107 Cancer Papers Retracted Due To Peer Review Fraud (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The journal Tumor Biology is retracting 107 research papers after discovering that the authors faked the peer review process. This isn't the journal's first rodeo. Late last year, 58 papers were retracted from seven different journals -- 25 came from Tumor Biology for the same reason. It's possible to fake peer review because authors are often asked to suggest potential reviewers for their own papers. This is done because research subjects are often blindingly niche; a researcher working in a sub-sub-field may be more aware than the journal editor of who is best-placed to assess the work. But some journals go further and request, or allow, authors to submit the contact details of these potential reviewers. If the editor isn't aware of the potential for a scam, they then merrily send the requests for review out to fake e-mail addresses, often using the names of actual researchers. And at the other end of the fake e-mail address is someone who's in on the game and happy to send in a friendly review. This most recent avalanche of fake-reviewed papers was discovered because of extra screening at the journal. According to an official statement from Springer, the company that published Tumor Biology until this year, "the decision was made to screen new papers before they are released to production." The extra screening turned up the names of fake reviewers that hadn't previously been detected, and "in order to clean up our scientific records, we will now start retracting these affected articles...Springer will continue to proactively investigate these issues."

Comments

Re:Could climate science be affected, too?

[Ol Olsoc]

If cancer research is affected by incidents like this, what's to say that climate science isn't similarly affected?

Pay no attention to the research assistant behind the curtain!

As long as humans are involved, there will be fraud along the way. But there is one beg difference between science and the religio-political world. We seek out and correct our fraud and errors. And once the fraud is exposed, the perp is a pariah, as opposed to the other world where they are often re-elected or otherwise rewarded.

Its also good to point out that the fraud was in the review process, not the work itself. So the tools that did it were extra stupid in their laziness.

As for AC's hand wringing, climate science is not cancer research, with obscure aspects only a few people know anything about. The physics is out there, the data can be perused by anyone, it's like permanent peer review.

In fact, if we want to see intellectual fraud vis-à-vis climate science, we need only look at the denialists work. We'll have to give some rope here, because denialists tend not to publish actual papers, but "publish" on line denial.

But you do the same process. You look at the claims and walk them back to the source. You look at the graphs and check for accuracy and graphic tricks. You check references - although in denialist work, there are not many. You also check timeliness. In an ongoing field of research like climate science, is the latest data being used?

So AC need not worry, climate scientists are acutely aware of the political scrutiny of their work, and are very very careful.