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How Did Those STAP Stem Cell Papers Get Accepted In the First Place?
bmahersciwriter writes The news team at the scientific journal Nature turns its investigative power on the journal itself. The goal: to try and understand how two papers that made extraordinary claims about a new way to create stem cells managed to get published despite some obvious errors and a paucity of solid evidence. The saga behind these so-called STAP cells is engaging, but sadly reminiscent of so many other scientific controversies.
Peer reviewed. Yeah, right. And just who is reviewing the peers?
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
"See, this is exactly why we oppose stem cell research. They are all frauds."
Seriously though, I would have imagined that the papers should only get published if the results themselves were reproducible. Somehow those are skipped and the whole peer review system is in trouble. At the end, I would think whoever reviewed the papers should also be disciplined.
I can't imagine this was done on purpose... I can't imagine how a scientist would, knowingly, publish wrong results (and perceived as revolutionary/important by their peers). Because this would be nothing more than willingly putting a sword of Damocles over your head / committing professional suicide on the spot. I mean, how is that possible that rational people (scientific minds) would accept to do such thing while being sure it will compromise their entire career (and life) after that?
Everybody wants to believe in miracles.
You don't seem to understand how Science works. Theories that later turn out to be wrong are proposed all the time, and doing so is not a blot on your academic record unless it is proved (or strongly believed) that you did it on purpose and hence wasted everybody's time knowingly .
If it wasn't deliberate then making an erroneous proposal is a perfectly normal occurrence in Science, and we rely on other scientists to confirm or invalidate our work. Obviously we try our best to get it right, but scientists are human and that's why one person's results are merely the start of the process and are meaningless without multiple confirmations by others.
The real story here is how come experienced peer reviewers accepted the paper if the substance was as poor as alleged.
"Nice journal you got here. Shame if it got broke..."
There are examples where papers on global warming tried to game the system but were found out in short order. For an example see this article where Dr. Roy Spencer sneaked a botched paper past the peer-review system by submitting to an off-topic journal. Because the reviewers were not familiar with the topic they were not aware that the methodology described in the paper had already been refuted by previous literature. Within days the journal editor had resigned: http://science.slashdot.org/st...
“The problem is that comparable studies published by other authors have already been refuted in open discussions and to some extend also in the literature (Trenberth et al. 2010), a fact which was ignored by Spencer and Braswell in their paper and, unfortunately, not picked up by the reviewers.”
Worse than that. It's blind faith in circular belief in truth. You get just enough people saying it and it becomes "a number of people" and suddenly a critical mass of people are making or supporting the claim and it becomes "truth." This is a general understanding of how lies become truth all over. Such common lies are "god" and "global warming." Deny either of those (among others) and you will be attacked politically. Observe as I get modded down because I dared mention god or global warming as lies.
A reviewer might think that the results are not implausible, so the paper can go ahead. Reviewers don't try to reproduce the results in their own lab.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
"Blind faith in Japanese researchers"
Yes. Such things cannot happen when the researchers are of other ethnicities. [heavy rolling of eyes]
"Observe as I get modded down because I dared mention god or global warming as lies."
Ooh, so daring. What's next, O King of Iconoclasts, a bold swig of non-skim milk?
Global warming is something of a "meta lie" then. See, you get just enough people saying it's a lie and it becomes "a number of people" and suddenly a critical mass of people are making or supporting the claim and the lie about it being a lie becomes "truth".
Like the American, Vacanti, who started the whole thing.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Everyone also wants to believe pretty little Dr Obokata, who is has adorable cartoon characters on her lab equipment and wears a cooking apron while experimenting managed to cure mortality. I mean, she would be such a fantastic science poster girl.
I mean, I just looked at her pictures and completely forgot about anything scientific. One look and I was: "Forget about the chimeric rats, lets see if I can inject some of my non-pluripotent cells into her and create some embrionic stem cells!"
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Journals aren't arbiters of Truth (capital T), they're just what they say they are: JOURNALS of the ongoing work of science.
Someone records that they have done X in a journal. Because said journal is available to other scientists, other scientists get to try to make use of the same notes/information/processes. If they are able to do so, they journal it as well. Get enough mentions in enough journals that something works, and we can begin to presume that it does.
If only one mention in one journal is ever made, then it is just another record in another journal of another thing that one scientist (or group of scientists) claim to have done.
Peer review is just to keep journals from expanding to the point that there is too much for anyone to keep track of or read. It is emphatically NOT the place at which the factuality or truthfulness of notes/information/processes are established once and for all. That happens AFTER publication as other scientists get ahold of things and put them through their paces.
Seriously, this is all exactly as it is supposed to work. I have no idea why there is such hoopla about this. There is nothing to see here. One group journaled something, other groups couldn't replicate it, they no doubt will reference this failure in future articles, and "what happened" is recorded out in the open for all of science, thereby expanding our pool of knowledge, both about what consistently works in many situations and of what someone claims has worked once in one situation but appears either not to work in the general case or requires more understanding and research.
Again, there is nothing to see here. Let's move on.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
... by the journal itself... investigating itself... the result will be that they don't find any wrong doing in their own journal.
And then the media will report "journal finds no wrong doing"... and then we can all go back to sleep.
Right guys?
The issue is not this one journal. Its a general lack of scrutiny in science itself. They are not being audited. The data is not being checked. The experiments are not being replicated.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Peer review works if the people doing the review are honest and competent. Both aspects have been in sharp decline, not only in the biomedical field. These days, positions for Professors and PhD students are more often than not filled with people that can simulate competence and that have no or little personal ethics whatsoever. They will form groups that accept any and all papers from each other and reject anything from others. Anything original also generally has a high chance of getting rejected, unless the reviewers know and like the authors. The peer-review system is so broken and corrupt that it has just stopped working as the quality of the "researchers" forming it is way too often abysmally bad. (And forget about "anonymous reviews". The in-group has all the Tech-Reports from their friends and can recognize all papers written by them.)
This is not a new phenomenon, it seems to just be getting worse again. But remember that Shannon had trouble publishing his "Theory of Information", because no reviewer understood it or was willing to invest time for something new.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
In my country we don't get tornados. But a few weeks ago we got 3 of them in one day. They must have been around F1-F2.
So, why did STAP paper get published? Monetary interests as usuall.
Coming from AC, I find that to be only a little ironic.
Perhaps what you meant is that the notion "global warming is a lie" is itself a circular belief? That would make more sense. After all, a key property of a circular belief is that it's exact origins are somewhat obscure. The theory of global warming has well known, logical origins founded in the laws of thermodynamics and provable via repeatable (and oft-repeated) experiments. The origins of the theory can be traced back to those original observations which can't be logically explained otherwise.
Whereas the belief that "global warming is a lie" has all the properties of a circular belief:
(a) The proof of the belief refers to the belief itself
(b) The origins of the belief are obscure and it's proponents are often at considerable effort to avoid discussing the likely origins
(c) The belief makes no reference to observations which justify it and indeed, contradict known observations.
Is it therefore safe to assume that that is what you meant - that the belief "global warming is a lie" is itself a lie?
Well put; I agree with just about everything you said. The only slight issue I had regards your statement:
"Peer review is just to keep journals from expanding to the point that there is too much for anyone to keep track of or read."
If that were the primary role of peer review it could be considered an abject failure (I think the primary role of peer review is as a first order coherence and relevance check on the work of researchers - that it has a limiting effect on the proliferation of publications is more of a useful by product). As a matter of fact the number of journals articles have expanded to the point that even ultra specialists have an extremely difficult time keeping up with the literature in their field and I think this will develop into a serious problem. Scientific development requires a degree of coherence between practitioners that I think is currently in danger of being lost. Sure the "coherence time" may a grow a little without causing too much trouble but it can't get arbitrarily large without doing irreparable damage. But maybe this problem will be "solved" by the drying up of funding (though hopefully it can be addressed in a less disastourous manner).