CategoryPeer Review
AI Peer Review Called “Inevitable” by Some, “Disaster” by Others
The whole debate raises a question: How much original thought goes into peer review anyway? And what purpose does it ultimately serve?
Fallout From Alzheimer Research Failures: Does Anything Work?
Other research suggests that treating poor oral health, vision loss, and hearing loss might delay or reduce the effects of cognitive decline
New Science Journal Strives for Openness, Fairness, In Peer Review
Skeptics worry that the new journal "will be used to sow doubt about scientific consensus"
Cancel Culture Dissected by One of Its Victims
Researchers are beginning to study the sociology of Woke mobs demanding the firing or silencing of whoever vexes them — with some interesting results
Scandal! Science Journal Busts Allegedly Bogus Neurological Science
If these leading dementia studies’ images are indeed falsified, many years of follow-up research by others may have been wasted
The Government-Debt Tipping Point Is Nonsense
There are serious problems with the economics paper by Reinhart and Rogoff, whose recommendations were widely followed
How Science Can Slowly Morph Into Junk. Or not.
Science can become entangled in many things — politics and the self-interest of funding sources, for example — and chatbots will likely make things worse
The Cancel Culture Mob Comes for the Psychologists
The response “It’s complicated,” chosen by nearly half of psychology profs, is a roundabout confession of cowardice in the face of mobs threatened by findings they hope to stifle
Don’t Believe in “International Community”? You’re Hardly Human!
Who said that? Not a streetcorner doomsday crank. No, it’s the editor of a highly respected medical journal
Is Psychology Heading for Another Big Replication Crisis?
The use of Amazon’s MTurk in survey research risks a second scandal in which findings are low quality and can’t be replicated, critics warn
Religious Scientists Balance Work and Faith — on a Knife Edge
A recent article in Nature both sums up — and typifies — the problems they face, weaving around the presumption of atheism
Science Writer: Maybe We Need Fewer Scientists, Science Journals
Cameron English sees a rise in partisan advocacy as part of the problem of increasing retractions in science journals
Can AI Help Stem the Tide of Fake Science Papers?
One problem is that science journals don’t do a very good job of establishing author identities. Chatbots are bound to make things worse
Is There a Solution to Low Quality Research in Science?
Molecular biologist Henry Miller and statistician Stanley Young explain why statistical techniques like meta-analysis won’t solve the basic problem
Retracted Paper Is a Compelling Case for Reform
The credibility of science is being undermined by misuse of the tools created by scientists. Here's an example from an economics paper I was asked to comment on
How Data Can Appear in Science Papers — Out of Thin Air!
At Retraction Watch, Gary Smith explains how one author team apparently copy pasted missing data about green innovation in various countriesRecently, Retraction Watch, a site that helps keeps science honest, noted some statistical peculiarities about a paper last September in the Journal of Clean Energy, “Green innovations and patents in OECD countries.” The site was tipped off by a PhD student in economics that “For several countries, observations for some of the variables the study tracked were completely absent.” But that wasn’t the big surprise. The big surprise was when the student wrote to one of the authors: In email correspondence seen by Retraction Watch and a follow-up Zoom call, [Almas] Heshmati told the student he had used Excel’s autofill function to mend the data. He had marked anywhere from two to four observations before or after the missing values Read More ›
Scientists Spar Over What a Netflix Science Documentary Should Be
Should “Ancient Apocalypse” be relabeled “science fiction” if archeologists don’t think the documentary writer’s claims are valid?A Case Study in Why Peer Review May Be Unreformable
McIntosh and Hudson Vitale illustrate, by their very zeal to eliminate pro-life researchers, the built-in corruption of the peer review process