Also, 30,000 fake papers out of 1 million+ does not indict or threaten science as a whole. This entire "science is in crisis from within" narrative is a right-wing myth.
I think this quote is both unsustainable and unsupported by the analysis in the piece. First and foremost, it portrays fraud as consuming science rather than merely growing alongside it. Much of the βfraudβ in the paper is just metric gaming whackamole that doesnβt get read, cited or used.
"This entire 'science is in crisis from within' narrative is a right-wing myth."
Which makes it "important news" for the New York Times.
I will say that a few high-profile cases (Sylvain Lesne and his retracted Alzheimerβs work, for instance) HAVE had dramatic impacts and likely wasted millions of dollars in efforts built on his fraud (vested interest as happened at my University)
That seems like a fairly low percentage. Also is it perhaps that the increased pressure to publish your parish is causing more people to cut corners?
π
a couple of important caveats though: this is why peer review exists, and why it is critical, and also, its why the bedrock institutions of medical literature (JAMA, NJM, lancet, nature) have to be protected. if they are compromised, then its going to be very hard to do actual medical research
Hasnβt most of the replication crisis come from psychology-related fields? I feel like I heard something about that before
SOME OF THOSE 30 WERE RETRACTIONS! RETRACTIONS ARE ALSO THE SYSTEM WORKING!
How many were retracted? Because that sounds like the system working...
It's bonkers anyone would reach this conclusion. The biggest advances tend to publish in the journals with high rates of desk rejection, so papers like these retracted ones might not make it into review in those. Journals like PLOS One have different purposes.
And they were retracted!
3% of these kids are cheating; better fail the whole class
It's the rate of growth that I found alarming.
www.science.org/content/arti...
A surge in AI-generated text has been detected in papers across many disciplines since the release of ChatGPT
Really appreciate your work, Michael, but I think this is an overstatement. Entire areas of Alzheimerβs research have been found to be based on fabricated research. I think calling scientific critique of shoddy science a right-wing op pushes the pendulum too far back in the other direction
Also, counting retracted papers as fraud is fluffing the numbers a bit, isnβt it?
Exactly. Relying on absolute numbers should always raise a red flag in the reader.
Let's see...$30,000 is 3% of one million.
So the top 97% of scientific papers pass this scrutiny.
Now where do you think the bottom 3% get published?
This is not a problem for respectable journals or peer reviewed papers or indeed for 97% of all of them no matter where they are published.
It could just be that whatβs increasing is just detection of fraudulent papers, and the actual rate of publication of fraudulent papers isnβt changing too much. The authors mention this in their limitations section but deserves more attention www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1...
And how many of those fake papers were published by right-wing think tanks? (asking for a friend)
3% of all papers is not small, but also not a crisis.
Seems like the bigger problem here is that people aligned with RFK can set up woo woo scientific journals and woo woo panels that masquerade as science to further their own beliefs and this is exactly what they are doing. They want to build out an alternative infrastructure to produce "science'
To some extent, the right wing opposition to science has always been there. Iβve been reading the new William F. Buckley biography and the Birchers were opposed to fluoridated water all the way back in the 60βs.
Md PhD here and the way bigger threat is the use of AI tools that obscure hallucinations of citations as well as deter actual thoughtful analysis of the source and quality of the underlying studies. It says all answers with the same confidence.
HAHAHAHAHAHA!
It IS in "crisis" from within, but not in a way conservatives EVER want to admit, given their grabbing and coopting of some of the institutions and research, and the planned demolition of the rest! I'm getting good mileage out of a wall I wrote earlier. longer.blue/posts/u3bpmr...
Create your own extended posts and share them seamlessly on Bluesky.
This is a very good paper on the myth.
P-hacking, failure to replicate and fraud are real problems but don't remotely represent science collapsing in on itself. The existential threat to science comes from conservatives, full stop.
Empirical data do not support the conclusion of a crisis of public trust in science. They do support the conclusion of a crisis of conservative trust in science: polls show that American attitudes tow...
this feels in hand with the way that some sectors of the media (hello, daytime TV) credulously report anything published in a journal as the monolithic βscience.β right-wingers thrive in the literacy gap.
no human endeavor is immune to human impulses, but the overriding goal of science to βbe right about thingsβ makes it the only self-policing institution in society. all the corrupting influences come from outside whereas uncovering sloppiness & fraud is rewarded from within.
@michaelhobbes.bsky.social have you watched Bobby Broccoliβs YouTube videos on science frauds and failures? Theyβre so great, fantastically produced and insightful! One thing I find reassuring the he shows is that once fraudsters face the scientific community theyβre always picked apart and stopped.
It would not shock me if some of these were the βresearch papersβ some high school kids βwriteβ to say they were published in a journal for college admissions.
The science in crisis narrative is one more unintended outcome of Rule by Centrists since their neoliberal focus on metrics incentivised counter-productive practise.
The Centristsβ myth of a meritocracy (allowing rule by billionaires) opened the door to fascism across society, not just in science.
And how many of these fake papers promote right wing ideology in the first place?
I also have serious questions about retraction watchβs integrity since their coverage of transgender healthcare begins with a guest essay by Alice Dreger and ends with an interview by Michael Bailey.
www.pinkerite.com/2025/07/weap...
Professor Dave notes in his latest video that physicist Sabine Hossenfelder is parroting Peter Thiel's talking points about the alleged slow...
crisis narratives get clicks, and clicks are more important than truth
The existence of shitty art is not a condemnation of art as a whole.
Yes. Reading through comments, there's conflation of two different things. There's what you might call high-status fraud, especially people going to some effort to invent data. Then there is the paper mill stuff, aimed at gaming metrics but unlikely to ever be taken seriously.
Frauds and quacks exist, but that's why peer review has a role
A whole three percent! π±
Creationist have been doing that for years trying to undermine the teaching of evolution
Pretty disappointing article from one of the Timesβ leading science writers
Unless they're weighting each paper based on how often it's referenced or something I doubt this is in any way meaningful.
"been retracted" that's not a bad thing? That doesn't ipso facto mean it's a sham? If a paper fails reproducibility but was earnest work that arrived at an erroneous conclusion, then retraction is a good and natural conclusion
If there's a fraudulent paper in a journal that no-one ever reads, does it destroy science?
