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