Showing posts with label fraud. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fraud. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Study Finds Misconduct Widespread in Retracted Scientific Papers
Last year the journal Nature reported an alarming increase in the number of retractions of scientific papers — a tenfold rise in the previous decade, to more than 300 a year across the scientific literature.
Other studies have suggested that most of these retractions resulted from honest errors. But a deeper analysis of retractions, being published this week, challenges that comforting assumption.
In the new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, two scientists and a medical communications consultant analyzed 2,047 retracted papers in the biomedical and life sciences. They found that misconduct was the reason for three-quarters of the retractions for which they could determine the cause.
“We found that the problem was a lot worse than we thought,” said an author of the study, Dr. Arturo Casadevall of Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.
Dr. Casadevall and another author, Dr. Ferric C. Fang of the University of Washington, have been outspoken critics of the current culture of science. To them, the rising rate of retractions reflects perverse incentives that drive scientists to make sloppy mistakes or even knowingly publish false data.
“We realized we would really like more hard data for what the reasons were for retractions,” Dr. Fang said.
They began collaborating with R. Grant Steen, a medical communications consultant in Chapel Hill, N.C., who had already published a study on 10 years of retractions. Together they gathered all the retraction notices published before May 2012 by searching PubMed, a database of scientific literature maintained by the National Library of Medicine.
“I guess our O.C.D. kicked in and we started trying to look at every paper we could look at,” Dr. Fang said.
The researchers analyzed the reasons for retractions cited by the scientific journals. But they also looked beyond the journals for the full story.
In the mid-2000s, for example, Boris Cheskis, then a senior scientist at Wyeth Research, and his colleagues published two papers on estrogen. Later, the scientists retracted both papers, explaining that some of the data in them were “unreliable.” In 2010, the Office of Research Integrity at the federal Department of Health and Human Services ruled that Dr. Cheskis had engaged in misconduct, having falsified the figures.
Dr. Cheskis settled with the government. Although he neither accepted nor denied the charges, he agreed not to serve on any advisory boards for the United States Public Health Service and agreed to be supervised on any Public Health Service-financed research for two years.
Neither of the notices for the two retracted papers has been updated to reflect the finding of fraud. Dr. Cheskis could not be reached for comment.
Dr. Fang and his colleagues dug through other reports from the Office of Research Integrity, as well as newspaper articles and the blog Retraction Watch. All told, they reclassified 158 papers as fraudulent based on their extra research.
“We haven’t seen this level of analysis before,” said Dr. Ivan Oransky, an author of Retraction Watch and the executive editor at Reuters Health. “It confirms what we suspected.”
Dr. Oransky said he expected the rise to continue in the near future. He and his co-author, Adam Marcus, have been scrambling to keep up with new cases of fraud.
In July, for example, the Japanese Society of Anesthesiologists reported that Dr. Yoshitaka Fujii had falsified data in 172 papers. Most of those papers have yet to be officially retracted. “They’re headed for the fraud pile,” Dr. Oransky said.
Dr. Benjamin G. Druss, a professor of health policy of Emory University, said he found the statistics in the paper to be sound but added that they “need to be kept in perspective.” Only about one in 10,000 papers in PubMed have been officially retracted, he noted. By contrast, 112,908 papers have had published corrections.
Dr. Casadevall disagreed. “It convinces me more that we have a problem in science,” he said.
While the fraudulent papers may be relatively few, he went on, their rapid increase is a sign of a winner-take-all culture in which getting a paper published in a major journal can be the difference between heading a lab and facing unemployment. “Some fraction of people are starting to cheat,” he said.
Better policing techniques, like plagiarism-detecting software, might help slow the rise in misconduct, Dr. Casadevall said, but the most important thing the scientific community can do is change its culture.
“I don’t think this problem is going to go away as long as you have this disproportionate system of rewards,” he said.
Saturday, July 21, 2012
KUHNER: ARPAIO PROBE COULD DWARF WATERGATE
America may be facing a constitutional crisis. Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, Ariz., has made a startling declaration: President Obama’s birth certificate is fraudulent. If true — and I stress if — then this scandal dwarfs Watergate. In fact, it would be the greatest political scandal in U.S. history.
Recently, Sheriff Arpaio held a news conference. He said that his team of independent investigators — composed of former law enforcement officials and reporters — have for months meticulously examined the computer-generated birth certificate that Mr. Obama revealed to the public in April 2011. Their stunning conclusion: The document is a forgery. His chief investigator, Mike Zullo, says that the document is full of errors and omissions. In particular, Mr. Zullo claims that numeric sections are not filled out that otherwise would have been in birth certificates from Hawaii during that time. But other sections, such as those dealing with Mr. Obama’s race and his father’s work and field of study, are completed. Hence, Sheriff Arpaio’s investigative posse definitively believes the birth certificate is not authentic, but was manufactured to provide Mr. Obama with a veneer of constitutional legitimacy.
Sheriff Arpaio’s findings threaten to plunge America into an unprecedented crisis. For if — and again, I emphasize if — he is correct, then Mr. Obama has perpetrated the most elaborate hoax in U.S. history. A fraudulent birth certificate would mean that Mr. Obama is ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief. His presidency would therefore be legally and constitutionally illegitimate.
The consequences would shake the country to its very foundations. It would mean that he should be immediately removed from office — impeached. Moreover, every law and executive order passed under his administration — Obamacare, the economic stimulus, the Dodd-Frank financial reform, the government takeover of General Motors and Chrysler, the granting of amnesty to nearly one million illegal immigrants, the National Defense Reauthorization Act, the drone assassination list — would be null and void. The logic is inexorable: Should the president’s legal authority be deemed invalid, then everything resulting from it is also baseless. The Obama presidency would be overturned. Mr. Obama himself would be facing criminal charges — and possible jail time — for committing fraud.
Yet, the birth certificate issue would repeal more than the Obama administration. It would bring down the entire liberal regime. The ruling elites — the establishment media, the Hollywood left, the federal bureaucracy, the myriad regulatory agencies, the public sector unions, big banks and the financial sector — have refused to seriously examine Mr. Obama’s background. In fact, they have repeatedly propped him up. He defends the liberal corporatist status quo, constantly expanding government power. This is why they are determined to destroy anyone who seriously challenges Mr. Obama’s constitutional authority. To simply inquire into the status of his birth risks being called a “birther” — a kook and conspiracy theorist akin to Holocaust deniers. Having coddled and protected him, the ruling class could not survive if Mr. Obama was exposed as a slick con man. Their moral and intellectual legitimacy would be discredited as well.
The topic has become toxic. Even Fox News refuses to touch it. Many leading conservative radio talk-show hosts ignore it. The editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal mock so-called “birthers.” Meanwhile, the liberal media continues to vilify Sheriff Arpaio. He is being accused of racial profiling, committing civil rights abuses and having failed to effectively prosecute sex crimes. They allege he is waging a baseless, personal vendetta against Mr. Obama. Liberals are portraying him as a Southern stereotype: a racist, out-of-control sheriff determined to bring down a black president.
The very opposite, however, is the case. It was the citizens of Maricopa County who through a petition asked Sheriff Arpaio to investigate Mr. Obama’s birth certificate. The sheriff is not the only one with doubts. Many question the president’s status as a natural-born citizen. Mr. Obama’s grandmother says he was born in Kenya. This is echoed by Obama relatives. Members of the Kenyan parliament have repeatedly claimed Mr. Obama as their native son. The Kenyan media asserts he was born in Kenya. For nearly 15 years, Mr. Obama’s literary agent produced a pamphlet describing him as being “Kenyan born.” In his 2004 race for the U.S. Senate, wire stories — including by the Associated Press — frequently referred to Mr. Obama’s place of birth as Kenya. As late as 2009, the Kenyan government sought to build an official monument commemorating the site of Mr. Obama’s birth (until the State Department ordered the project be shuttered).
The president is a brazen opportunist; a political hustler who mastered his craft on the streets of Chicago. When it suited his interests to come across as a cosmopolitan, multicultural liberal, Mr. Obama pushed a Kenyan persona. When it was no longer politically expedient, he abandoned it. Yet, Mr. Obama cannot escape a fundamental dilemma: He either lied then or he is lying now. He was either born in Kenya (as he claimed during the 1990s and part of the 2000s) or he wasn’t (as he has insisted since 2007). Both cannot be true.
At best, Mr. Obama is a shameless liar. At worst, he is a foreign usurper.
Jeffrey T. Kuhneris a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute.
Read more:http://times247.com/articles/82kuhner-arpaio-probe-could-be-bigger-than-watergate6?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook#ixzz21Gf5C8Fv
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Recently, Sheriff Arpaio held a news conference. He said that his team of independent investigators — composed of former law enforcement officials and reporters — have for months meticulously examined the computer-generated birth certificate that Mr. Obama revealed to the public in April 2011. Their stunning conclusion: The document is a forgery. His chief investigator, Mike Zullo, says that the document is full of errors and omissions. In particular, Mr. Zullo claims that numeric sections are not filled out that otherwise would have been in birth certificates from Hawaii during that time. But other sections, such as those dealing with Mr. Obama’s race and his father’s work and field of study, are completed. Hence, Sheriff Arpaio’s investigative posse definitively believes the birth certificate is not authentic, but was manufactured to provide Mr. Obama with a veneer of constitutional legitimacy.
Sheriff Arpaio’s findings threaten to plunge America into an unprecedented crisis. For if — and again, I emphasize if — he is correct, then Mr. Obama has perpetrated the most elaborate hoax in U.S. history. A fraudulent birth certificate would mean that Mr. Obama is ineligible to serve as commander-in-chief. His presidency would therefore be legally and constitutionally illegitimate.
Yet, the birth certificate issue would repeal more than the Obama administration. It would bring down the entire liberal regime. The ruling elites — the establishment media, the Hollywood left, the federal bureaucracy, the myriad regulatory agencies, the public sector unions, big banks and the financial sector — have refused to seriously examine Mr. Obama’s background. In fact, they have repeatedly propped him up. He defends the liberal corporatist status quo, constantly expanding government power. This is why they are determined to destroy anyone who seriously challenges Mr. Obama’s constitutional authority. To simply inquire into the status of his birth risks being called a “birther” — a kook and conspiracy theorist akin to Holocaust deniers. Having coddled and protected him, the ruling class could not survive if Mr. Obama was exposed as a slick con man. Their moral and intellectual legitimacy would be discredited as well.
The topic has become toxic. Even Fox News refuses to touch it. Many leading conservative radio talk-show hosts ignore it. The editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal mock so-called “birthers.” Meanwhile, the liberal media continues to vilify Sheriff Arpaio. He is being accused of racial profiling, committing civil rights abuses and having failed to effectively prosecute sex crimes. They allege he is waging a baseless, personal vendetta against Mr. Obama. Liberals are portraying him as a Southern stereotype: a racist, out-of-control sheriff determined to bring down a black president.
The very opposite, however, is the case. It was the citizens of Maricopa County who through a petition asked Sheriff Arpaio to investigate Mr. Obama’s birth certificate. The sheriff is not the only one with doubts. Many question the president’s status as a natural-born citizen. Mr. Obama’s grandmother says he was born in Kenya. This is echoed by Obama relatives. Members of the Kenyan parliament have repeatedly claimed Mr. Obama as their native son. The Kenyan media asserts he was born in Kenya. For nearly 15 years, Mr. Obama’s literary agent produced a pamphlet describing him as being “Kenyan born.” In his 2004 race for the U.S. Senate, wire stories — including by the Associated Press — frequently referred to Mr. Obama’s place of birth as Kenya. As late as 2009, the Kenyan government sought to build an official monument commemorating the site of Mr. Obama’s birth (until the State Department ordered the project be shuttered).
The president is a brazen opportunist; a political hustler who mastered his craft on the streets of Chicago. When it suited his interests to come across as a cosmopolitan, multicultural liberal, Mr. Obama pushed a Kenyan persona. When it was no longer politically expedient, he abandoned it. Yet, Mr. Obama cannot escape a fundamental dilemma: He either lied then or he is lying now. He was either born in Kenya (as he claimed during the 1990s and part of the 2000s) or he wasn’t (as he has insisted since 2007). Both cannot be true.
Jeffrey T. Kuhneris a columnist at The Washington Times and president of the Edmund Burke Institute.
Read more:http://times247.com/articles/82kuhner-arpaio-probe-could-be-bigger-than-watergate6?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=facebook#ixzz21Gf5C8Fv
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