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China's Scientists Set New International Record -- For Faked Peer Reviews (nytimes.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the regretting-retractions dept.

China now has more laboratory scientists than any other country in the world, reports Amy Qin in the New York Times, and spends more on research than the entire European Union. But in its rush to dominance, China has stood out in another, less boastful way. Since 2012, the country has retracted more scientific papers because of faked peer reviews than all other countries and territories put together, according to Retraction Watch, a blog that tracks and seeks to publicize retractions of research papers... In April, a scientific journal retracted 107 biology research papers, the vast majority of them written by Chinese authors, after evidence emerged that they had faked glowing reviews of their articles. Then, this summer, a Chinese gene scientist who had won celebrity status for breakthroughs once trumpeted as Nobel Prize-worthy was forced to retract his research when other scientists failed to replicate his results. At the same time, a government investigation highlighted the existence of a thriving online black market that sells everything from positive peer reviews to entire research articles...

In part, these numbers may simply reflect the enormous scale of the world's most populous nation. But Chinese scientists also blame what they call the skewed incentives they say are embedded within their nation's academic system.

13 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Incentives are skewed everywhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "In part, these numbers may simply reflect the enormous scale of the world's most populous nation. But Chinese scientists also blame what they call the skewed incentives they say are embedded within their nation's academic system."
    I don't see how these skewed incentives are any different in Western countries.

    1. Re:Incentives are skewed everywhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I don't see how these skewed incentives are any different in Western countries.

      Presumably you have performed research in both China and in the West and your comment is drawing on your deep knowledge of the educational systems of both countries? No? The ability of slashdotters to hold strong opinions on subjects which they know next to nothing about never ceases to amaze. In China, Master's students must publish a certain number of papers above a certain impact factor in order to graduate. For PhD students, the bar is set higher. Principal investigators are given cash sums - which can be quite substantial - based on the impact factors of their papers. Add to this the weak separation between personal income and research funding and the incentive to cheat is huge.

    2. Re:Incentives are skewed everywhere by gtall · · Score: 5, Informative

      Maybe it works for Chinese publications. However, Chinese papers don't just get submitted to Chinese publications, they get submitted to journals and conferences outside China. It isn't easy reading a paper for review. Unless you are doing precisely similar research, you must learn enough about the research to know if it is good or not. I read a (Chinese) paper (written in English...well written English, I might add) on rings (mathematics). I'm not a ring theorist but I do know a bit of algebra. I decided I wouldn't just read the paper but track down every result. Marvelous paper except for the first theorem upon which all the rest were based. I couldn't prove it, and I tried hard. Many times papers do not include all the proofs because it would make the paper too long for publication or they are considered trivial in the field.

      After writing and Latexing 15 pages of notes and proofs on the rest of the paper, I radioed back I wanted to see their proof of that theorem. What I got back was a reference and how it was a trivial conclusion from the reference. I found the reference and read it (yet another paper I had to read after tracking down and reading some of their previous refs). I couldn't see it. I radioed back I wanted to see an honest proof, not invocation to a Higher Authority. After 2 months, they retracted the paper. The total time from my first seeing the paper to that retraction was 8 months and several long days of my time....on one paper...

      My point is that few reviewers are going to dig in their heels and properly review a paper, few have that kind of time. After that, I'll be damned if I'm not going to read another paper the same exact way. It will cost me in time, but I'll learn new things and maybe another piece of shit won't make it into a journal.

  2. Not just about large population by JoshuaZ · · Score: 2
    From the summary:

    In part, these numbers may simply reflect the enormous scale of the world's most populous nation.

    That is probably part of it, but it is worth emphasizing that that is definitely not all of it. The per a capita retraction rate for China is much higher than it is for other large countries.

  3. Re:Incentives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sigh... people talk about research money like the researchers themselves actually profit from it. 99% of the time, researcher salary is fixed completely independently of grant money obtained.

    Instead, we could actually RTFA, the paragraph after...

    As in the West, career advancement can often seem to be based more on the quantity of research papers published rather than the quality. However, in China, scientists there say, this obsession with numerical goal posts can reach extremes. Compounding the problem, they say, is the fact that Chinese universities and research institutes suffer from a lack of oversight, and mete out weak punishments for those who are caught cheating.

  4. Re: Chinese are programmed to cheat. by Kleanthes · · Score: 2

    Yeah, would be much better if they were the 'murican type of Christian. Then they would also cheat, but at least they would also loudly complain about cheaters.

  5. sounds familiar. by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Chinese scientists also blame what they call the skewed incentives they say are embedded within their nation's academic system.

    It sounds like they have a similar problem to the US's collapsing "publish or perish" paradigm. People should be less focused on what the scientists are doing and focus on the cause of such behavior.

    To change the behavior of a group you must correct the feedback loops that control them.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
    1. Re:sounds familiar. by Peter+Desnoyers · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Chinese scientists also blame what they call the skewed incentives they say are embedded within their nation's academic system.

      It sounds like they have a similar problem to the US's collapsing "publish or perish" paradigm. People should be less focused on what the scientists are doing and focus on the cause of such behavior.

      To change the behavior of a group you must correct the feedback loops that control them.

      In the US, gross misconduct (like impersonating other scientists in order to review your own papers) is a career death sentence, in part because "publish or perish" is administered by a tenure vote of the people you work with (and compete with), instead of a bean-counting administrator somewhere. There are lots of incentives to do semi-unsavory things - e.g. splitting your work into "least-publishable units", or "P-hacking", where you try every combination of data to see if one of them supports your conclusion - however if you cross the line and start doing things your colleagues aren't willing to do, they'll be happy to come down on you like a ton of bricks.

    2. Re:sounds familiar. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Oh please spare me. I'm involved in nutrition research and I see the contortions others go through to support whatever conclusion is best for the corporation helping fund said study. It's no accident, statistically, when Corporation F funds Study U, that Study U will have an 80% chance to put Corporation F's dubious products in a good or at least neutral light.

    3. Re:sounds familiar. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In the US, gross misconduct (like impersonating other scientists in order to review your own papers) is a career death sentence, in part because "publish or perish" is administered by a tenure vote of the people you work with (and compete with), instead of a bean-counting administrator somewhere.

      https://science.slashdot.org/story/15/02/13/2113248/unearthing-fraud-in-medical-trials

      you new to the research thing?

  6. Can't fake everything... by Peter+Desnoyers · · Score: 4, Funny

    Gotta love this quote from one of the linked articles:

    "When a lot of the fake peer reviews first came up, one of the reasons the editors spotted them was that the reviewers responded on time"

  7. More fake biology/medical research by riverat1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    One thing I see when I look at faked research and retractions of papers is that it often is in biology and medical research or things like sociology. In the hard sciences like physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, meteorology and dare I say it climatology it doesn't seem to happen nearly as often. Maybe it's harder to fake the data in those sciences or maybe there's just more variability open to interpretation in the results from biology/medicine.

    1. Re:More fake biology/medical research by SNRatio · · Score: 3, Insightful

      One thing I see when I look at faked research and retractions of papers is that it often is in biology and medical research or things like sociology. In the hard sciences like physics, chemistry, astronomy, geology, meteorology and dare I say it climatology it doesn't seem to happen nearly as often. Maybe it's harder to fake the data in those sciences or maybe there's just more variability open to interpretation in the results from biology/medicine.

      I think a big part is that when it's medicine the media is more likely to pick up the story. Jan Hendrik Schön was one of the biggest scandals - but it didn't really make a big splash in the news because solid state physics just isn't something most people get worked up about. Ditto for Adrian Maxim. So unless you are a regular at Retraction Watch, you hear about Wakefield and Hwang Woo-Suk (cloning), but not about physics or engineering fraud.

      I also wonder if the problem is really that much worse than it was in the past. Granted, academia is more competitive than it used to be. But really, the big change is that it is so much easier to find fraud than it was in the past. You're right - it is not that hard to make some fake data for a biology paper. You photoshop the picture of your gel (a technique for showing which proteins are present in a sample and whether they are interacting with each other) to show the results you want. 30 or 40 years ago: same thing, though you would have had to do it manually. But now image analysis can catch that easily. Ditto for plagiarism. Ditto for analyzing sets of numbers to see if they were observed or invented. And because it is easier to examine for fraud, and fraud is actually routinely talked about, more people are looking for it than in the past. Now, fraud stands a good chance of being caught. Back then: not so much.