Research Misconduct in Chemistry, Physics, and Astronomy
In the "Ego Depletion" topic it was easily claimed and supported that fraud and other misconduct is more prevalent in "soft" sciences. Retraction Watch is a blog dedicated to reporting papers that were withdrawn.
Why are so many of the retractions you cover from the life sciences?
"There are a number of reasons for this. The two most important are that 1) we’re both medical reporters in our day jobs, so our sources and knowledge base are both deeper in the life sciences and 2) there are more papers published in the life sciences than in other areas. We’d love your help beefing up our physical sciences section, so keep those tips coming."
I searched Retraction Watch for "chemistry", "physics", and "astronomy" and got some interesting results.
Chemistry
http://retractionwatch.com/?s=chemistry
Science chemistry paper earns retraction after expression of concern, marking second for UT group
The authors of a 2011 Science paper that proposed a new way to direct chemical bonds have withdrawn the paper after concerns about the data prompted an investigation and Editorial Expression of Concern last year from the journal. The retraction is the second for the group, which has also had seven other expressions of concern.
After a reader emailed the editors to raise suspicions about the data, corresponding author Christopher W. Bielawski, then based at the University of Texas at Austin, led an investigation of all the figures. It found substantial problems: “In over 50% of the figure parts, the authors deemed the data unreliable due to uncertainty regarding the origin of data or the manner in which the data were processed,” according to the retraction notice.
UT Austin concluded that there had been misconduct, but did not elaborate.
Physics
http://retractionwatch.com/?s=physics
"A magnetic field with particular attributes reported in the paper seemed to provide evidence of the current. But the researchers soon discovered that the field might have been, in part, an artifact of the very device they used to detect it."
Astronomy
http://retractionwatch.com/?s=astronomy
"Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder where you went: Astronomy report retracted"
Mathematics
http://retractionwatch.com/?s=mathema...
(And, of course, Engineering….
http://retractionwatch.com/?s=enginee...
This is the previously posted link to "Retraction Watch" (https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post....
It is important to accept that egregious behavior and statistical exceptions do not make a rule. Back about 1980, there surfaced a woman named "Dagny" with a high-performance car with a "secret motor." Not only was she a transvestite, so was her car. They both dropped off the news. That says nothing about the importance of Atlas Shrugged. While research fraud and other scientific misconduct are important to understand in the search for truth, it is similarly important not to condemn entire branches of learning for the misdeeds of a few.
My comrades in criminology assert that the fact that 20% of Black youth have primary contact with the criminal justice system - diversion, probation, jail, prison, parole - is a consequence of racism in our society. It is hard to disagree with that. … but it remains that 80% do not. One of my professors used "20%" as an easy statistic: 20% of the goods on the market lack clear title. By that same metric, we could expect that 20% of scientists are crooks: they plagiarize, they steal from their students, they falsify data. Sexual exploitation of their assistants is another failing. And it crosses all lines of work. It does not invalidate science in general or any specific branch of study.
Why are so many of the retractions you cover from the life sciences?
"There are a number of reasons for this. The two most important are that 1) we’re both medical reporters in our day jobs, so our sources and knowledge base are both deeper in the life sciences and 2) there are more papers published in the life sciences than in other areas. We’d love your help beefing up our physical sciences section, so keep those tips coming."
I searched Retraction Watch for "chemistry", "physics", and "astronomy" and got some interesting results.
Chemistry
http://retractionwatch.com/?s=chemistry
Science chemistry paper earns retraction after expression of concern, marking second for UT group
The authors of a 2011 Science paper that proposed a new way to direct chemical bonds have withdrawn the paper after concerns about the data prompted an investigation and Editorial Expression of Concern last year from the journal. The retraction is the second for the group, which has also had seven other expressions of concern.
After a reader emailed the editors to raise suspicions about the data, corresponding author Christopher W. Bielawski, then based at the University of Texas at Austin, led an investigation of all the figures. It found substantial problems: “In over 50% of the figure parts, the authors deemed the data unreliable due to uncertainty regarding the origin of data or the manner in which the data were processed,” according to the retraction notice.
UT Austin concluded that there had been misconduct, but did not elaborate.
Physics
http://retractionwatch.com/?s=physics
"A magnetic field with particular attributes reported in the paper seemed to provide evidence of the current. But the researchers soon discovered that the field might have been, in part, an artifact of the very device they used to detect it."
Astronomy
http://retractionwatch.com/?s=astronomy
"Twinkle, twinkle little star, how I wonder where you went: Astronomy report retracted"
Mathematics
http://retractionwatch.com/?s=mathema...
(And, of course, Engineering….
http://retractionwatch.com/?s=enginee...
This is the previously posted link to "Retraction Watch" (https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post....
It is important to accept that egregious behavior and statistical exceptions do not make a rule. Back about 1980, there surfaced a woman named "Dagny" with a high-performance car with a "secret motor." Not only was she a transvestite, so was her car. They both dropped off the news. That says nothing about the importance of Atlas Shrugged. While research fraud and other scientific misconduct are important to understand in the search for truth, it is similarly important not to condemn entire branches of learning for the misdeeds of a few.
My comrades in criminology assert that the fact that 20% of Black youth have primary contact with the criminal justice system - diversion, probation, jail, prison, parole - is a consequence of racism in our society. It is hard to disagree with that. … but it remains that 80% do not. One of my professors used "20%" as an easy statistic: 20% of the goods on the market lack clear title. By that same metric, we could expect that 20% of scientists are crooks: they plagiarize, they steal from their students, they falsify data. Sexual exploitation of their assistants is another failing. And it crosses all lines of work. It does not invalidate science in general or any specific branch of study.
Here is a discussion in the Gulch from one of the "blah subjects"
"People Who Understand Science and Technology are happier than Religious People"
https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...
Sorry that your prejudices prevented understanding.
"The few I read about deal with errors in the use of statistical methods. Social studies are full of self-contradictions and non-falsifiable statements so the reasons for retraction that apply in physics do not apply. I expect papers to be withdrawn due to insufficient political correctness in dealing with minorities, Muslims, feminists, and the alternatively gendered than for errors, biases or methodology. "
Retractions are pretty much the same across all of the sciences. Some are for simple errors; others are for fraud; many are for plagiarism - including self plagiarism, i.e., duplicated publication, reuse of text or images.
Enjoy yourself.
'Author' of the Black Swan of Tresspass. Correct, the story is about a hoax, why else would I mention it?
The poems are much as any other post-modern work. A snippet from me- the main source was a text on marine biology.
The progress of the baboons (re. web site below) has been relentless since that time, entire university departments are now occupied. MM, I recommend this to you especially, a bit long but good.
www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/tien-h...
Alan Sokal's paper on quantum gravity serves the same purpose by showing how convoluted verbiage is accepted if it is preposterous enough.
Feminist glaciology, not a hoax (or is it?) same same.
The title tells all- 'A feminist glaciology framework for global environmental change research'. Makes no difference what the author got. The 'climate change' hint got the university the $413,000. Have I read it? No. The abstract is sufficiently bad. I am in this for fun not masochism.
The subject of women in science is big-
Rosalind Franklin who did the work, ignored when Nobels were given out,
Margaret O’Toole, scientist in a Nobel winner's lab, discovered that published results could not be replicated, reported, forced out.
Research misconduct, a better source is-
ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/rcr/rcr_...
Fraud, hoax, cheating etc are common in science. However, even when successful the event ends. Lysenko is an exception but that lasted only with Stalin. But in the would-be and psuedo-sciences, perpetrators become revered icons:
Keynes, Freud, Jung, Margaret Mead. Claude Lévi-Strauss. Rachael Carson. Cyril Burt.
Similar- Mother Teresa, held up as a paragon of selfless altruism but in fact a fraudster propagandist for superstition.
There are key names in climate change but I mention a few victims- Willie Soon, Patrick Michaels, Bob Carter, Murray Salby - hounded and vilified on specious complaints by believers.
Bjorn Lomberg and Richard Toll are both economists believing in carbon climate change and now despised for advocating rational analysis of the money flood as there may be better uses than giving to parasites in universities.
Climate science is marketing and sociology not science. Data is manipulated, lost, or made up to support the funding mechanism. Real scientists are hounded out of work, funding is withdrawn, all their private communications and emails published whereas the eminent who bring in big government money can hide publicly paid for work under so called commercial confidentiality.
Creation Science defenders on this forum have given me a chuckle when rhetorical skills were used to support nonsense.
Similar - the threat to Dinesh D'Souza.
The innumerate in the would-be sciences try to copy science by using equations and statistics, no wonder there are so many errors. But who cares? That stuff, like post-modernism, is 'not even wrong'.
"Occasionally a message carried by the media
finds an audience so eager to receive it that it
is willing to suspend all critical judgment and
adopt the message as its own."
From the opening of his book 'Not Even Wrong'
on Margaret Mead by Martin Orans.
Enfin: If it is not fun, why do it?
'Goto Retraction Watch and put "climate" in the search box. Then do the same for "psychology." '
Willie Soon. Even on this site a normally sensible contributor quoted the NYT. Soon had been paid for research! Shock horror! This smear, by an ex-Greenpeacer that Soon had, in a paper supported the coal industry for money, was false. The only payment Soon got was from his employer the Smithsonian. Soon was and still is vilified and has no support from his employer who grovel and release all correspondence in the usual manner. This incident is on Retraction Watch with only the smear sources given.
Retraction Watch does mention retraction of something by Lewandowsky, only one of his atrocities against sense (and manners) that embarrass even the believers, tho' no mention of John Cook (qv).
From Retraction Watch
" . . .. more than 250 psychology researchers tried to replicate the results of 100 papers published in three psychology journals. Despite working with the original authors and using original materials, only 36% of the studies produced statistically significant results, and more than 80% of the studies reported a stronger effect size in the original study than in the replication. To the authors, however, this is not a sign of failure – rather, it tells us that science is working as it should "
So how many of those 100 papers were mentioned as being retracted, or that will be or should be retracted? .. I reckon it should be 64 on that evidence alone.
I recall the cold fusion paper of about 1989 being retracted after about two reports of non-replication. But in psychology, who cares. Psychology has not recovered from Freud and Jung who still have followers. There are some who have shown the work of Freud to be dangerous nonsense not just twaddle, but few inside the profession.
Ok, I misread the comment to mean many retractions in physics etc but none in the blah subjects. The few I read about deal with errors in the use of statistical methods. Social studies are full of self-contradictions and non-falsifiable statements so the reasons for retraction that apply in physics do not apply. I expect papers to be withdrawn due to insufficient political correctness in dealing with minorities, Muslims, feminists, and the alternatively gendered than for errors, biases or methodology.
I then looked up economics and the first entry says- "More than half of top-tier economics papers are replicable."
I take this as stating approval.
Economics is perhaps the great fraud of the age. My opinion is that the Keynes work started as a joke. His writing was so dense that the joke was not picked up, tho' that should have been a clue. Compare Keynes with Henry Hazlitt. Obfuscation-clarity, gibberish-genuine observation, adulation and imitation-public obscurity. Not only is Keynsianism counter to sense, it has as far as evidence in this field allows, been thoroughly discredited.
Now, if you think this boring post is too long, more may follow!
Even your examples are flawed. "Transgressing the Boundaries" is the famous Sokal Affair paper. Sokal is a physicist who purposely set up Social Text for the fall. His criticisms began with the fact that while not claiming to be literate in science, they accepted his paper without peer review. Sociology is a science. Social Text never claimed to be a scientific publication. The wider targets were those who like Jacques Lacan know nothing about mathematics and physics but who use their language to make unprovable assertions. Sokal called it "fashionable nonsense."
Also, the Gender and Glaciers paper was not - as many rightwing blogs have claimed - the subject of a $400,000 study. It was one paper in a collected body of research. We might agree that just by the title it seems silly. But gender studies reveals much that otherwise would be left unaddressed, and maybe this, too, had some merit. Have you actually read the paper or the anthology?
"The Black Swan of Trespass" is ambiguous. I had to google it and the results were divergent. Do you mean the book about modern art in Australia by Humphrey McQueen? http://www.amazon.com/THE-BLACK-SWAN-...
Do you mean the limited edition etching by Garry Shead? http://martinezartdealer.com/product/...
How about "The Black Swan of Trespass and Some Angry Penguins"?
http://www.kateberginartist.com/#!bla...
And there is this essay:
http://jacketmagazine.com/17/ern-wark...
Basically, Lucky, in this instance, you seem to be enjoying a joke with yourself.
Many papers in the fields of chemistry, physics, astronomy, .. are retracted.
No papers in cultural studies, climate science, economics or psychology are retracted. Therefore the second group is better and more scientific that the first group.
I seem to recall this type of argument used to defend creationism.
Anyway, the explanation is simply that the second group are not fields of study that contain anything refutable - statements in those fields are not even wrong.
Familiarity with some of my favorites
-The Black Swan of Trespass
-Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
-Glaciers, Gender, and Science, “Glaciers are key icons of climate change and global environmental change,” etc.
may enlighten.
http://retractionwatch.com/2012/04/17...
Applied Mathematics apologizes and pays $10,000 compensation to mathematics professor after pulling his paper for citing Intelligent Design.
http://retractionwatch.com/2011/06/13...
"Science" pulls online advice post telling a woman to put up with her advisor looking down her shirt.
http://retractionwatch.com/2015/06/01...