way into emails, and cherry picking the data, and that is all they can come up with?

I suspsect the deniers would love to take down retraction watch, because of gems like this:

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Don't worry though, because AGW deniers refuse to believe that the paper is not real and the honest truth. SO I guess they can still quote the retracted paper

Amazingly enough, Character assassination, the second tool of the deniers, has even had a "scientific paper put out. Oops, it was retracted.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Lest you believe this site deals only with anti-AGW papers being retracted, here is a case of a really bad AGW study

http://www.guardian.co.uk/envi...

Retracted, and rightfully so

This one was a bit less dumb:

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

However, here is the biggie:

http://retractionwatch.com/201... For those who don't read articles, the Journal, "Pattern Recognition in Physics", is a journal favored by climate change skeptics, And Published by Copernicus Publications. While th einitiators asserted that the aim of the journal was to publish articles about patterns in the full spectrum of physical disciplines, events proved otherwise.

In a special issue entitled "Pattern in Solar variability, their planetary origin, and terrestrial impacts, the paper authors cast doubt upon global warming.

Okay, so far, so good. But nothing gets published in scientific journals without review. The main page of that Retraction watch proves that. It's a matter of course. What we found out:

The "peer" review process was done on a nepotistic basis. Scientific publishing considers that as malpractice and unethical.

The writers plagiarized themselves. Always a trigger for retraction.

The editor in chief of the journal is employed by the Algerian Petroleum Institute.

Copernicous Publications has ceased publication of the journal.

Give me the publicantions (sic) and research where Pro-AGW factions engaged in scientific fraud.

Well, this comes to mind. Why cover up the data? Maybe he was cleared of all wrong-doing, but this was one of the first hits when I searched for "Global Warming Fraud".

Okay, I read the report, and personally if that is fraud, then most everything is.

It boils down to a researcher was worried about some of the data. Then he was reluctant to release some of the data to a climate change "skeptic".

Okay, I hope that what you not are saying that this incident completely disproves AGW?

You need to go here. http://retractionwatch.com/ Lots and lots of retractions. And they have real ones, not just the ones that the press and the deniers orgasm over.

But there is a reason for that. Hackers that worked their way into emails, and cherry picking the data, and that is all they can come up with?

I suspsect the deniers would love to take down retraction watch, because of gems like this:

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Don't worry though, because AGW deniers refuse to believe that the paper is not real and the honest truth. SO I guess they can still quote the retracted paper

Amazingly enough, Character assassination, the second tool of the deniers, has even had a "scientific paper put out. Oops, it was retracted.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Lest you believe this site deals only with anti-AGW papers being retracted, here is a case of a really bad AGW study

http://www.guardian.co.uk/envi...

Retracted, and rightfully so

This one was a bit less dumb:

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

However, here is the biggie:

http://retractionwatch.com/201... For those who don't read articles, the Journal, "Pattern Recognition in Physics", is a journal favored by climate change skeptics, And Published by Copernicus Publications. While th einitiators asserted that the aim of the journal was to publish articles about patterns in the full spectrum of physical disciplines, events proved otherwise.

In a special issue entitled "Pattern in Solar variability, their planetary origin, and terrestrial impacts, the paper authors cast doubt upon global warming.

Okay, so far, so good. But nothing gets published in scientific journals without review. The main page of that Retraction watch proves that. It's a matter of course. What we found out:

The "peer" review process was done on a nepotistic basis. Scientific publishing considers that as malpractice and unethical.

The writers plagiarized themselves. Always a trigger for retraction.

The editor in chief of the journal is employed by the Algerian Petroleum Institute.

Copernicous Publications has ceased publication of the journal.

Give me the publicantions (sic) and research where Pro-AGW factions engaged in scientific fraud.

Well, this comes to mind. Why cover up the data? Maybe he was cleared of all wrong-doing, but this was one of the first hits when I searched for "Global Warming Fraud".

Okay, I read the report, and personally if that is fraud, then most everything is.

It boils down to a researcher was worried about some of the data. Then he was reluctant to release some of the data to a climate change "skeptic".

Okay, I hope that what you not are saying that this incident completely disproves AGW?

You need to go here. http://retractionwatch.com/ Lots and lots of retractions. And they have real ones, not just the ones that the press and the deniers orgasm over.

But there is a reason for that. Hackers that worked their way into emails, and cherry picking the data, and that is all they can come up with?

I suspsect the deniers would love to take down retraction watch, because of gems like this:

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Don't worry though, because AGW deniers refuse to believe that the paper is not real and the honest truth. SO I guess they can still quote the retracted paper

Amazingly enough, Character assassination, the second tool of the deniers, has even had a "scientific paper put out. Oops, it was retracted.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Lest you believe this site deals only with anti-AGW papers being retracted, here is a case of a really bad AGW study

http://www.guardian.co.uk/envi...

Retracted, and rightfully so

This one was a bit less dumb:

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

However, here is the biggie:

http://retractionwatch.com/201... For those who don't read articles, the Journal, "Pattern Recognition in Physics", is a journal favored by climate change skeptics, And Published by Copernicus Publications. While th einitiators asserted that the aim of the journal was to publish articles about patterns in the full spectrum of physical disciplines, events proved otherwise.

In a special issue entitled "Pattern in Solar variability, their planetary origin, and terrestrial impacts, the paper authors cast doubt upon global warming.

Okay, so far, so good. But nothing gets published in scientific journals without review. The main page of that Retraction watch proves that. It's a matter of course. What we found out:

The "peer" review process was done on a nepotistic basis. Scientific publishing considers that as malpractice and unethical.

The writers plagiarized themselves. Always a trigger for retraction.

The editor in chief of the journal is employed by the Algerian Petroleum Institute.

Copernicous Publications has ceased publication of the journal.

Give me the publicantions (sic) and research where Pro-AGW factions engaged in scientific fraud.

Well, this comes to mind. Why cover up the data? Maybe he was cleared of all wrong-doing, but this was one of the first hits when I searched for "Global Warming Fraud".

Okay, I read the report, and personally if that is fraud, then most everything is.

It boils down to a researcher was worried about some of the data. Then he was reluctant to release some of the data to a climate change "skeptic".

Okay, I hope that what you not are saying that this incident completely disproves AGW?

You need to go here. http://retractionwatch.com/ Lots and lots of retractions. And they have real ones, not just the ones that the press and the deniers orgasm over.

But there is a reason for that. Hackers that worked their way into emails, and cherry picking the data, and that is all they can come up with?

I suspsect the deniers would love to take down retraction watch, because of gems like this:

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Don't worry though, because AGW deniers refuse to believe that the paper is not real and the honest truth. SO I guess they can still quote the retracted paper

Amazingly enough, Character assassination, the second tool of the deniers, has even had a "scientific paper put out. Oops, it was retracted.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Lest you believe this site deals only with anti-AGW papers being retracted, here is a case of a really bad AGW study

http://www.guardian.co.uk/envi...

Retracted, and rightfully so

This one was a bit less dumb:

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

However, here is the biggie:

http://retractionwatch.com/201... For those who don't read articles, the Journal, "Pattern Recognition in Physics", is a journal favored by climate change skeptics, And Published by Copernicus Publications. While th einitiators asserted that the aim of the journal was to publish articles about patterns in the full spectrum of physical disciplines, events proved otherwise.

In a special issue entitled "Pattern in Solar variability, their planetary origin, and terrestrial impacts, the paper authors cast doubt upon global warming.

Okay, so far, so good. But nothing gets published in scientific journals without review. The main page of that Retraction watch proves that. It's a matter of course. What we found out:

The "peer" review process was done on a nepotistic basis. Scientific publishing considers that as malpractice and unethical.

The writers plagiarized themselves. Always a trigger for retraction.

The editor in chief of the journal is employed by the Algerian Petroleum Institute.

Copernicous Publications has ceased publication of the journal.

Give me the publicantions (sic) and research where Pro-AGW factions engaged in scientific fraud.

Well, this comes to mind. Why cover up the data? Maybe he was cleared of all wrong-doing, but this was one of the first hits when I searched for "Global Warming Fraud".

Okay, I read the report, and personally if that is fraud, then most everything is.

It boils down to a researcher was worried about some of the data. Then he was reluctant to release some of the data to a climate change "skeptic".

Okay, I hope that what you not are saying that this incident completely disproves AGW?

You need to go here. http://retractionwatch.com/ Lots and lots of retractions. And they have real ones, not just the ones that the press and the deniers orgasm over.

But there is a reason for that. Hackers that worked their way into emails, and cherry picking the data, and that is all they can come up with?

I suspsect the deniers would love to take down retraction watch, because of gems like this:

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Don't worry though, because AGW deniers refuse to believe that the paper is not real and the honest truth. SO I guess they can still quote the retracted paper

Amazingly enough, Character assassination, the second tool of the deniers, has even had a "scientific paper put out. Oops, it was retracted.

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

Lest you believe this site deals only with anti-AGW papers being retracted, here is a case of a really bad AGW study

http://www.guardian.co.uk/envi...

Retracted, and rightfully so

This one was a bit less dumb:

http://retractionwatch.com/201...

However, here is the biggie:

http://retractionwatch.com/201... For those who don't read articles, the Journal, "Pattern Recognition in Physics", is a journal favored by climate change skeptics, And Published by Copernicus Publications. While th einitiators asserted that the aim of the journal was to publish articles about patterns in the full spectrum of physical disciplines, events proved otherwise.

In a special issue entitled "Pattern in Solar variability, their planetary origin, and terrestrial impacts, the paper authors cast doubt upon global warming.

Okay, so far, so good. But nothing gets published in scientific journals without review. The main page of that Retraction watch proves that. It's a matter of course. What we found out:

The "peer" review process was done on a nepotistic basis. Scientific publishing considers that as malpractice and unethical.

The writers plagiarized themselves. Always a trigger for retraction.

The editor in chief of the journal is employed by the Algerian Petroleum Institute.

Copernicous Publications has ceased publication of the journal.

http://retractionwatch.com/2014/01/17/climate-skeptic-journal-shuttered-following-malpractice-in-nepotistic-reviewer-selections/

Science is easy when you have your mind made up for you by your employer, and only look for the data your employer wants.

Remember, get ALL your science data from politicians. They'd never ever lie. Nor would people who have a monetary interest in disproving something

http://scholarlyoa.com/2013/07/16/recognizing-a-pattern-of-problems-in-pattern-recognition-in-physics/

Then again, there is Retraction Watch in case deniers just want to claim that the scientists are sitting on their billion dollar yachts sipping their mojitos, and selectively killing only articles about global warming - hey, might as well add creationism while we are into denialism.

http://retractionwatch.com/2014/01/17/climate-skeptic-journal-shuttered-following-malpractice-in-nepotistic-reviewer-selections/

While journals are not perfect, they do (usually) maintain some minimum bars and filters for the material that goes into them.

"Journals published by Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, and Sage all accepted my bogus paper."