Research Fraud

The crew’s attempt to redeem CSRobinson from Episode Pseudoscience backfires into papermills and scientific journals under fire. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:41

We're just projections of the bowl and bad in mind. And that come on. Bigfoot episodes took all your credibility anyway, boss. I was back to the boss. So science has its own thought industry now, huh? We're not talking just a few bad apples here. Lonely researchers cutting corners has now become global networks, faking entire studies. Oh, come on! Already an anti-social millenarian awaiting the end of day seven-day advantage. I don't need to be hearing this. Well for bunny. Why else would anybody organize crime for Bob? Careers, politics, ideology? All such ladders lead to the almighty dollar. Okay, okay, okay, okay. But come on, Pug. Organize networks. No, it's true, boss. They're called paper mills. Outfits that charge money to publish fake studies under your name. They mass produce fake, low-quality research papers, and literally sell authorship slots for hundreds, even thousands of dollars. That is outrageous! I always thought ghostwriting was shady. I mean celebrity autobiographies, baby. But novelists like James Patterson? Come on. It's fake business cultivating a brand. All about leveraging hard-won value into a commercial engine. Gas money, baby. The fans feel cheated, exploited. But that's entertainment. What you're talking about here is the scientific community. Not so much authorship as research fraud. Kinda like pseudoscience does with the scientific method, Bigfoot boy, and Thalma Swears by a good Colin Clemson. That was our first episode, Pug. Boss took his punishment like a man. Uh-huh. Moving on. Scientific journals are drowning in a tsunami of fake papers. Faster than they can catch or remove. Well, there's fabrication and there's falsification. One makes up data completely, the other tweaks real data to get the results they want. Oh boy, the ladder. It's everywhere. If I had a dollar for every piece of crap claiming research shows! It's not funny, Fab. If this keeps going unchecked, it could seriously undermine the entire structure of scientists with knowledge. Oh, I hear you. I don't get why this isn't a bigger deal in the media. Doesn't this threaten the very foundation of our society? It's nothing new, boss. From social media to the Spanish Inquisition, authoritative sourcing has been a bloody tooth and nail dog fight. The Holy Father is pinning his time. The keys of his authority over the flock of Christ shall be restored to its medieval glory. Whether by coin or by civil sword, if need be. What? Yeah, to make drugs look more effective. Or safe. Wagging God's name would incentivize anybody to even think of doing such a thing. Are you kidding me, Pug? What planet are you on? World of common sense and sanity. Holy Father sends you his papal support. Look, I don't know what opium flower fields you and Leo are tripping through, dog. But we're in a pressure cooker down here. These scientists weren't born yesterday. They gotta publish for parish. It's pretty brutal. Researchers have to publish to keep their careers alive. No papers, no funding. It's always the devil's dollar. The Vatican again? Yeah, I'm blocking the post number. We agree. Look, this ain't no Protestant monkey ranch. I'm just saying. Desperate people do desperate things. These are corporate companies. Businesses will hide risk and exaggerate benefits. They got investors to answer to. Profits to protect. Oh, of course! Making fake papers mighty profitable. How widespread is this, really? Fake papers roughly doubled every year and a half between 2016 and 2020. Whoa! As many as one in seven research papers were estimated to contain fake data. One in seven? That's awful. Actually, it's pretty terrifying. Especially in high-stakes fields like cancer research or drug trials. Cancer. Fraud there could delay real treatments affecting patients. The dog is right. This is awful. So how do we even fight something like this? Seems to me AI could be useful here. Data sleops, baby. Oh yeah? Tell me about them. They're a crew dedicated to rooting out fraud by using statistical tools and AI to spot red flag. Retraction watch! They maintain lists of serial offenders, even of hijacked journals. Half fear started out as a sleopy online foot club for Lavner. That is until comments were allowed to be anonymous. Heavily armed lawyers suddenly started showing up. Ha ha, you knew that was gonna happen. So these watchdogs watch for red flags, eh? Yeah, there are ways to spot bad actors. Duplicated images. That is outrageous! Weird phrasing meant to dodge plagiarism checks. All kinds of things if we know what to look for. Burn the paper bills down, baby! Are they having any effect? Well, some publishers have had to retract hundreds of papers at once. Entire journals have been shut down. Oh, no way. This way, says here what made your house pulled over 11,000 compromised papers. Wow. Chuck down 19 journals. They need to check the verification process. Where's the editorial desk? Sounds to me like nobody's guarding the head now. Well, that's the problem. Uh-oh. Here we go. I've got my fellow ball. And my journal between 2006 and 2023, 700 papers were retracted. Whoa! Yeah, but that's 277,000 papers over. Hold on, hold on. Out of the 18,000 total editors, only 22 individuals were found to have handled most of the retracted papers. Far above what we randomly feasible. Uh-huh. Gotcha! You going down, dudes! Investigators declined to name the editors identified, but each idiot was in charge of far more problematic papers that could be explained by chat. So the duels are not just proliferating fake papers for pay. They're actually infiltrating the editorial apparatus of the scientific publishing world! Oh my word. Paper mills are manipulating theory. Somebody fired this particular house and says that in the past, they have removed compromised papers and editors when they have been found. Oh right! Can they retract all the damage done because of those papers? I know, right? Professionals feed off these channels. How are we supposed to know how much of Bob's doctor's knowledge is based on those 700 papers? Wait, wait, wait. What big picture numbers are closer to 33,000 subscription fake papers? Oh please, you know it's more than that. What? Even researchers say it fairly scratches the surface. Raphace! Cancel my doctor's appointment! There's no canceling health care, Bob. Eh, the dog's got a point there, Bob. May I suggest Aunt Thelma's colon cleansing instead?