Nepami
Friday, December 6, 2013
GM Maize Study Retracted
China's Publication Bazaar
Science 29 November 2013:
Vol. 342 no. 6162 pp. 1035-1039
DOI: 10.1126/science.342.6162.1035
- NEWS FOCUS
Vol. 342 no. 6162 pp. 1035-1039
DOI: 10.1126/science.342.6162.1035
China's Publication Bazaar
A Science investigation has uncovered a smorgasbord of questionable practices including paying for author's slots on papers written by other scientists and buying papers from online brokers.
SHANGHAI, CHINA—The e-mail arrived around noon from the mysterious sender "Publish SCI Paper," with the subject line "Transfer co-first author and co-corresponding author." A message body uncluttered with pleasantries contained a scientific abstract with all the usual ingredients, bar one: author names. The message said that the paper, describing a potential strategy for curbing drug resistance in cancer cells, had been accepted by Elsevier's International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology. Now its authorship was for sale.
"There are some authors who don't have much use for their papers after they're published, and they can be transferred to you," a sales agent for a company called Wanfang Huizhi told a Science reporter posing as a scientist. Wanfang Huizhi, the agent explained, acts as an intermediary between researchers with forthcoming papers in good journals and scientists needing to snag publications. The company would sell the title of co–first author on the cancer paper for 90,000 yuan ($14,800). Adding two names—co–first author and co–corresponding author—would run $26,300, with a deposit due upon acceptance and the rest on publication. A purported sales document from Wanfang Huizhi obtained by Science touts the convenience of this kind of arrangement: "You only need to pay attention to your academic research. The heavy labor can be left to us. Our service can help you make progress in your academic path!"
Monday, September 19, 2011
Journal editor resigns over climate-change paper
Climate debate
Every year, one or two sceptical papers get published, and these are then trumpeted by sympathetic media outlets as if they had discovered the wheelAndrew Dessler of Texas A&M University
Climate scientist Kerry Emanuel from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says the affair reflects the broad debate over climate change rather than the specific detail of the Spencer–Braswell paper. "There's a huge discrepancy between what the paper says and what people, including Roy Spencer, say that it says," he explains. "People seem to be replying to the climate-change sceptics rather than the paper itself."
Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M University agrees. "Every month, dozens if not hundreds of papers are published that are in agreement with the mainstream theory of climate science," he says. "But every year, one or two sceptical papers get published, and these are then trumpeted by sympathetic media outlets as if they had discovered the wheel. It therefore appears to the general public that there's a debate."
Monday, March 7, 2011
Former MIT Researcher Convicted of Fraud
The ordeal isn't over for biologist Luk van Parijs, who was fired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2005 after admitting to fabricating research data. Yesterday, Van Parijs, 40, pleaded guilty in a U.S. District Court in Boston to one count of making a false statement on a federal grant application.
Van Parijs worked in the field of RNA interference. MIT launched an investigation after his students and postdocs raised questions about his research and found that he had fabricated and falsified data in grant applications, submitted manuscripts, and a published paper. In 2009, the federal Office of Research Integrity found that he had also falsified data in other publications.
The U.S. attorney's office in Boston announced yesterday that Van Parijs will be sentenced 14 June and that he could receive up to 5 years in prison and up to a $250,000 fine. The government alleges that he falsely claimed to have developed a specific transgenic mouse and to have obtained certain results from an experiment. According to a plea agreement, the U.S. attorney will not recommend a fine, but Van Parijs has agreed to pay MIT $61,117 in restitution.
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Scientific misconduct
February 22, 2011
More on Culture and Misconduct
The German model
Universities in Northeast Asia are "particularly prone to scientific scandal" because of a specific combination of structural factors, argue Schrank and Lee in their article. One structural factor is the enormous rewards that governments bestow on conspicuously successful senior scientists as incentives "to overtake their advanced industrial counterparts." The "illiberal laboratory cultures inherited from Germany by way of Japan" is another.
Numerous "high profile" cases have emerged in South Korea, Japan, and China, where some people "worry that disclosure is the exception to the rule, especially among the scientific elite," Schrank and Lee state. In the interview, Schrank hastens to acknowledge that American scientists also cheat, but, he adds, "We simply think that the incentive structure and the organizational structure in Northeast Asia are much more conducive to this type of fraud than either the incentive structure or the organizational structure in the United States."
Discouraging misconduct
So how do you lessen the likelihood of fraud? "I think the way to combat this is to recognize that it's not Asian culture, but that it's organizational, and then to think about what types of organizations militate against it," Schrank says. He cites as evidence Taiwan and Singapore, which share an Asian cultural background with China, South Korea, and Japan and "have pursued the same sort of intensive drive to give incentive for blockbuster publications, with monetary rewards," but haven't seen nearly as much scandal.
The reason? They "have broken with the German model. Taiwan is particularly interesting" because it used to follow the highly hierarchical German system, but it changed to the American one. Singapore has consistently followed a British system that is also similar to that of the United States.
The key is institutional structures that value, encourage, and reward skeptical interchange among personnel at all levels. Events such as a regularly scheduled lab meeting can discourage would-be cheaters "precisely because every week they have this confrontation and someone can call them on it." The research systems in more scandal-prone countries "don't have this sort of built-in mechanism for quality control, and as a result there isn't a structured space for that sort of challenge."
Rampant Fraud Threat to China’s Brisk Ascent
By ANDREW JACOBS
Published: October 6, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/07/world/asia/07fraud.html?_r=1
For $450, seriously ill patients could buy a 10-minute consultation and a prescription — except Mr. Zhang, one of the most popular practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine, was booked through 2012.
¶But when the price of mung beans skyrocketed this spring, Chinese journalists began digging deeper. They learned that contrary to his claims, Mr. Zhang, 47, was not from a long line of doctors (his father was a weaver). Nor did he earn a degree from Beijing Medical University (his only formal education, it turned out, was the brief correspondence course he took after losing his job at a textile mill)
The most recent string of revelations has been bracing. After a plane crash in August killed 42 people in northeast China, officials discovered that 100 pilots who worked for the airline’s parent company had falsified their flying histories. Then there was the padded résumé of Tang Jun, the millionaire former head of Microsoft China and something of a national hero, who falsely claimed to have received a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology.
Pressure on scholars by administrators of state-run universities to earn journal citations — a measure of innovation — has produced a deluge of plagiarized or fabricated research. In December, a British journal that specializes in crystal formations announced that it was withdrawing more than 70 papers by Chinese authors whose research was of questionable originality or rigor.
“Clearly, China’s government needs to take this episode as a cue to reinvigorate standards for teaching research ethics and for the conduct of the research itself,” the editorial said. Last month a collection of scientific journals published by Zhejiang University in Hangzhou reignited the firestorm by publicizing results from a 20-month experiment with software that detects plagiarism. The software, called CrossCheck, rejected nearly a third of all submissions on suspicion that the content was pirated from previously published research. In some cases, more than 80 percent of a paper’s content was deemed unoriginal.
Plagiarism and Fakery
¶Her findings are not surprising if one considers the results of a recent government study in which a third of the 6,000 scientists at six of the nation’s top institutions admitted they had engaged in plagiarism or the outright fabrication of research data. In another study of 32,000 scientists last summer by the China Association for Science and Technology, more than 55 percent said they knew someone guilty of academic fraud.
He cited the case of Chen Jin, a computer scientist who was once celebrated for having invented a sophisticated microprocessor but who, it turned out, had taken a chip made by Motorola, scratched out its name, and claimed it as his own. After Mr. Chen was showered with government largess and accolades, the exposure in 2006 was an embarrassment for the scientific establishment that backed him.
But even though Mr. Chen lost his university post, he was never prosecuted. “When people see the accused still driving their flashy cars, it sends the wrong message,” Mr. Zeng said.
The problem is not confined to the realm of science. In fact many educators say the culture of cheating takes root in high school, where the competition for slots in the country’s best colleges is unrelenting and high marks on standardized tests are the most important criterion for admission. Ghost-written essays and test questions can be bought. So, too, can a “hired gun” test taker who will assume the student’s identity for the grueling two-day college entrance exam.
Then there are the gadgets — wristwatches and pens embedded with tiny cameras — that transmit signals to collaborators on the outside who then relay back the correct answers. Even if such products are illegal, students spent $150 million last year on Internet essays and high-tech subterfuge, a fivefold increase over 2007, according to a Wuhan University study, which identified 800 Web sites offering such illicit services.
Nonchalant Cheating
Ask any Chinese student about academic skullduggery and the response is startlingly nonchalant. Arthur Lu, an engineering student who last spring graduated from Tsinghua University, considered a plum of the country’s college system, said it was common for students to swap test answers or plagiarize essays from one another. “Perhaps it’s a cultural difference but there is nothing bad or embarrassing about it,” said Mr. Lu, who started this semester on a master’s degree at Stanford University. “It’s not that students can’t do the work. They just see it as a way of saving time.”
In recent years, both journalists have taken on Xiao Chuanguo, a urologist who invented a surgical procedure aimed at restoring bladder function in children with spina bifida, a congenital deformation of the spinal column that can lead to incontinence, and when untreated, kidney failure and death.
In a series of investigative articles and blog postings, the two men uncovered discrepancies in Dr. Xiao’s Web site, including claims that he had published 26 articles in English-language journals (they could only find four) and that he had won an achievement award from the American Urological Association (the award was for an essay he wrote).
Despite his confession, Dr. Xiao’s employer, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, appeared unwilling to take any action against him. In the statement they released, administrators said they were shocked by news of his arrest but said they would await the outcome of judicial procedures before severing their ties to him.
Ethnicity, Acculturation, and Plagiarism: A Criterion Study of Unethical Academic Conduct
Daniel E. Martin A1, Asha Rao A1, Lloyd R. Sloan A2
A1 Department of Management, California State University, East Bay
A2 Department of Psychology, Howard University
Abstract:
Ethics have received increased attention from the media and academia in recent years. Most reports suggest that one form of unethical conduct—plagiarism—is on the rise in the business schools. Stereotypes of Asian students as being more prone to plagiarize are frequently found in the literature, though not concretely substantiated. This study used a behavioral criterion to examine the relationships among ethnicity, acculturation, and plagiarism in a sample of 158 undergraduate and graduate students. Significant differences in plagiarism behavior were found based on level of student acculturation, but not ethnicity. Considerations and implications for training and managing international students and workers are discussed.
Friday, February 18, 2011
High-Priced Recruiting of Talent Abroad Raises Hackle
Vol. 331 no. 6019 pp. 834-835
DOI: 10.1126/science.331.6019.834
- NEWS & ANALYSIS
High-Priced Recruiting of Talent Abroad Raises Hackles
How much would it take to get you to relocate to China? Would 150 million yuan ($23 million) do the trick? If so, pack your bags—if you are a Nobel laureate, that is. Science has learned that the Chinese government will soon announce a new initiative to lure up to 10 winners of prestigious inter national science prizes—including the Nobel Prize—to China each year by offering what may be the heftiest reward ever paid to individual researchers.
Some prizewinners may be salivating, but at least one prominent Chinese-American scientist aware of the new program blasts it as a massive waste of resources. “It is better to invest in a whole new generation of talent than to buy reputation,” says David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center (ADARC) in New York City. “Someone should step up and put an end to this folly.”
...
Thursday, February 10, 2011
6 Serious Office Health Risks
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Sitting at a desk all day can be hazardous to your health. Back pain, eyestrain and sleep problems can all be results of increasingly sedentary yet stressful work environments.
The number of physically demanding jobs has dropped to less than 10% from 20% in the 1950s, according a study published by economic and social policy researchers at the Urban Institute, meaning the number of jobs that require some exertion were cut in half, leaving more Americans susceptible to desk-job-related health problems.
Here are six office-related maladies and how they can be prevented.
©MGSpiller |
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
Problem: Any motion that is repeated over and over again can cause injury or pain, according to occupational-health-focused Denver Chiropractor Dr. T. Randall Eldridge. But carpal tunnel syndrome isn't just pain or soreness from too much typing. It's the tingling, numbness, itching or even sharp pain caused when a nerve that runs through the forearm is compressed by swollen ligaments and bones in the wrist, according to the National Institutes of Health.
Prevention: Before you're forced to treat carpal tunnel with acupuncture, drugs or even surgery, stretching and other exercises may help release tension in the wrist, the NIH says. And, contrary to what many believe, your wrists shouldn't actually rest on those cushy wrist pads that sit below your keyboard or mouse pad. They should actually be used as a guide for how high your wrists should be, according to occupational therapist to Marji Hajic. Hajic says hands should hover over the wrist rest and it should only be used as a rest in between bouts of typing.
©Yugenro |
Lower-Back Pain
Problem: Sitting for hours on end, particularly if you have bad posture, can be devastating to your body over time if you don't get moving on a regular basis. And back pain is actually a major reason for missed work for adults of all ages, according to the Georgetown University Center on an Aging Society.
But bad posture at your desk goes beyond the obvious slouching. Sitting up straight but curving your back too much can be a cause of lower-back pain as well, notes the NIH.
Prevention: Besides being better aware of your posture as you're sitting at your desk, getting regular exercise including abdominal strengthening activities should relieve some of the pressure on your lower back.
Having too fat a wallet in your back pocket can be a bad thing as well. Sitting on a large wallet can put pressure on the sciatic nerve, which can cause sharp back pain, according to UAB Health System in Birmingham, Ala.
Other Joint Problems
Problem: The human body is meant to move, and staying in one position for too long can make joints feel tight. Sitting at a desk especially shortens and tightens the hip flexors, the muscles than help pull your legs toward your body, according to the Yoga Journal. And tight hip flexors can actually contribute to back pain as well since tight hips force the pelvis to tilt forward, compressing the back, Yoga Journal says.
Prevention: Besides getting up from your desk at regular intervals and walking around a bit, the Mayo Clinic recommends a number of stretches that can help loosen up your hips.
©Just A Prairie Boy |
Eyestrain
Problem: Office workers who spend hours a day staring at a computer screen might tell you that after a certain amount of time, their vision gets blurry and their eyes generally become more sensitive. Those symptoms (as well as too-watery or too-dry eyes, a headache or a sore neck) could be indications of eyestrain, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Prevention: To prevent eyestrain at your computer, increase your font size so you don't have to squint, suggests Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT - News) (though the font on this informative page might cause readers to do just that). You may also want to rest your eyes frequently by looking away from your computer screen and reducing any glare on your monitor, the Mayo Clinic suggests.
Bacteria
Problem: "The desk, in terms of bacteria, is 400 times more dirty than your toilet," University of Arizona microbiologist Dr. Charles Gerba told WebMD (NASDAQ: WBMD -News). "People turn their desks into bacteria cafeterias because they eat at them, but they never clean them. The phone is the dirtiest, the desktop is next, and the mouse and the computer follow."
But bacteria problems at your desk could be more severe than Gerba thinks. Breadcrumbs and other food remnants get can get in between keys on your keyboard, attract rats and lead to unintended exposure to their germs. What's more, many raw and cooked foods need to remain refrigerated, and leaving them out for two hours or more is a food safety no-no.
Prevention: If you frequently eat your lunch at your desk, you may want to make sure you have hand sanitizer and antibacterial wipes to wipe down your work surface daily. That can also protect you from germs sprayed into the air by your coughing and sneezing coworkers.
If your office has a communal kitchen sink with a sponge, the American Dietetic Association suggests using paper towels instead, just to stay safe from bacteria.
The association goes as far as recommending that those who eat in the office bring a refrigerator thermometer and a meat thermometer as well.
©Adikos |
Stressful Situations
Problem: Stress can be a problem at work regardless of how physical your day-to-day activities are, but those who do exert themselves on the job can actually use some of their activities to ease their stress. If you're chained to a desk, however, you may be even more likely to have stress-related outbursts.
About one-sixth of workers said anger at work led to property damage, and 2%-3% of workers admit to pushing, slapping or hitting someone at work, according to Reuters.
"With roughly 100 million people in the U.S. work force ... that's as many as 3 million people," Reuters reports.
Additionally, about 22% of U.S. workers say they've been driven to tears because of workplace stress and 9% say that stress has led to physically violent situations, reports RJC Associates, a career development firm.
Prevention: Smaller stressors can be handled with breathing and relaxation techniques at your desk or a break outside of the office, but some conflicts may call for mediation by an unbiased party.
And believe it or not, video games have been suggested as a method for easing workplace stress, according to CareerBuilder.com. With the job market recovering and more companies hiring, however, it's starting to look like new job prospects could be a promising way out of stressful work conditions as well.