New Year's Eve Quiz 2022

Dodgy journals special

With so much happening in the world this year, it’s easy to miss some recent developments in the world of academic publishing.  Test your knowledge here, to see how alert you are to news from the dark underbelly of research communication.

 

1. Which of these is part of a paper mill¹?

 

 

2. How many of these tortured phrases² can you decode?

 

a) In context of chemistry experiment: “watery arrangements”

b) in context of pharmaceuticals: “medication conveyance”

c) in context of statistics: “irregular esteem”

d) in context of medicine: “bosom peril”

e) in context of optical sensors: “wellspring of blunder”

 

 

3. Which journal published a paper beginning with the sentence:

“Persistent harassment is a major source of inefficiency and your growth will likely increase over the next several years.”

 

and ending with:

“The method outlined here can be used to easily illuminate clinical beginnings about confinement in appropriate treatment, sensitivity and the number of treatment sessions, and provides an incentive to investigate the brain regions of two mice and humans”

 

a)    a) Proceedings of the National Academy of Science

b)    b) Acta Scientifica

c)    c) Neurosciences and Brain Imaging

d)    d) Serbian Journal of Management

 

 

4. What have these authors got in common?  

 

Georges Chastellain, Jean Bodel, Suzanne Lilar, Henri Michaux, and Pierre Mertens

 

a)    a) They are all eminent French literary figures

b)    b) They all had a cat called Fifi

c)     c) They are authors of papers in the Research Journal of Oncology, vol 6, issue 5

d)    d) They were born in November 

 

5. What kind of statistical test would be appropriate for these data? 

a) t-test

b) no-way analysis of variance

c) subterranean insect optimisation

d) flag to commotion ratio

 

6. Many eminent authors have published in one of these Prime Scholars journals:

i)               Polymer Sciences

ii)              Journal of Autacoids

iii)            Journal of HIV and Retrovirus

iv)            British Journal of Research

 

Can you match the author to the journal?

a)    Jane Austen

b)    Kurt Vonnegut

c)     Walt Whitman

d)    Herman Hesse

e)    Tennessee Williams

f)      Ayn Rand

 

 

7. Some poor authors have their names badly mangled by those who use their name while attempting to avoid plagiarism checks.  Can you reconstruct the correct versions of these two names (and affiliation for author 1)?

 

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Final thoughts

 

While the absurdity of dodgy journals can make us laugh, there is, of course, a dark side to all of this that cannot be ignored. The huge demand for places to publish has not only led to obviously predatory publishers, who will publish anything for money, but also has infiltrated supposedly reputable publishers.  Papermills are seen as a growing problem, and all kinds of fraud abound, even among some of the upper echelons of academia. As I argued in my last blogpost, it’s far too easy to get away with academic misconduct, and the incentives on researchers to fake data and publications are growing all the time. My New Year’s wish is that funders, academic societies and universities start to grapple with this problem more urgently, so that there won’t be material for such a quiz in 2023.

 

 

References

 

¹ COPE & STM. (2022). Paper mills: Research report from COPE & STM. Committee on Publication Ethics and STM. https://doi.org/10.24318/jtbG8IHL

 

² Cabanac, G., Labbé, C., & Magazinov, A. (2021). Tortured phrases: A dubious writing style emerging in science. Evidence of critical issues affecting established journals (arXiv:2107.06751). arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2107.06751

 

 

ANSWERS

 

1. B is a solicitation for an academic paper mill. A is a flour mill and C is a paper mill of the more regular kind. B was discussed here.

 

2. Who knows? Best guesses are:

a) aqueous solutions

b) drug delivery

c) random value

d) breast cancer

e) source of error

 

If you enjoy this sort of word game, you can help by typing "tortured phrases" into PubPeer and checking out the papers that have been detected by the Problematic Paper Screener.  

 

3. c) https://www.primescholars.com/articles/a-short-note-on-mechanism-of-brain-in-animals-and-humans.pdf 

 

4. c) see https://www.primescholars.com/archive/iprjo-volume-6-issue-5-year-2022.html 

If you answered (a) you are misled by the Poirot fallacy – all of them except Bodel are Belgian. 

 

5. Fortunately the paper has been retracted and so no answer is required. For further details see here. 

c) is a reference to tortured phrase version of “ant colony optimisation” (which is a real thing!) and d) is reference to “signal-to-noise” ratio.

 

 

6.        

Jane Austen  (ii) and (iv)

Kurt Vonnegut (ii) and (iii)

Walt Whitman (i) (ii) and (iv)

Herman Hesse (iv)

Tennessee Williams (ii)

Ayn Rand (iii)

 

See: https://www.primescholars.com/archive/jac-volume-3-issue-2-year-2022.html 

https://www.primescholars.com/archive/ipbjr-volume-9-issue-7-year-2022.html 

https://www.primescholars.com/archive/ipps-volume-7-issue-4-year-2022.html 

https://www.primescholars.com/archive/ipps-volume-7-issue-2-year-2022.html 

https://www.primescholars.com/archive/ipbjr-volume-9-issue-9-year-2022.html 

https://www.primescholars.com/archive/ipbjr-volume-9-issue-7-year-2022.html 

 

7.

This article is available here: https://www.primescholars.com/archive/jac-volume-2-issue-3-year-2020.html.  A genuine email has been added to the paper and is the clue to the person whose identity was used for this paper: Williams, GM with address at New York Medical College, Valhalla campus. Given the mangling of his name, I suspect he is no more aware of his involvement in the paper than Jane Austen or Kurt Vonnegut.

For 2^nd e.g. see https://pubpeer.com/publications/B7E65FDF7565448A0507B32123E4D8 

Manipulated images: hiding in plain sight?

Many years ago, I took a taxi from Manchester Airport to my home in Didsbury. It’s a 10 minute drive, but the taxi driver took me on a roundabout route that was twice as long. I started to query this as we veered off course, and was given a rambling story about road closures. I paid the fare but took a note of his details. Next day, having confirmed that there were no road closures, I wrote to complain to Manchester City Council.  I was phoned up by a man from the council who cheerfully told me that this driver had a record of this kind of thing, but not to worry, he’d be made to refund me by sending me a postal order for the difference in correct fare and what I’d paid. He sounded quite triumphant about this, because, as he explained, it would be tedious for the driver to have to go to a Post Office.

What on earth does this have to do with manipulated images? Well, it’s a parable for what happens when scientists are found to have published papers in which images with crucial data have been manipulated. It seems that typically, when this is discovered, the only consequence for the scientists is that they are required to put things right. So, just as with the taxi driver, there is no incentive for honesty. If you get caught out, you can just make excuses (oh, I got the photos mixed up), and your paper might have a little correction added. This has been documented over and over again by Elisabeth Bik: you can hear a compelling interview with her on the Everything Hertz podcast here.

There are two things about this that I just don’t get. First, why do people take the risk? I work with data in the form of numbers rather than images, so I wonder if I missing something. If someone makes up numbers, that can be really hard to detect (though there are some sleuthing methods available). But if you publish a paper with manipulated images, the evidence of the fraud is right there for everyone to see. In practice, it was only when Bik appeared on the scene, with her amazing ability to spot manipulated images, that the scale of the problem became apparent (see note below). Nevertheless, I am baffled that scientists would leave such a trail of incriminating evidence in their publications, and not worry that at some future date, they’d be found out.

But I guess the answer to this first question is contained within the second: why isn’t image manipulation taken more seriously? It’s depressing to read how time after time, Bik has contacted journals to point out irregularities in published images only to be ignored. The minority of editors who do decide to act behave like Manchester City Council: the authors have to put the error right, but it seems there are no serious consequences. And meanwhile, like many whistleblowers, far from being thanked for cleaning up science, Elisabeth has suffered repeated assaults on her credibility and integrity from those she has offended.

This week I saw the latest tale in this saga: Bik tweeted about a paper published in Nature that was being taken seriously in relation to treatment for coronavirus. Something in me snapped and I felt it was time to speak out. Image manipulation is fraud. If authors are found to have done it, the paper should be retracted and they should be banned from publishing in that journal in future. I call on the ‘high impact’ journals such as Nature to lead the way in implementing such a policy. I’d like to see some sanctions from institutions and funders as well, but I’ve learned that issues like this need a prolonged campaign to achieve small goals.

I’d be the first to argue that scientists should not be punished for honest errors (see this paper, or free preprint version). It's important to recognise that we are all fallible and prone to make mistakes. I can see how it is possible that someone might mix up two images, for instance. But in many of the cases detected by Elisabeth, part of one image is photoshopped into another, and then resized or rotated. I can’t see how this can be blamed on honest error. The only defence that seems left for the PI is to blame a single rogue member of the lab. If someone they trust is cooking the data, an innocent PI could get implicated in fraud unwittingly. But the best way to avoid that is to have a lab culture in which honesty and integrity are valued above Nature papers. And we’ll only see such a culture become widespread if malpractice has consequences.

‘Hiding in Plain Sight’ is a book by Sarah Kendzior that covers overt criminality in the US political scene, which the author describes as ‘a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government’. The culture can be likened to that seen in some areas of high-stakes science. The people who manipulate figures don’t worry about getting found out, because they achieve fame and grants, with no apparent consequences, even when the fraud is detected.

Notes (14th May 2020)
1. Coincidentally, a profile of Elisabeth Bik appeared in Nature the same day as this blogpost https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01363-z
2. Correction: Both Elisabeth Bik and Boris Barbour (comment below) pointed out that she was not the first to investigate image manipulation: