In September last year, John Ridgway published here at Cliscep a piece titled Burn the Witch!, about an article written by climate scientist Patrick T Brown in which he (Dr Brown) suggested “that journals such as Nature and Science were biased towards articles that are focussed upon a particular narrative.” In particular, as John reported, Dr Brown said:

I knew not to try to quantify key aspects other than climate change in my research because it would dilute the story that prestigious journals like Nature and its rival, Science, want to tell. This matters because it is critically important for scientists to be published in high-profile journals; in many ways, they are the gatekeepers for career success in academia. And the editors of these journals have made it abundantly clear, both by what they publish and what they reject, that they want climate papers that support certain preapproved narratives—even when those narratives come at the expense of broader knowledge for society. To put it bluntly, climate science has become less about understanding the complexities of the world and more about serving as a kind of Cassandra, urgently warning the public about the dangers of climate change. However understandable this instinct may be, it distorts a great deal of climate science research, misinforms the public, and most importantly, makes practical solutions more difficult to achieve.

Inevitably, perhaps, those comments met with quite a backlash in climate-concerned circles. Whether the original claim, or the backlash against it, is more justified probably lies in the eye of the beholder, but at the time the wagons were vigorously circled in defence of the integrity of climate science. The claims made by Dr Brown were denied in a most determined way.

A few months later, and the Observer published an article with the heading “‘The situation has become appalling’: fake scientific papers push research credibility to crisis point – Last year, 10,000 sham papers had to be retracted by academic journals, but experts think this is just the tip of the iceberg”.

In fairness, the claims about “fake scientific papers” were of a different order to the candid confession made by Dr Brown last September. As described by the Observer, the situation is truly dreadful. Tens of thousands of bogus papers are being published every year, and their number is increasing.

Medical research is being compromised, drug development hindered and promising academic research jeopardised thanks to a global wave of sham science that is sweeping laboratories and universities.

In 2023, so we are told, for the first time research journals retracted more than ten thousand papers in a year. “Most” analysts believe this is just the tip of an iceberg of scientific fraud. Professor Dorothy Bishop of Oxford University is quoted as saying:

The situation has become appalling. The level of publishing of fraudulent papers is creating serious problems for science. In many fields it is becoming difficult to build up a cumulative approach to a subject, because we lack a solid foundation of trustworthy findings. And it’s getting worse and worse.

The problem started in China, apparently, because promotion for young doctors and scientists working there depends on them having published papers. And so “paper mills” cashed in by supplying fake scientific papers for publication. And now the problem is spreading like a plague – to India, Iran, Russia, former Soviet Union states and to eastern Europe. Journal editors are being bribed, and the paper mills themselves have established their own agents as guest editors, thus facilitating the publication of yet more false work.

The next quote is from Professor Alison Avenell of Aberdeen University, who says:

Editors are not fulfilling their roles properly, and peer reviewers are not doing their jobs. And some are being paid large sums of money. It is deeply worrying.

The article concludes with another quote from Professor Bishop in Oxford:

People are building careers on the back of this tidal wave of fraudulent science and could end up running scientific institutes and eventually be used by mainstream journals as reviewers and editors. Corruption is creeping into the system.

I am grateful to the Observer for bringing this to our attention. I do have a question, however. Is this problem one that relates only to the particular area discussed in its article, namely medicine and drug development? Professor Bishop referred to “many fields” and said that “it’s getting worse and worse”. Also, we are told that it is likely to be only the tip of an iceberg. Could it affect climate science? And if not, why not? Why is climate science so special?

12 Comments

  1. Mark,

    Thank you for bringing this subject up. I would like, if I may, to link to a few other relevant Cliscep articles that the WordPress algorithm has not picked up on.

    But firstly, in answer to your question, there is absolutely no reason to assume that climate science is immune to the problem; in fact, quite the opposite can be assumed if we are to accept Patrick Brown’s testimony regarding journalistic bias. The problem is widespread and it is a cause for concern. Others have brought it to public attention. There was the infamous Sokal hoax, of course. Then there was John Ioannidis’s famous 2005 paper “Why Most Published Research Findings Are False” — even when outright hoax is not involved, the quality of the work is often sub-standard. Then a so-called ‘reverse-Sokal’ was achieved by the Bogdanoff twins, proving that even ‘hard’ sciences such as fundamental physics are not immune:

    Where One Error Ends and the Next Begins

    The problem is also more worrying because of the existence of the Matthew Effect applied to citations. This will pick up and promote the bad stuff as well as the good stuff:

    The Matthew Effect and Climate Change

    Finally, all of this rather undermines the blind optimism shown by the likes of Dr Robert Grimes. The integrity of scientific consensus cannot be assumed — the checks and balances are simply not good enough and the social dimensions are too important to ignore:

    The Return of the Bluebottle

    When we sceptics bring this sort of thing up we are dismissed as failing to understand how the scientific method works. I rather think that we do understand, and it is always interesting to see when those inside the fields start to share our concerns.

    Liked by 2 people

  2. I also refer readers back to my comment at

    Message Found on a Derelict Planet

    Despite a finding that the data were made up, the Royal Society declined to retract the paper. And what became of the researcher? Fired, we presume? Not a bit of it. Still employed at the same joint as if nothing had happened. Perhaps it would be wise to come down like a ton of bricks on research misconduct – ya know, disqualifying the guilty from all future grant money – if we don’t want the literature polluted with BS.

    Liked by 3 people

  3. I find all this very difficult to understand. Perhaps it was the type of science I dealt with, but I never was even tempted to produce fake science.

    I never was very prolific, producing just a steady trickle of research papers but I never was even tempted to produce anything fake. In fact if I had wanted to I’m sure I would have found it much more difficult and complex to achieve pseudo-reality than writing up a genuine paper based upon real data or analysis.

    Finally, I doubt if I would have achieved any real satisfaction from getting fake science published. It’s nerve wracking enough worrying about whether your interpretations were correct and the possibility of your ‘incompetence’ being revealed by another. To add the possibility of being identified as a charlatan would be far too much, especially when finding interesting data to interpret I found so easy. My contemporaries must have found the same because I cannot recall any fake material in what I read, nor in any material sent to me for evaluation.

    Some student’s work had definitely been copied but that was due to laziness or fear of being found inadequate.

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  6. Interesting, Alan.

    The Observer article does suggest that this is a recent phenomenon that is rapidly getting worse.

    Like you, I cannot understand the mindset of anyone who would set out to produce something fake, but then I suppose we should never underestimate the power of money and greed.

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  7. Disclosure – I noticed that the embedded link to the Observer article didn’t seem to be working, so I have fixed that now (I think).

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  9. energywise – thanks for the heads up & link.

    can’t access the original Times article, but partial quote from your link –

    “Bloomberg analysed 30 million records between 2018 to June last year to compare wind operators’ daily forecasts of the energy they planned to generate with their actual production when they were not curtailed. Of the 121 wind farms in the analysis, 40 overstated their output by 10 per cent or more on average and 27 overestimated by at least 20 per cent.

    It is not possible to determine precisely how much bill-payers have spent because of such overstatements. However, assuming a similar rate of overestimation during the times that those 40 farms were paid to stop generating, consumers would have overpaid an estimated £51 million since 2018, according to Bloomberg’s analysis.”

    Like

  10. “Junk science is cited in abortion ban cases. Researchers are fighting the ‘fatally flawed’ work

    Researchers are calling for the retraction of misleading anti-abortion studies that could influence judges in critical cases”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/28/junk-science-papers-abortion-cases

    The retraction of three peer-reviewed articles prominently cited in court cases on the so-called abortion pill – mifepristone – has put a group of papers by anti-abortion researchers in the scientific limelight.

    Seventeen sexual and reproductive health researchers are calling for four peer-reviewed studies by anti-abortion researchers to be retracted or amended. The papers, critics contend, are “fatally flawed” and muddy the scientific consensus for courts and lawmakers who lack the scientific training to understand their methodological flaws…

    Remind you of anything?

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  11. Mark, reminds me that the Left are profoundly anti-life and misanthropic. Note the recent news article about climate worrier women going on a ‘baby strike’ until the non-existent climate crisis is resolved. Population reduction is like the Holy Grail to these people and they’d probably ALL like to be reincarnated as a deadly virus in order to wipe humanity off the face of the earth. It is now ‘far right’ to organise a conference to debate the worrying drop in fertility levels in developed countries. It is far right to want to ensure that healthy women (adult biological females) give birth to enough healthy babies in order to sustain the population and that these children grow up in a stable family environment.

    Liked by 1 person

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