Hundreds of papers with bogus peer review to be retracted...

www.americanthinker.com...

www.lifesitenews.com...

Follow the science you say? Trust the Science you say?

Well # you.

This is insane, but not unexpected. It shocks me how I am now conditioned that when this type of news makes it's way to the surface, I am not shocked, in the least.

From the Lifesite article Via American Thinker:

There’s good news that a major publisher of scientific journals is cleaning out the stable of papers whose review process appears corrupted, but the bad news is worse.

Not only were these papers published in the first place, but the easily-corrupted system of peer review – which is supposed to be the quality assurance mechanism for the creation and dissemination of scientific knowledge – remains in place with no additional safeguards.

Retraction Watch reports:

After months of investigation that identified networks of reviewers and editors manipulating the peer review process, Hindawi plans to retract 511 papers across 16 journals, Retraction Watch has learned.

The retractions, which the publisher and its parent company, Wiley, will announce tomorrow in a blog post, will be issued in the next month, and more may come as its investigation continues. They are not yet making the list available.

Hindawi’s research integrity team found several signs of manipulated peer reviews for the affected papers, including reviews that contained duplicated text, a few individuals who did a lot of reviews, reviewers who turned in their reviews extremely quickly, and misuse of databases that publishers use to vet potential reviewers.

The problem appears to be what are called “peer review and citation rings,” as found in another case at a scientific journal from another big publisher, SAGE:

SAGE announces the retraction of 60 articles implicated in a peer review and citation ring at the Journal of Vibration and Control (JVC). The full extent of the peer review ring has been uncovered following a 14 month SAGE-led investigation, and centres on the strongly suspected misconduct of Peter Chen, formerly of National Pingtung University of Education, Taiwan (NPUE) and possibly other authors at this institution…

While investigating the JVC papers submitted and reviewed by Peter Chen, it was discovered that the author had created various aliases on SAGE Track, providing different email addresses to set up more than one account. Consequently, SAGE scrutinised further the co-authors of and reviewers selected for Peter Chen’s papers, these names appeared to form part of a peer review ring. The investigation also revealed that on at least one occasion, the author Peter Chen reviewed his own paper under one of the aliases he had created.

These abuses involve fraud, but inevitably there are also “rings” of scientists who do not use false identities, but who mutually scratch each other’s backs to build up a record of publication by favorably reviewing each other’s work. The reward system in academia requires publication of articles in journals, and measures the number of citations those articles receive. Such a system is inherently vulnerable to cooperation among like-minded scholars who push each other’s work into print and cite each other.

The problem is “massive” and even when important papers are withdrawn, some continue to be cited and relied upon for further work. Science becomes a joke under such circumstances, with the possibility of real world catastrophe if the phony results become the basis for real world actions.

My own view as someone who left academia after becoming a Harvard professor is that corruption has infiltrated the academy along with careerism and politicization. Correcting the situation will not be easy, but a first step would be to institute criminal penalties for research and review fraud. A “cultural revolution” of sorts is needed in academia, with a pervasive ethic of honesty enforced by social pressure as well as laws.


So again no surprise. But this is not solely isolated to Covid. It appears "science" (whatever TF that means these days) is now, and has been a commodity, sold to the highest bidder.

gizmodo.com...

If someone applied to a top position at a company, you’d hope a hiring manager would at least Google the applicant to ensure they’re qualified. A group of researchers sent phony resumes to 360 scientific journals for an applicant whose Polish name translated to “Dr. Fraud.” And 48 journals happily appointed the fake doctor to their editorial board.

This sting operation was the first systematic analysis on editorial roles in science publishing, adding concrete evidence to a problem past stings have shed light on. There are a whole lot of “predatory” scientific journals out there, journals that take advantage of scientists’ need to produce articles by publishing anything for a fee, without checking to make sure the paper is actually new research, worth publishing, and not completely inaccurate. But the problem is more than a juiced-up email scam (despite some probably-predatory journals looking essentially the same), and highlights many issues in today’s scientific publishing industry. Those issues can result in important science not being published in real journals, or worse, bad, un-vetted science being published, scientists bolstering their resumes with crap, and an eroding public trust in science as an institution.

“What this boils down to is that scholarly papers published in these types of journals are far less likely to have undergone any kind of quality check, including proper peer review,” one of the scientists leading the sting from the University of Sussex, Katarzyna Pisanski, told Gizmodo in an email. “It could result in (and probably already has) thousands of scientific articles that have essentially gone ‘un-checked’... If we cannot trust the academic publishing system, who can we trust?”

The standards of academia require scientists to publish papers. It’s how many get their Ph.Ds, and how universities judge the quality of their research. Most journals say they thoroughly vet their research through peer review, by having knowledgable subject matter experts look over the work and make suggestions before publishing. Some, like Science and Nature, charge a subscription fee to access their articles. Others, like PLoS One and Peerj are open access, meaning that scientists pay a fee to have their work appear in the peer-reviewed journal, but the articles are free to read and access for anyone.

The idea for a sting operation came after the paper’s authors began noticing “absurd number” of emails asking them to send papers or be the editors of journals outside their expertise, said Pisanski. The researchers randomly selected 120 papers each from three sources: Jeffrey Beall’s blacklist, a since-removed list of predatory journals, the Directory of Open Access Journals (which is exactly what it sounds like), and titles indexed by Journal Citation Reports, which gives “impact factors,” a flawed but frequently-used metric that ranks journals and how often their articles are cited. The researchers created a fake web presence for their “doctor,” along with a fake resume listing fake research publications and no editorial experience.

All of this points to the fact that EVERYTHING is now corrupt.

You can't trust a MF'ing word that comes out of the mouths of our medical or scientific communities, school boards, government agencies, etc, etc. They have all sold their souls to the highest bidder.

SMH...

originally posted by: MaxxAction
All of this points to the fact that EVERYTHING is now corrupt.

You can't trust a MF'ing word that comes out of the mouths of our medical or scientific communities, school boards, government agencies, etc, etc. They have all sold their souls to the highest bidder.

SMH...

That's a fact.
What's even more disturbing than the non-stop lies these entities spew is the fact that people BELIEVE THEM!
Our society is beyond dumbed-down. It's zombie-fied.

a reply to: MaxxAction

They lie all the time in science, psychology being the biggest offender, political opinion influences science, Science on it's own is amazing but you add the human element of deceiving others for personal gain whether it be monetary or influence/power....

Nothing has really change from the times of Rome.

a reply to: Lysergic

We the plebs are constantly tricked into support X, Y and Z.

Then you get plebs who took the bait and will violently defend their liar.

Thank you for sharing. S&F for ya.

a reply to: MaxxAction

Billions of Dollars shot in the ass and millions of Human misery victims because of the lies !!!! 😳

Now how and who recovers ? 😳

And to think, all these "Peers" are all ultra educated with ultra degrees !!!!!!!! Think about THAT !! 😁

a reply to: MaxxAction

All of this points to the fact that EVERYTHING is now corrupt.

You can't trust a MF'ing word that comes out of the mouths of our medical or scientific communities, school boards, government agencies, etc, etc. They have all sold their souls to the highest bidder.

You're right in your assertion, that it's all corrupted, but you're wrong to think it's new...

The whole shenanigan is older than history... well... at least the one we know about.

a reply to: MaxxAction

Great thread and very important info - couldn't help thinking of this video whilst reading it.

I remember 10-15 years ago.. it was a joke that if you could somehow link whatever your research was, to global warming, you could get funding easy. Now look at where we are with all “undeniable evidence” of the climate emergency and “overwhelming consensus.”
what a crock.. I wonder how many of these papers are climate change related..

a reply to: MaxxAction

I've been saying this for years.
Peer review doesn't guarantee that the methods used to gather data was sound or not biased to skew the results.

That and the people reading the paper are not usually working in the field of study.

Kind of like the fabricated surgisphere study that was created to discredit hydroxychloroquine and then disappeared after the damage was done.

originally posted by: MaxxAction
All of this points to the fact that EVERYTHING is now corrupt.

You can't trust a MF'ing word that comes out of the mouths of our medical or scientific communities, school boards, government agencies, etc, etc. They have all sold their souls to the highest bidder.

SMH...

It's All about Controlling the Narrative . Look at the Archaeology Establishment , they have been doing it for Over a 100 Years now . Open to No Debate , and Crushing Dissent .

a reply to: v1rtu0s0

Yes sir...

but doctors world wide still based their opinion of HCQ treatment on that bogus paper.

It was also discovered that Surgisphere had created a subscription based predictive treatment model that immediately went into use in over 1k hospitals, netting surgisphere millions. Care to guess what it always recommended as treatment??

Remdesivir, and ventilation.

originally posted by: MaxxAction
All of this points to the fact that EVERYTHING is now corrupt.

You can't trust a MF'ing word that comes out of the mouths of our medical or scientific communities, school boards, government agencies, etc, etc. They have all sold their souls to the highest bidder.

SMH...

Well you can thank yer lucky stars, MactionAxx : that at least none of them are completely, and totally Planned™, Structured™, Built™, and put into Service™ ; with the express intent to exercise Control™ ! ! ! !

Nothing new here!

The peer-review process has been corrupted long time ago. Politics and financial interests are interfering with science and this is a fact.

originally posted by: MaxxAction
a reply to: v1rtu0s0

Yes sir...

but doctors world wide still based their opinion of HCQ treatment on that bogus paper.

It was also discovered that Surgisphere had created a subscription based predictive treatment model that immediately went into use in over 1k hospitals, netting surgisphere millions. Care to guess what it always recommended as treatment??

Remdesivir, and ventilation.

Not to mention they kill 3 birds with one stone with the bogus protocol:

1. Re-purpose garbage ebola drug, sell for insane fees
2. Falsely inflate the Covid death count since the protocol has an extremely high chance of killing patient
3. Depopulate the elderly and vulnerable (bonus NWO goal)

Shouldn't the govt sue to get the taxpayers money back?

It's getting to the point where if it all burned to the ground, I'd assess the overall loss as less than I might have otherwise.

Who woulda thunk?