I like that the wiki used the phrase “hipchecked.”
From the link.
The vehicle also appears to have caught fire.
No shit, Sherlock. What tipped you off?
I can’t tell what kind of car that was but I wonder if it’s one of the Hyundai or Kia cars that are far too easy to hot-wire.
I don’t need photos. Movies have taught us that seconds after a car crashes, the automobile will inevitably burst into flames.
I still ask the same thing: How? Even if it was a grad student slipping it in, how did it get reviewed and published? And more importantly: Why is it still published? Isn’t that journal lowering their reputation each minute they have that article live?
They’re not even hot wiring them. The Kia boys are just ripping out the ignition and starting it with a screwdriver*. Those cars don’t have anti-theft devices that make sure there’s actually a key in the ignition.
*They’re actually using a USB jump drive, but just because it fits.
I know; perhaps I should have said the cars are far too easy to get started. (I have a co-worker who had one that was stolen twice. He was very happy when it was declared totaled after the second theft. He had gap insurance so was able to stop paying something like $700 per month.)
From what I read, there is a huge crisis in academic publishing right now, pretty much across the board of topics.
So many people have so much incentive to publish and even the quality journals are having to lower their standards. The peer review process is fundamentally broken as academia has been converted into another dog eat dog competitive industry. So reviewers are incentivized to just “phone it in.” And often do.
There’s always been sludge at the bottom and froth at the top. But now the sludge is threatening to overwhelm the whole edifice. It’s far worse in China and India, where cultural factors are different. But science in a very internationalized business, and the rot has spread everywhere a little bit and is gaining speed everywhere.
The paper retraction process is a bureaucratic nightmare that takes years. Because in Dayes of Yore the reputations of the authors would be destroyed by having a paper force-retracted on them, so there’s lots of due process and harrumphing meetings. Unfortunately none of this has kept up with the reality of 2024 worldwide “ethics” and the speed of 2024 aca-business.
If all this is news to you, this might be a decent place to start:
Really, why did this guy think it was a good idea? Very bad impulse control.
Thanks for the information as I didn’t know what a mess things were. You’d think the lead author names on that paper would be embarrassed and want it corrected ASAP.
As one who sees this from the inside (former editor-in-chief of a peer reviewed journal, current member of the editorial board for an open access peer reviewed journal):
The surge of papers in any given area has stressed he peer review system, as has the proliferation of journals, all vying for papers. Open access has further degraded the incentives for being a peer reviewer (in pay-to-publish, one is no longer participating in keeping a “publication is free if you pass peer review” system functioning, so if it is pay-to-publish, why act as a peer reviewer for free in order to support a journal’s profits?)
Next, the emerging STEM countries (China, India, etc.) place an enormous value on publications in peer reviewed journals in considering promotion and advancement in academic and research institutions (much more than in the US or Europe). Gaming the system becomes very tempting. I note that the authors are all from a single locale in China, and not a big name institution, at that.
Another issue is that a lot more papers are coming out of non-English speaking countries, but the language of science (for now) is English. I can imagine the corresponding author (who was responsible for “conceptualization and data”) decided to add that figure as a final touch and used a generative AI program to create it and didn’t/couldn’t read the text and just added it to the paper at the last minute (note that this author hold a Bachelor’s degree in Medicine).
However, the editorial process should have caught this, which brings up the tension between rejecting a potential revenue source and assuring a paper’s quality (what’s the threshold for rejection of potential APC revenue versus what the threshold is when revenue comes after publication and depends on the quality of the paper). It is worth noting that this publisher is a for-profit business, so this tension is much more pronounced than for non-profit publishers (like the publishers of the Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA)
One thing I will note is the Medicine is apparently a pretty low-rated (IF of 1.6, JAMA IF is ~120) journal that is part of a very large stable of journals in a very competitive space for scientific publishing (medical). So, the non-paid parts of the editorial process (reviewers, some editors) are going to be tough to fill with the best researchers who have to prioritize the spend on this unpaid role.
Finally, could retraction of papers be faster? Yes of course, but retraction of a paper is serious business (because of the repercussions of getting it wrong) and there is almost always a process that assures that rejections are not the result of bias but based on objective evidence. In this case, I would expect that even though the evidence is obvious to even lay people, the process needs to be followed before formal retraction by the journal. As an author, I wouldn’t want it any other way, even if I never submit a paper that could even potentially need to be retracted.
TLDR: The explosion of science and technology research globally, plus the rise of open access (pay-to-publish) has stressed a system that is dependent on unpaid workers (editors and reviewers), resulting in the need for significant scientific background to sort the wheat from the chaff of published advancements.
Alexa, who is the absolute last person in the world who should be talking about building a Moon colony?
At least the huts won’t implode. /s
ISTM that insisting that pay-to-publish journals be identified in all citations might help people decide whether a journal’s peer review process is up to snuff, or deserves closer scrutiny (perhaps on a paper-by-paper basis).
I assume that by “create a joint society”, he means that he’s part of a society that’s all smoking joints?
@peccavi: Thank you for being the expert who can put all the meat on the bones.
MSNBC is now deliberately misquoting a US Senator in order to throw more fuel on the “BIDEN OLD” fire.
Former aide to Tan the Convictman says Vice President Harris got the job because, among other things, she’s colored. (The link goes to Yahoo.)
You’re being logical. Stop it. All right? She’s a DEI hire, right? She’s a woman. She’s colored.