http://www.nature.com/news/publishers-wi...
Are they?

What gives a journal its prestige is frequently the care of the reviewers. If someone gets a publication in a prestigious journal, people will read it, but more importantly there is a much higher probability of its authenticity. Academic fraud is a very serious problem that definitely is worse than it used to be.

All articles get checked, but it is one thing to verify plausibility and yet another to check veracity.

Mike Marotta makes a very correct point about the review process. It is FAR from perfect. In fact, many journals even ask authors to recommend reviewers. How many authors do you think will recommend someone vehemently opposed to one's work?

Moreover, as Adlai Stevenson, the failed presidential candidate correctly observed, "We Americans are suckers for good news". I read this yesterday within "The Creature from Jekyll Island" by G. Edward Griffin.

If, as you say, "the article makes reasonable claims" then you agree that the fact that the _Journal of Vibration and Control_ retracted 60 papers after an audit evidences that science is self-correcting. That same claim is make by Daniele Fanelli, who is also cited in this article for uncovering false positives. If you goto Fanelli's website, you will find this new publication:
Fanelli D (2014) Publishing: rise in retractions is a signal of integrity. Nature - doi:10.1038/509033a
which rehashed this publication:
Fanelli D (2013) Why growing retractions are (mostly) a good sign. PLoS Medicine - DOI: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001563

My problem here, k, is that Town Hall caters to people who want to believe what they read there. Once you start to dig for facts, you find the truth, even as presented, is somewhat more complicated.

According to this article from Town Hall: "University of Montreal’s Danielle Fanelli has written several comprehensive reviews of the content of published science and he found, in the last twenty years, that the number of “positive” results is increasing dramatically." Indeed, you can find his website here: http://danielefanelli.com/contact.html (Just to note that with one L, Danny boy is indeed a boy. Normally, the typographical error would not merit mention, but here in the Gulch, gender identity seems to be consequential.)

Fanelli collaborated with Ioannidis on two papers:
Fanelli D & JPA Ioannidis (2014) Re-analyses actually confirm that US studies may overestimate effect sizes in softer research. PNAS - DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1322565111
Fanelli D & JPA Ioannidis (2013) US studies may overestimate effect sizes in softer research. PNAS - DOI:10.1073/pnas.1302997110

I, too, have published the same research twice by tweaking it into a new article. It makes the bibliography bigger. That these two stalwarts also succumb to a venal sin is not entirely condemnatory.

That 50% of the papers in the JACS do get checked is laudable; and it underscores the strong ethos of science in chemistry. _The Same and Not the Same_ by Roald Hoffmann points out that chemists depend on the discoveries of others to build their own new work. Thus, they are always (often) checking each other's results. He allows that much else even in chemistry does not get that independent re-investigation; but again, at least it is very common in chemistry. That was how physicist Jan Hendrick Schoen was exposed. His chemical experiments in plastics and crystals could not be replicated by researchers who wanted to build on them.

I read "Why Most Published Researched Findings are False" by John P. A. Ioannidis, cited in this article. The best that can be said is that it is a moral warning in the tradition of Richard Feynman's "Cargo Cult Science." Overall, stripped of its arithmetical cloak, it is what we learned in my undergraduate class in research methods for social science. Granted all of that, the paper also contains a lot of puffery. Some of the sniping lies behind a duck blind made from the judicious use of colloquialism such as "a lot". I can understand the attraction for the article based on its title. Again, its best advice is in an old tradition. But once you start to examine it, the paper delivers much less than it promises.

We have disagreed more than once, publicly and privately.

Thanks, Jim. I had more than one ethics class: in addition to "Ethics in Physics" for my master's, I started with "Ethics for Criminal Justice" for my associate's. See my review of _4Es: Ethics, Engineering, Economics & Environment_ by John St. J. S. Buckeridge (Annandale NSW: The Federation Press, 2011). http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2012/...
Prof. Buckeridge teaches engineering ethics. He sent me an autographed copy of the book after mischance brought us together. (Story there; some other time.) I have given these problems serious professional development. It was on that basis that I found this article from Town Hall disappointing. I just read all of Ionnidi's paper cited there. I wonder who else did ... or felt they needed to...

I think FIT is just about at the right size now at the undergrad level. We need a few more PhD students and some research dollars from private industry, and then we'll be where we need to be.

Nah, I'm just a guy with an opinion.
But, thanks.

oops, Point for AR

Oh, and BTW, I haven't downgraded you on any posts yet, even when I have disagreed with you.

I am glad to see that you took an ethics class, Mike. I incorporate ethics into all of my classes.

Institutional review boards can only do so much. The peer review process is supposed to identify research misconduct. As a reviewer, I often am reviewing papers that I know the general subject, but not all of what everyone in the field has done. Catching fraud is not an easy thing to do. I have seen where The Journal of the American Chemical Society asks, but does not require, its reviewers to attempt to replicate research results. That is a lot to ask.
A chemist who was one of my old bosses said that he couldn't reproduce half of what was in the published literature. That is consistent with my experience, too. Research fraud is a serious problem.

As for conservatives not seeking good news, until I read AS, I was overly optimistic. I am definitely personally conservative, although I would govern as a libertarian. I have always wanted to assume that everyone was of high moral character and good will, until they gave me cause to think otherwise.

Thanks for the publicity, Robbie. +1
FIT has increased in size over the last 10 years, but is pretty close to where we plan on being after that.

Quite correct, Eudaimonia. The problem for us is that progressives' concept of morality is quite different than ours is.

Boils down to they believe their own press releases :P

Copernicus proposed the Heliocentric model in the 1500s

I think you are smarter than any professor, Euda.. I love this comment and it rings so true. Those of us who want to make our own way are told by these indoctrinated ones that we don't know how to take care of ourselves. Yes, it is unending. Shrugging is very rewarding :-)

hey now...what degree do you think AR would have pursued? there's plenty O reason to go around