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Peer Review and the Scientific Process
ewemoa:
Thanks for that follow-up!
IainB:
The fraud was apparently first reported in the journal Nature.
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
Over 100 published science journal articles just gibberish
* ...The fake papers are in the fields of computer science and math...
* ...This is not the first time nonsense papers have been published. ...
* ...But how could gibberish end up in respectable science papers? The man who discovered the recent frauds said it showed slipping standards among scientists.
"High pressure on scientists leads directly to too prolific and less meaningful publications," computer scientist Cyril Labbé of Joseph Fourier University in France, told FoxNews.com.
But he has no explanation as to why the journals published meaningless papers.
"They all should have been evaluated by a peer-review process. I've no explanation for them being here. I guess each of them needs an investigation," he said. ...
* ...The publishers also could not explain it, admitting that the papers “are all nonsense.”...
* ...Some professors said that pay rules that base professor salaries on the number of papers they publish may lead to fakes.
“Most schools have merit raise systems of some kind, and a professor’s merit score is affected by his or her success in publishing scholarly papers,” Robert Archibald, a professor of economics at the College of William and Mary, who studies the economics of higher education, told FoxNews.com.
He noted that because other professors may not read the paper, “publishing a paper that was computer-generated might help with merit pay.”
Labbé also said that overly numerical measures might encourage fraud.
“In aiming at measuring science it is perturbing science,” he said.
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-IainB (March 04, 2014, 05:34 PM)
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Looks like this could be an absolutely classic own goal by the moronic academic administrations that subscribe to the outmoded and discarded management practice of making merit pay based on numerical measures. It is well-documented what happens if you do that: you get unintended consequences.
Points 10 and 11 of Deming's 14-point philosophy cover this very well:
* 10. Eliminate slogans, exhortations and targets for the workforce asking for zero defects and new levels of productivity. Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the workforce.
* 11. (a) Eliminate work standards (quotas) on the factory floor. Substitute leadership.
(b) Eliminate management by objective. Eliminate management by numbers, numerical goals. Substitute leadership.
Therefore, it is arguably not so much a case of "it showed slipping standards among scientists" as that it showed that the university administration was effectively dictating a lowered standard as being necessary to achieve higher merit pay - i.e., the more you publish, the more we'll pay you, regardless of the quality.
barney:
... the more you publish, the more we'll pay you, regardless of the quality.
-IainB (March 04, 2014, 11:46 PM)
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Well, haven't we all - or at least most of us - been subjected to the same thing?
When management - any management, including our so-called peers - demands quantity, performance and quality degrade. Not so certain that could not be called a force of nature. When position becomes more important than performance, those in position punish those who do not perform to the satisfaction and gratification and reputation of those in position, no? The powers that be, in most any venue, want accolades, rather than performance. Recognition for private/personal performance is seldom rendered unless that recognition benefits those other than the performer. My mind is awash with similes, but none compare with the reality of illusions fostered by governing bodies.
IainB:
Well, haven't we all - or at least most of us - been subjected to the same thing?
-barney (March 05, 2014, 12:16 AM)
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A rhetorical question. I can't speak for anyone else, but in my case, the answer would be "Yes, but no", mainly because I have always resisted attempts to impose that sort of asinine method of motivation on me. It is insidious, self-destructive and corrosive of the human spirit, but probably more importantly, it is guaranteed to adversely affect quality of output of a process (Deming, et al - esp. the experiment with the red and white beads).
TaoPhoenix:
... the more you publish, the more we'll pay you, regardless of the quality.
-IainB (March 04, 2014, 11:46 PM)
--- End quote ---
Well, haven't we all - or at least most of us - been subjected to the same thing?
When management - any management, including our so-called peers - demands quantity, performance and quality degrade. Not so certain that could not be called a force of nature. When position becomes more important than performance, those in position punish those who do not perform to the satisfaction and gratification and reputation of those in position, no? The powers that be, in most any venue, want accolades, rather than performance. Recognition for private/personal performance is seldom rendered unless that recognition benefits those other than the performer. My mind is awash with similes, but none compare with the reality of illusions fostered by governing bodies.
-barney (March 05, 2014, 12:16 AM)
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Just had this happen today!
:o
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