From Retraction Watch, we get a story of academic irregularity, if not fraud. Frontiers to retract 122 articles, links thousands in other publishers’ journals to “unethical” network
Science is a human endeavor, and so subject to trends, fads, politics and shady dealings.
The publisher Frontiers has begun retracting a batch of 122 articles across five journals after an investigation found a network of authors and editors engaged in “unethical actions” such as manipulating citations and reviewing papers without disclosing conflicts of interest.
Those 122 articles fan out to be used in 4000 articles in different "Peer Reviewed" journals. So called.
The latest tranche of retractions began to appear July 28. By our count, at least 25 were posted that day. According to one of the notices, which are identical for each paper, the publisher’s investigation “identified this article as one for which the integrity of the peer review process has been undermined, resulting in the loss of confidence in the article’s findings.”
The hat tip goes to A View from the Beach: Science is Dead, Long Live Science.
Somebody once said “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”
There is a lot of money involved. You have to publish to get grant funding. And so people publish, even if what they have to say is not very interesting, or just plain wrong.
Whatever science is, it is settled.
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