scientific ‘cartels’ band together to cite each others’ work

[987baz]

source - statnews.com (JAN 2017) _https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/13/citation-cartels-science/

They’re not the kind of gangs that smuggle drugs and murder people. But people looking closely at the scientific literature have discovered that a small number of scientists are part of a different kind of cartel — ones that band together to reference each other’s work, gaming the citation system to make their studies appear to be more important and worthy of attention.

These so-called citation cartels have been around for decades, as the publishing consultant Phil Davis has pointed out. Thomson Reuters, which until recently owned the Impact Factor for ranking journals, has even sanctioned periodicals for evidence of cartel behavior.

Davis, who clearly has an eye for this kind of thing, unearthed a citation cartel a few years back when he came across a 2010 article in Medical Science Monitor with a glaring feature: Of its 490 references, 445 were to articles in an emerging medical journal called Cell Transplantation. Of the rest, 44 were to papers in … Medical Science Monitor. Davis also noticed this: “Three of the four authors of this paper sit on the editorial board of Cell Transplantation. Two are associate editors, one is the founding editor. The fourth is the CEO of a medical communications company.”

However large the cartel phenomenon, it’s just one among many illnesses afflicting modern science, which tends to reward quantity of metrics — more citations, more papers, more grant money — over quality.

As seductive as metrics are, however, they’re often fool’s gold. It’s sort of like cutting that Cali cocaine with baking powder — a subject about which we promise we have no knowledge. It’ll work on the street for a little while. But when you’re found out, it won’t be pretty.

 

[Glenn]

source - statnews.com (JAN 2017) _https://www.statnews.com/2017/01/13/citation-cartels-science/

They’re not the kind of gangs that smuggle drugs and murder people. But people looking closely at the scientific literature have discovered that a small number of scientists are part of a different kind of cartel — ones that band together to reference each other’s work, gaming the citation system to make their studies appear to be more important and worthy of attention.

These so-called citation cartels have been around for decades, as the publishing consultant Phil Davis has pointed out. Thomson Reuters, which until recently owned the Impact Factor for ranking journals, has even sanctioned periodicals for evidence of cartel behavior.

Davis, who clearly has an eye for this kind of thing, unearthed a citation cartel a few years back when he came across a 2010 article in Medical Science Monitor with a glaring feature: Of its 490 references, 445 were to articles in an emerging medical journal called Cell Transplantation. Of the rest, 44 were to papers in … Medical Science Monitor. Davis also noticed this: “Three of the four authors of this paper sit on the editorial board of Cell Transplantation. Two are associate editors, one is the founding editor. The fourth is the CEO of a medical communications company.”

However large the cartel phenomenon, it’s just one among many illnesses afflicting modern science, which tends to reward quantity of metrics — more citations, more papers, more grant money — over quality.

As seductive as metrics are, however, they’re often fool’s gold. It’s sort of like cutting that Cali cocaine with baking powder — a subject about which we promise we have no knowledge. It’ll work on the street for a little while. But when you’re found out, it won’t be pretty.

Here is a parody of Ted Talks. One way that pseudo knowledge is dispensed using fake sincerity and other tools of the trade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZBKX-6Gz6A

 

[JGeropoulas]

...
Here is a parody of Ted Talks. One way that pseudo knowledge is dispensed using fake sincerity and other tools of the trade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZBKX-6Gz6A

I loved the parody. Nothing more annoying than pseudo-enlightened people dispensing pseudo-knowledge or "know-it-all"s who know very little at all--usually from those afflicted with the Dunning-Kruger syndrome:
https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,19024.msg182747.html#msg182747

 

[Glenn]

...
Here is a parody of Ted Talks. One way that pseudo knowledge is dispensed using fake sincerity and other tools of the trade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZBKX-6Gz6A

I loved the parody. Nothing more annoying than pseudo-enlightened people dispensing pseudo-knowledge or "know-it-all"s who know very little at all--usually from those afflicted with the Dunning-Kruger syndrome:
https://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic,19024.msg182747.html#msg182747

You bring up a good point. Referring back to your link, Mr Wheeler could be said to not know himself. The antithesis of Know Thyself. He was not aware of his limitations, and his thinking based on false assumptions. Knowing yourself is a process of examining your strengths and weaknesses, and once aware of those beginning to work on your weaknesses. I think awareness, starts with self awareness, for if you are not aware of your false awareness, and false beliefs, how can you begin to be aware of the reality you live in? Of course, under the General Law, everything possible is done to stunt your self awareness, and keep you to the level that they desire. A basic consumer. A consumer of not only hard goods, to feed the system, but a consumer of their ideologies, and lies to keep you firmly entrenched in the system, and hence no threat to the system.