ME/CFS Skeptic - How many scientific papers are fake?

[MrMagoo]

ME CFS Data Sloth also works

 

[Hutan]

Fake news. Fake research. Fake people. Damn the future is bleak.

Yes, but the future has probably always been bleak, some people have always been corrupt, and yet humans are still here. The same tools used to produce and magnify all that fakery can also be used to increase transparency and increase knowledge, to allow people to inform themselves, better than ever before. There are good people trying to make things better, as ME/CFS Skeptic's blog illustrates.

 

[Sean]

but fabrication and falsification of data is only the end of the tip of the iceberg.

Indeed. A general lowering of methodological standards, in particular inadequate control, is the broader picture.

 

[Hutan]

Here's the thread for further discussion about ideas for a new name for ME/CFS Skeptic
Should we change our name: 'ME/CFS Skeptic'?

 

[Nightsong]

Excellent blog, as usual.

I suspect there isn't a lot of outright fraud in the ME/CFS field, just incompetence, vested interests, and third-rate researchers with niche ideas. Academic fraudsters aren't going to choose a field where it's difficult to attract funding, difficult to publish in high-impact journals and where research attracts significant critical scrutiny.

Having said that, last year I came across a paper with "tortured phrases", obviously the product of some automated tool, although it wasn't a biomedical paper.

 

[ME/CFS Skeptic]

Having said that, last year I came across a paper with "tortured phrases", obviously the product of some automated tool, although it wasn't a biomedical paper.

Ha, that's interesting. So post-exertional malaise became 'submit-exertional malaise'?

 

[Nightsong]

Ha, that's interesting. So post-exertional malaise became 'submit-exertional malaise'?

Yup. Looking back at the paper I spotted another one, too - "capability player bias" (probably an automated rephrasing of "participant bias").

Didn't quite know what to make of it at the time; only heard of the concept of "tortured phrases" recently.

 

[ME/CFS Skeptic]

On Twitter Wigglethemouse also suggested this study as problematic:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Kurup+RK%5BAuthor%5D+digoxin%5BTitle%5D

https://twitter.com/user/status/1901722085409648849


And the Perez study using 23 and ME data:
Genetic Predisposition for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Pilot Study 2019 Perez Nathanson Klimas et al | Science for ME

https://twitter.com/user/status/1901723670294532136

 

[wigglethemouse]

On Twitter Wigglethemouse also suggested this study as problematic:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Kurup+RK%5BAuthor%5D+digoxin%5BTitle%5D

That link was to a range of papers for Digoxin in various diseases, all suspiciously similar. This is the link to the ME one.
HYPOTHALAMIC DIGOXIN, CEREBRAL CHEMICAL DOMINANCE AND MYALGIC ENCEPHALOMYELITIS

 

[wigglethemouse]

And the Perez study using 23 and ME data:
Genetic Predisposition for Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Pilot Study 2019 Perez Nathanson Klimas et al | Science for ME

Here is a paper describing the errors of the Perez et al paper. The major errors were easy to spot with spot checking.
Re-analysis of Genetic Risks for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome From 23andMe Data Finds Few Remain