Major publisher retracts 43 scientific papers amid wider fake peer-review scandal

Washington Post ^ | 03/27/2015 | By Fred Barbash

[SeekAndFind]

A major publisher of scholarly medical and science articles has retracted 43 papers because of “fabricated” peer reviews amid signs of a broader fake peer review racket affecting many more publications.

The publisher is BioMed Central, based in the United Kingdom, which puts out 277 peer-reviewed journals. A partial list of the retracted articles suggests most of them were written by scholars at universities in China, including China Medical University, Sichuan University, Shandong University and Jiaotong University Medical School. But Jigisha Patel, associate editorial director for research integrity at BioMed Central, said it’s not “a China problem. We get a lot of robust research of China. We see this as a broader problem of how scientists are judged.”

Meanwhile, the Committee on Publication Ethics, a multidisciplinary group that includes more than 9,000 journal editors, issued a statement suggesting a much broader potential problem. The committee, it said, “has become aware of systematic, inappropriate attempts to manipulate the peer review processes of several journals across different publishers.” Those journals are now reviewing manuscripts to determine how many may need to be retracted, it said.

Peer review is the vetting process designed to guarantee the integrity of scholarly articles by having experts read them and approve or disapprove them for publication. With researchers increasingly desperate for recognition, citations and professional advancement, the whole peer-review system has come under scrutiny in recent years for a host of flaws and irregularities, ranging from lackadaisical reviewing to cronyism to outright fraud.

[jsanders2001]

Let me take a stab. Half of them are related to global warming, right?

[expat2]

They should look very closely at the climate-research field, where pro-alarmist papers get special treatment and skeptic papers get un-special (i.e., negative) treatment.

[Gaffer]

Michael Mann, NASA’s Hansen and EAU-CRU involved?

[Rebel_Ace]

[Mase]

This is not surprising at all. The peer review process has been broken for a long time.

[SeeSharp]

Let me take a stab. Half of them are related to global warming, right?

And the other half to genetic homosexuality.

[jsanders2001]

One thing I’ve learned about “experts” from being one (or considered as one in my field) is that they can ALWAYS be right or wrong depending on which wy the wind is blowing on a given day. Same applies to these motons who claim they ate intellectully superior to others because they took some college courses.

[jsanders2001]

One thing I’ve learned about “experts” from being one (or considered as one in my field) is that they can ALWAYS be right or wrong depending on which way the wind is blowing on a given day. Same applies to these morons who claim they are intellectully superior to others because they took some college courses.

Thre typos proved my point...: )

[jsanders2001]

Even your graphic meme lies with blue photoshopped eyes and other assorted color changes to the image....: )

[JoeFromSidney]

For over 40 years I was an associate editor for a major journal. Part of my job was selecting reviewers for papers that fell within my area of expertise. I knew each potential reviewer personally, so there was no possibility of a fake review. Granted, when you have to pick a reviewer who is knowledgeable about the topic of a paper, it's almost inevitable that the reviewer will know the author of the paper. They're working in the same "invisible college." Thus there is some possibility of "back-scratching." That's why the journal kept the reviews anonymous. We even tried to keep the reviewer from knowing who the author was, but that's difficult when an expert in a field already knows who all the other experts in that field are. It looks to me as though the problem is not with peer review per se, but with the editors who select reviewers.

I've retired from that editorial position, but I still occasionally do reviews for that same journal, and for a couple of other journals that publish papers in my field. When I'm asked to undertake a review, it's always by an editor who knows me, not by the author of the paper.

Something has gone badly wrong in the journal business. I think we have too many journals needing to fill their pages, and quality has suffered as a result. The peer review issue is a symptom of this problem.