Public How citation distortions create unfounded authority: analysis of a citation network (2009) S A Greenberg

I think people will be interested in this paper which shows a way of detecting and showing how citation bias can create unfounded authority. The parallels with the whole BPS network seem striking. I've often seen reference to how certain authors cite themselves.

(emphasis added)

https://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b2680

 

Having read your book @Brian Hughes, I'm guessing this might interest you, if you are not already aware of it. (I've not gone back to check if you reference this paper or not in the book, apologies if you did).

 

I forgot to add it, but this seemed to me the most interesting finding

This was the part that really struck me on original reading as being similar to our situation.

 

The is quite cool @Luther Blissett. A bit like the inverted funnel plot - you may not be able to show one paper is crap but the whole load of papers reveals, without knowing it, a tell tale whiff of jiggery-pokery.

 

So this is "how alzheimer research got it wrong for 20 years"...? *sigh*

There's no self correcting in science, if one ignores the evidence correcting you... Sounds way to familiar. :-/

 

Cool. Would love to see such an analysis of CFS research.

 

Puts me in mind of The Lord of the Flies. With no well grounded datum, moralities tend to float and evolve according to group inclinations.

 

Saaammme.

Though I expect we'd see it on the biomedical side, too, though not half so glaringly.

The effect of having a small sample size of studies to choose from is probably notable.