Another Slew of Science Papers Retracted Because of Fraud

schwit1 writes: A major scientific publisher has retracted 64 articles in 10 journals after discovering that the so-called independent peer reviewers for these articles were fabricated by the authors themselves. From the article: "The cull comes after similar discoveries of 'fake peer review' by several other major publishers, including London-based BioMed Central, an arm of Springer, which began retracting 43 articles in March citing 'reviews from fabricated reviewers'. The practice can occur when researchers submitting a paper for publication suggest reviewers, but supply contact details for them that actually route requests for review back to the researchers themselves." Overall, this indicates an incredible amount of sloppiness and laziness in the peer-review field. In total, more than a 100 papers have been retracted, simply because the journals relied on the authors to provide them contact information for their reviewers, never bothering to contact them directly.

Comments

This can all be disproved.

[timrod]

I have written a paper that conclusively proves that there is absolutely no fraud within the field of academic publishing within the biomedical field. It was peer reviewed by no fewer than sixty of my peers (who definitely aren't me making up names) and is absolutely concrete in its findings... provided you don't look too hard at my evidence. Clearly, anyone who says there is fraud within the biomed field is in fact fraudulent themselves.

Also, I take checks, Visa, and Mastercard, but no Amex.

Re:And this is why people don't trust science

[msauve]

But who's more of a peer than the author themselves?